annamaria.bsky.social
Public health journalist with ProPublica
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Overall, the bureau identified 72 activities that are life-saving. To date, none of these have been approved and no payments have been released, according to Enrich's memo. Then nearly all of them were terminated on Feb 27th.
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Then, on Feb 26, Secretary of State Marco Rubio terminated 5,000 USAID programs all at once, including care for malaria, TB and HIV. Shortly after political appointees told Enrich that they'd made some mistakes. "There is an acknowledgement some may have been sent out in error."
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In the weeks that followed, USAID received conflicting information on a near daily basis about whether waivers could continue and how. On Feb 24, political leadership said to deprioritize programs for mpox, polio, and Ebola, noting waivers for that work would not be approved.
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Then senior officials were told to start terminating some programs, including ones that had been flagged as life-saving.
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Nonprofits made clear to USAID staff that without payment, they couldn't continue their life-saving work. On Feb 7, senior officials acknowledged that all of USAID's payment systems had been shut off by DOGE, so funds couldn't go out.
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One early request was for the response to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. Those programs got temporary permission to continue, but USAID has not been paying its bills, stranding programs. (More on that w/ my colleague Brett Murphy: www.propublica.org/article/trum...
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Starting Jan 29, staff scrambled to request life-saving waivers after all foreign aid was paused. Enrich sent an email on Jan 31st to three political appointees about waivers, but didn't get a response until Feb. 4, when one said to be "draconian" in what they approved.
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This is the first time we are hearing from senior leadership at USAID in this way, how political appointees impeded staff from continuing life-saving programs, and who did it.