Legacy
Under normal conditions, as the transition of executive power begins, career civil servants furiously craft mountains of orientation material for incoming leaders, brief transition “landing teams,” prepare nominees for their confirmation hearings and wait for orders. Career employees in “acting positions” pause any big policy or programmatic moves. They exercise great caution before making any decision that would bind an incoming appointee. No matter the stripe of the incoming party, USAID career civil servants greet the transition by facilitating the capacity of incoming leaders to chart the direction of the agency.
Nothing prepared us for the events of the last week.
The flurry of Executive Orders and midnight directives first paused U.S. foreign aid, idled the global workforce that delivers humanitarian and development assistance, decapitated USAID’s leadership and announced the recall of all its foreign service officers from around the globe. On February 7, 2025, the President tweeted “Shut it down” laying bare the pretense of reviewing and aligning assistance with U.S. national interests or ensuring that life-saving assistance would be unaffected.
Having worked for the federal government for 30 years and been part of four presidential transitions and having lived through many more as in a civil service family, I am familiar with the uncertainty and anxiety of a new political order taking shape.
I retired from the U.S. Agency for International Development in 2017. I look back, and often. The hundreds of colleagues and friends whose paths joined with mine across our careers still shape my life.
During my time at USAID, I briefed the staff of the most conservative members of Congress. My colleagues and I were advocates for both Republican and Democratic presidents and our interlocutors carried out their constitutional oversight duties. They may have questioned our motivations and even 30 years ago, many supported merging USAID into the State Department. But, during my time as a civil servant or as a political appointee, I was never personally attacked for representing the policies of whatever administration I served. We battled vigorously over competing worldviews and policies that accompany those views. For both sides, our weapons were facts. Our client was the American people. We respected each other’s professionalism and our assigned roles in a democracy. And we always honored each other’s humanity, even when we disagreed.
That world has ended.
The President and his followers began the dismantling of USAID by demonizing it as “a criminal organization,” staffed by “lunatics,” “Marxists” and “worms.” Officials and their supporters on the Hill and on right-wing media sites harvested largely distorted and inaccurate depictions of government waste—unsupported by facts—and had those cherry-picked examples parroted from the White House press podium. By simultaneously darkening USAID’s website, the government cut media and citizen access to the actual documentation of how and why these programs were actually delivered, including evaluations, audits, and congressional testimony.
Choosing to act unilaterally rather than work with the Congress, the Administration stopped funding, took control of the Agency data, fired the people, and shuttered the agency, while waiting to see if Congress lifts a finger to stop it. Rather than simply end the policies and advance a new agenda, this administration went after the people. They also revealed the playbook they intend to use for the Department of Education, the FBI, the EPA and several parts of other cabinet agencies. In the U.S., we call it the “Imperial Presidency.” In Europe, it was and is known as fascism.
How different is this from democratic practice I have seen, time and again?
Development professionals served under the Reagan-Bush administration for twelve years executing policy and programs, whether they personally agreed with them or not. Our touchstone was advancing the national interest and delivering positive development outcomes that made the world more peaceful and prosperous. When Secretary of State James Baker and his then-Soviet counterpart brokered an end to the wars in Central America and changed the course of superpower relations in the region, the incoming Clinton team at USAID, together with State Department colleagues, immediately made sustaining the Central American Peace Accords the number one objective of our assistance programs in the region. The same people, regardless of their own political views, got on board. For us, it’s always about the mission. Our loyalty is to the Constitution and the oath we swear to support it.
Many of last week’s actions may ultimately be undone by Congress or the courts. But the damage has already been done. This needless and costly disruption in the system hits hard at all levels. I receive daily messages of condolence from friends and colleagues who know how much my work at USAID meant to me. It turns out that the initial “review and realignment” of foreign aid was a stalking horse for taking a wrecking ball to USAID, ending the development mission and capabilities of the government. Whatever functions remain will be folded into the State Department. Long live USAID.
This work isn’t just my legacy. It is my family’s work as well. My father spent 25 at the Department of Justice implementing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its mandate to offer mediation and assistance to ease conflicts associated with desegregation. My sister worked for 39 years at the National Institutes for Health, benefiting from one of the earliest DEI programs that hired people with disabilities. It gave her a job, a network of loving friends, and the opportunity to serve her country, which she did with distinction. Their legacies live on in my memory— their life’s work faces likely extinction or reversal.
I draw one deep lesson from all of this. There is deep mistrust and division in our politics and our discourse. As a country, we lack confidence in our government's ability to solve problems. Our system is now out of balance in a way we haven’t seen since the months after 9/11.
This is not a fight about foreign aid. It’s about whether our democracy can withstand unchecked power grabs and unaccountable governance led by the most powerful man and the richest man in the world. It smacks of fascism. It has already made us less safe, less free and less able to meet the challenges we face.