Marking one year since they were escorted out of their offices, hundreds of former USAID employees and supporters gathered Friday afternoon in downtown Washington, D.C., to call out the impacts of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID.
As one of the earliest agencies that the Department of Government Efficiency targeted in the Trump administration’s quest to downsize the federal government, USAID lost virtually its entire staff in the early months of 2025. In the span of a few weeks, the agency went from thousands of employees down to a few hundred.
The layoffs impacted Foreign Service officers and staff members, as well as thousands of other civilian agency workers. Thousands more USAID contractors were also laid off as a result of the agency’s closure.
“It hurt, not just for you and me, but for those we partnered with to serve,” Maria Price Detherage, a former USAID senior civil servant, told the crowd on Friday. “It was disorienting, it was painful, and for many of us, it was also quite traumatic.”
Friday’s rally was held downtown outside the Ronald Reagan Building — the same place where, a year ago, the Trump administration escorted many USAID employees out of the agency’s D.C. headquarters for the final time.
Despite the upheavals last year across the agency, speakers at the rally emphasized that public service and USAID’s mission are continuing on.
“An agency closed, a building closed, a chapter closed, but service did not close,” Price Detherage said. “We are serving in local communities, serving across the country, serving across the world, in nonprofits, in classrooms, in state and local governments, in global institutions, still answering the call to serve.”
Governmentwide, virtually all agencies were affected by the Trump administration’s federal employee overhauls throughout 2025. In total, more than 350,000 federal employees have separated from the government, whether by force or voluntarily, since President Donald Trump took office.
Recent federal workforce data from the Office of Personnel Management shows that USAID saw significantly steeper levels of employee separations, compared with some of the larger government departments. By percentage, USAID was the deepest-cut major agency, having lost about 97% of its staff since the early months of the Trump administration.
“This administration did not just dismantle an agency — it targeted a workforce,” Laura Pavlovic, co-founder of the grassroots organization Our USAID Community, said during the rally Friday. “It locked all of us out of this building. It cut off email access to public servants in conflict zones. It fired nearly all of us without cause. It vilified people who had spent decades responding to famine, disease, conflict and democratic backsliding on behalf of the American people.”
Over the last year, many grassroots organizations have popped up in an effort to offer support to former USAID employees and contractors, as well as highlight the work that USAID did prior to the agency’s demolition.
“This administration tried to bury us with shame by covering our images, our signage, burning our supplies and material, threatening our livelihood and compromising our safety and human rights,” said Amanda Nataro, co-founder of Aid on the Hill. “But a year later, we are here defiantly in front of this building — making sure this country and our lawmakers do not forget our life-saving work and the work that USAID did.”
As they warned that the impacts on foreign policy and the federal workforce may last for years, if not decades, speakers at the rally also expressed hope for the future of USAID’s mission and values.
“Let us be clear, these values did not disappear with the dismantling of USAID,” said Chris Milligan, chairman of the USAID Alumni Association. “They live on in people like you. They live on in the communities that are now thriving and whose lives were improved.”
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