They Dedicated Years to USAID. They Had Minutes to Pack up Their Desks.

The Washington Post

14:34 JST, March 1, 2025

Prairie Summer walked into the building and under the doorway where her agency’s sign used to hang, past the picture frames – now empty – and windows that had been blacked out. Officers with guns stood guard.

She joined the line of other USAID workers waiting to pass through security so they could retrieve their belongings and wave a final goodbye to their headquarters, each other and the agency that had become ground zero for President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s overhaul of the federal government.

Just two days before, she and others had received a text summoning them to retrieve their belongings from the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington. They’d been locked out as Trump’s rapid-fire dismantling of the congressionally authorized agency in the name of government efficiency moved into its final stages.

“Staff MUST bring their own boxes, bags, tape, and/or other containers to remove their personal items,” the message read. They would have 15 minutes to pack.

“This is really it,” Summer, 45, thought as she slipped off her sneakers and walked through the metal detectors.

She had helped clear land mines in Nepal and supported youth programs in Lebanon and, for the past nine years, she’d worked at USAID, the principal U.S. agency tasked with assisting countries around the globe as they recover from disaster, try to escape poverty and engage in democratic reforms. Earlier this month, Musk, in a post on X called the agency a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

For one last time, she walked by the Memorial Wall, which honors 99 colleagues who gave their lives while serving the nation.

She was a senior director, responsible for managing the agency’s partnerships with the private sector across the globe. She was ready to get to work under the Trump administration to expand USAID’s efforts abroad that, ultimately, she said, helped keep Americans safe, too.

Then she was terminated.

Outside the stone building, the sidewalk thronged with supporters. One woman waved a sign declaring: “Make American Compassionate Again.”

Asked what brought him out, a man who said he was retired military but declined to give his name said: “People always thank me for my service. I wanted to be sure to thank them.”

Another, bundled in a rain coat, shook her homemade maracas – a soda can filled with pennies.

“I thought my hands might get tired from clapping,” she said, weeping.

Cheers and honks from passing traffic broke through the February gloom Thursday and, again, on Friday, when hundreds of staff and their supporters poured into the street in front of the headquarters. Just before they marched from the sidewalk to the asphalt, they recited their oath of office.

Some staffers cried as they carried out grocery bags and wheeled suitcases with what was left of their life’s work. One balanced the remnants of a career in three plastic tubs on a skateboard. He is on administrative leave – he thinks. He was locked out of agency communications, he said, and unable to confirm.

Inside, as Summer walked through the second floor, she thought of her colleagues abroad, who she said had to pull their children out of school and scramble back to the United States when their jobs evaporated.

And she thought of the years she and her colleagues had poured into forging relationships with communities and businesses around the world, and how it felt like those relationships were being shredded before her eyes.

“Lifesaving health programs, work combating terrorism, supporting communities so they’re stable and don’t fall into conflict – that is what we did,” Summer said in an interview. “The idea that getting rid of that work will make Americans safer, stronger, more prosperous is ridiculous and devastating.”

She grabbed a white mug, Polaroids of colleagues from across the globe and some decorative flowers made of tissue paper. A colleague had given them to her on her first day and, in the years since, Summer had offered them to new hires as a welcome present.

She helped clean out the desks of others who couldn’t make it. It was happenstance she was even able to attend. In recent years, she’s worked remotely, raising her family in Colorado.

Under security escort, other staffers stripped their cubicles bare and emptied their desk drawers. They grabbed wedding photos and crayon drawings from their children. They took plants, wilted because the shuttered office had left no one to water them. Badges from a recent G-7 Summit. A ceramic bowl from a peacekeeping mission in Sudan. A blue rubber wristband that said “Ukraine.”

“Sure it’s just stuff, but it meant something to me to be at a global conference representing the United States,” said a former USAID employee who, like some others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retribution. “I don’t think the people dismantling us understand why we chose public service careers in the first place: We care about our country.”

Summer walked out of the building and burst into tears at the cheers greeting her. A small crowd enveloped her in hugs. One woman handed her a yellow rose. Another gave her a small paper bag of cookies.

Another person said she ultimately decided not to retrieve her belongings. The work was close to her heart; she had been a refugee as a child. But she left the photographs with her husband and her dog for the next building’s occupants.

“So they know we are real people,” she said.