Editor’s Note: A version of the following article appeared on Anne Linn’s Facebook page. It has been edited for space and formatting considerations.
On Tuesday, I lost my job, along with almost 400 talented and committed people who have dedicated their lives to improving the lives and health of people around the world. But this is not about my job. My job is a drop in an immense bucket of suffering caused by the halt on foreign aid, with cascading impacts beyond what I can describe.
There is much out there about the scale of these impacts, so I want to focus on my own experience of these last days and the impact on my specific work.
On Day One of the new administration, one of the executive orders was a halt of obligations, or funding, currently with the US Agency for International Development USAID going to projects. I was worried about this because of new projects that were in need of funding to get their vital work started. But I resolved to roll up my sleeves to articulate how the work I was involved with was indeed aligned with Secretary Rubio’s stated goals of making America safer, stronger and more prosperous.
My job for the past six years has been with the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). Malaria still kills around 600,000 people each year—mostly children under the age of five. However, in the 30 countries where PMI is involved, the malaria mortality rate has been reduced by half since the initiative was launched in 2006 by George W. Bush.
If this is not a show of American strength, I don’t know what is.
Aid is diplomacy and fosters goodwill. Malaria harms economies when people can’t work, and PMI’s work to fight this disease allows economies to grow—and with the globalization of today’s economy, that means more shared prosperity.
Did I join this field because of these goals? No. As a Christian, I was compelled by the gospel, the words of Jesus, to use my life to try to diminish suffering for the world’s most vulnerable. This has been more than a career—it has been a vocation where my greatest gifts have met the world’s greatest need. I have had no radical agenda other than the notion that no child should die from a mosquito bite.
I have been so proud to tell my children about my work and the American greatness it represented. And now I have had to tell them that I no longer have a job, and I’ve had to explain why.
I did not have a chance to articulate how my work meets Secretary Rubio’s goals and on Friday, he sent a new memo adding to the original executive order. Now, all aid would be halted for a 90-day review. Stop-work orders would be issued to all projects immediately, with almost no exceptions, despite the obvious life-saving nature of our work. That’s where my layoff came to be.
As contract staff, we were told that the entirety of our contract was stopped, and they were unable to continue our employment. Two-thirds of the PMI team at USAID just evaporated.
I have no objection to reviewing the work. But the immediate halts are nothing but cruel and wasteful.
If we want to talk about government efficiency, let me just provide a few examples of waste. I have been involved with work in Sierra Leone to test how we can more cost-effectively deliver an intervention with proven outcomes. A survey was scheduled to be conducted next week to measure these outcomes, but it is now all halted, and now we won’t know whether we could have actually provided this intervention with fewer resources and achieved the same outcomes.
All the resources that went into this work are wasted.
Malaria is very seasonal, as mosquitoes flourish during the rainy season. Planning things like distributions of bednets and preventive medicine for children has a precise timeline that will fall apart, making this work less effective, if it even happens at all. And children, children of God, will die unnecessarily.
I was supposed to go to a meeting on child survival next week. My ticket was non-refundable, because that’s the more cost-efficient option. Even if it does end up being just a “pause,” how many organizations will be able to maintain staff for three months without being able to pay them to do any work?
My non-contract colleagues, the federal employees who were not laid off, have been instructed not to conduct any work. As someone who has considered myself a steward of taxpayer resources for the last six years, this waste infuriates me.
On Monday, the career (non-political appointed) leadership of every bureau at USAID was escorted out of the building and placed on administrative leave. The global health leadership are people I respect so much who have served our country through their dedication to the agency’s mission. I am sickened to think of them being treated as an enemy.
The next morning, as contractors got our layoff notices, we heard about pictures of smiling beneficiaries of US foreign assistance being removed from their frames. Why do this other than to expressly try to terrorize the workforce, my colleagues who, to me, represent the best of America?
This is what the rhetoric from this administration looks like in practice.
I will be ok. I am scrappy and privileged. But so much is not ok. No matter who you voted for, if reading this has stirred any compassion in you, please speak out. Contact your representatives—the frozen budgets were approved by Congress, and the ordered halt of this work contradicts the balance of power intended in the Constitution.
The freeze on all federal grants was rescinded because people spoke out and said that it wasn’t ok. Secretary Rubio issued a waiver for HIV treatment. We can stop this. Even if you think we should diminish foreign aid, this can be done in a more thoughtful and strategic way.
America is great because America is good. We can still be good.
Annē Linn grew up surrounded by various faith communities in Montana. She attended Pacific Lutheran University and Tulane University. As a part of her graduate program, she served for two years in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa. For six years, she worked as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development at the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative. She lives in Bozeman, Montana, with her husband and two young children.