WASHINGTON >> The Trump administration will reduce the number of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions, three people with knowledge of the plans said Thursday.

Also Thursday, federal workers’ associations filed a lawsuit asking a federal court to stop the shutdown, arguing that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.

The small remaining staff would include employees who specialize in health and humanitarian assistance, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the cuts.

A spokesperson for the State Department, whose umbrella the remnants of the agency have moved under, did not return a request for comment.

USAID officials were also told Thursday that about 800 awards and contracts administered through the agency were being canceled, the three people said.

The moves also came just one day before almost all of the agency’s direct hires, including its roster of Foreign Service officers, will be put on indefinite administrative leave, while almost all contractors will see their work orders terminated. Foreign Service officers will have 30 days to return to the United States.

Rubio: Not getting rid of foreign aid

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took control of USAID as its acting administrator Monday, insisted during a Fox News interview this week that the takeover was “not about getting rid of foreign aid.”

“But now we have rank insubordination,” he said, adding that USAID employees had been “completely uncooperative, so we had no choice but to take dramatic steps to bring this thing under control.”

On Thursday, he reiterated the promise that some workers would be offered exemptions to minimize the hardship of the sudden recall.

“We’re not trying to be disruptive to people’s personal lives,” Rubio told reporters while traveling in the Dominican Republic. “We’re not being punitive here. But this is the only way we’ve been able to get cooperation from USAID.”

Extent of order

The order was later amended to say that the agency’s lifesaving activities could continue. But several USAID officials and contractors have reported that they cannot gain access to the funding for projects that received a waiver.

Employees’ fears were heightened Monday, after Rubio announced that he was now the agency’s acting administrator, delegating its day-to-day governance to Pete Marocco, the department’s director of foreign assistance. That day, Erica Y. Carr, the acting executive secretary, also told bureau heads in an email to come up with the “leanest essential personnel numbers” they would need “to provide essential services only,” according to a copy viewed by The New York Times.

End of programs

The loss of nearly the entire USAID workforce threatened to have dire consequences for an enormous swath of programs run by the agency, which has for years led the government’s humanitarian aid and global development efforts, as well as the greater global aid industry that relies on USAID funding.

While the exact size of the USAID workforce could not be precisely determined, estimates range as high as 14,000, a number that includes all contractors and foreign nationals who work with agency missions.

“Rubio claims that @USAID lifesaving assistance for health and humanitarian needs will continue,” Atul Gawande, who served as assistant administrator of the bureau of global health during the Biden administration, said in a social media post Thursday.

Gawande’s post included a screen shot of an email from Joel Borkert, the acting chief of staff, breaking down the projected staffing per bureau after the cuts. The email showed that the administration planned to retain 12 people focused on Africa, eight on Latin America and the Caribbean, 21 on the Middle East and eight on Asia.

According to that chart, 78 people from the bureau of humanitarian affairs and 77 from the bureau of global health would also be retained.

Pushback

Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.

The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit, which asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding.

Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to US national interests,” the suit says.

This report contains information from the Associated Press.