The Trump administration will only keep 294 out of 10,000 employees of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of an overhaul of the agency, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Sources familiar with the situation told Reuters that some employees have already begun receiving termination notices. Out of the 10,000 employees, about 60% are based out of the United States.
The pause on foreign aid and overhaul of USAID has highlighted the agency’s role in destabilizing activities across the world, which includes advancing regime change efforts by funding opposition groups and media outlets in other countries.
USAID is being brought under the State Department and will be overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the US will continue providing foreign aid but only programs it can “defend.”
“The United States is not walking away from foreign aid. It’s not. We’re going to continue to provide foreign aid and to be involved in programs, but it has to be programs that we can defend. It has to be programs that we can explain,” Rubio told US diplomats on Wednesday.
Rubio said the administration is working on identifying programs that would be exempted from the 90-day pause on foreign aid. The only initial exemptions were military aid to Israel and Egypt. US weapons shipments to Ukraine have been resumed after a brief pause, according to another Reuters report.
