Lawfare Daily: An Insider’s Account of the Trump Administration’s Dismantling of USAID

Summary

The Lawfare Podcast Summary

Episode Title: Lawfare Daily: An Insider’s Account of the Trump Administration’s Dismantling of USAID
Date: May 7, 2026
Host: Anna Hickey (Associate Editor, Lawfare)
Guest: Nicholas Enrich (Former Acting Assistant Administrator of Global Health, USAID; Author of Into the Woodchipper)

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Episode Overview

This episode offers a detailed, insider account of the rapid and sweeping dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the second Trump administration. Nicholas Enrich, who led USAID’s Global Health Bureau through its final days, discusses his experience, the haphazard processes behind the agency’s closure, the catastrophic impacts on global health, the role of newly installed personnel from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and the legal aftermath. Enrich also reflects on the loss of American soft power and trust, and considers what rebuilding U.S. foreign aid might require.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nicholas Enrich’s Background & Role at USAID

• Enrich describes his unusual background as a lawyer in a bureau otherwise staffed mostly by health specialists ([03:41]).
• At the transition, he was Director of Policy Planning and Programs; soon after, he was thrust into the acting head role for Global Health due to senior staff removals ([17:12]).

2. USAID’s Global Health Mission & Importance

• USAID’s Global Health Bureau was tasked with increasing global life expectancy and expanding access to health care, with $8 billion in annual funding ([04:51]).

• Key work included combating HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, improving maternal and child health, and more—primarily via partnerships with host governments ([04:51]).

• Enrich emphasizes U.S. self-interest: preventing global pandemics protects Americans ([05:51]).

  "The shortest-term pitch is that it keeps Americans safer from the potential spread of infectious diseases... USAID was really the embodiment of American generosity and soft power."
  — Nick Enrich ([05:51])

3. Initial Fears, Executive Orders, and Unfolding Chaos

• Enrich expected only specific program cuts, not outright abolition, citing bipartisan historical support ([07:19]).
• On January 20th, 2025, a broad freeze on foreign assistance is issued via executive order, throwing agency staff into uncertainty and panic ([07:19], [02:18]).
• The order jeopardized clinical trials, health clinics, malaria campaigns, and more, risking "millions of people losing their lives" ([02:18], [07:19]).

4. Myths Surrounding Family Planning (Abortion)

• Enrich asserts that USAID was prohibited by law from funding abortion services and clarifies that “family planning” largely meant contraception, counseling, and preventing teenage pregnancies ([09:42]).

  "...we did not fund abortions under any circumstances, despite that being like an insidious rumor."
  — Nick Enrich ([09:42])

5. The Abrupt, Unplanned Dismantling & Role of DOGE

• The abolition of USAID was not outlined in Trump’s campaign or Project 2025 but was pushed by fringe commentators and, crucially, Elon Musk’s DOGE ([11:14]).

• There were three groups at USAID post-inauguration: existing staff, Musk’s DOGE personnel (often clueless and careless), and Trump political appointees—many with an axe to grind ([12:42],[13:30],[18:36]).

  “They never participated in any sort of meetings where they could find out what it was the agency did... basically children in a toy spaceship messing around and pressing buttons...”
  — Nick Enrich on DOGE personnel ([13:30])

  • DOGE prioritized quick destruction, ignoring pleas to preserve life-saving contracts and infrastructure ([13:30], [15:30]).
  • Tension existed between DOGE staff—who wanted everything cancelled—and some political appointees, who at least nominally supported a Rubio-authored waiver for humanitarian exceptions ([13:30], [15:30]).

6. Personal Experiences & Management Turnover

• Within a week of the second Trump administration, 60 senior career staff were put on administrative leave; Enrich was made acting head of Global Health while on vacation ([17:12]).

• Many new appointees were not experts, but people with grudges against the agency, such as Mark Lloyd (who claimed civil servants killed his dog in retaliation during his first appointment) ([18:36], [21:02]).

  "Honestly, when he told me that the staff had killed his dog, I asked no follow-up questions. I just said something like, 'Oh, that sounds terrible,' and tried to remove myself from the conversation..."
  — Nick Enrich ([21:28])

7. Effects of Agency Drawdown: On-the-Ground Impact

• USAID’s sudden withdrawal led to immediate deaths and suffering—closed clinics, halted food distributions, maternal deaths ([37:23]).

• Estimates suggest at least 750,000 have died in the past year, with projections up to 14 million deaths in the coming five years due to lost immunization and prevention efforts ([37:23]).

  "...at least 750,000 people have already died. And about 500,000 of those are being children. Unfortunately, it looks like the worst is very much yet to come..."
  — Nick Enrich ([37:23])

8. The Ebola Outbreak Example

• Enrich recounts how the U.S. response to an Ebola outbreak in Uganda was crippled:

  • Staff were blocked from working with CDC or WHO, denied permission to release aid/medical supplies ([32:27]).
  • Political appointee Pete Morocco even suggested breaking into warehouses to get personal protective equipment, then gave an ultimatum to Enrich ([32:27]).

• Miraculously, the outbreak was contained, but only by luck and prior investments in Ugandan health systems ([35:59]).

  "...it just felt like we were kind of conducting global health policy by crossing our fingers and hoping, which obviously is a terrible way to conduct global health policy."
  — Nick Enrich ([35:59])

9. Aftermath: Personnel, Funding, and Legal Fights

• USAID shrank from a staff of 10,000–16,000 (plus hundreds of thousands of contractors) to “a tiny skeleton crew” now closing out contracts ([41:05], [42:11]).

• ~ $8 billion/year in funding is gone; remaining contracts mostly transferred or “dumped” into State in an unstrategic, ineffective way ([41:05], [39:13]).

• Legal challenges are underway, with claims of illegal firings, separation of powers violations, and improper contract terminations ([43:11]).

  "...people were fired three times and then reinstated and then unfired. And it was just like an absolute legal mess."
  — Nick Enrich ([43:11])

10. Documentation, Whistleblowing, and Historic Reckoning

• Enrich and colleagues prepared memos documenting what they tried to do, how they were blocked, and the likely death toll, estimating up to 2.6 million additional deaths per year without intervention ([44:56], [47:07]).
• He frames this as establishing a public record for accountability—including for DOGE staff, now often in other senior federal roles ([45:12], [47:07]).

11. Prospects for the Future

• Enrich advocates for new transparency: the State Department should release impact data, mandated by Congress ([48:17]).

• He argues that the destruction was not about ensuring alignment to presidential priorities but simply wrecking for its own sake ([48:17]).

  "...it was torn down just like for the sole purpose of satisfying the ego of the world’s richest man. And that’s not a good reason."
  — Nick Enrich ([48:17])

• Challenges to rebuilding: American expertise remains, but global trust is badly broken ([49:56]).

• He warns that replacing experts with sycophants is a recipe for failure, and cautions agencies and observers not to underestimate the role of incompetence and vindictiveness in government dysfunction ([51:22]).

  "...a cautionary tale... We can’t underestimate the sheer level of incompetence and what happens when agencies are hollowed out of their expertise and replaced by uninformed and unqualified sycophants..."
  — Nick Enrich ([51:22])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the chilling speed and scale of the freeze:

  "I was kind of like nervous but optimistic and waiting for some sort of supplemental guidance...because they couldn't possibly mean what it said, because that would result in potentially millions of people losing their lives..."
  — Nick Enrich ([02:18])

• On DOGE’s recklessness:

  "...children in a toy spaceship messing around and pressing buttons and not really knowing or caring what any of those things did."
  — Nick Enrich ([13:30])

• On the legacy:

  "In my mind, when the dust settles on the Trump presidency, this is going to end up being its legacy. This is one of the most consequential policy decisions that the Trump administration will have ended up making. And they didn't even know what it was that they were closing out."
  — Nick Enrich ([52:51], recurring theme)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Notable Quote | |-----------|--------------------| | 02:18 | Enrich describes reaction to executive order freezing foreign assistance | | 05:51 | Enrich defines USAID's value: American soft power, pandemic prevention | | 07:19 | Immediate aftermath of inauguration and the agency-wide panic | | 09:42 | Clarifying USAID’s family planning work—no funding for abortion | | 11:14 | Abolition was not in Project 2025/campaign platforms | | 13:30 | DOGE staff described as reckless, clueless, and destructive | | 17:12 | Mass administrative leave, Enrich’s sudden elevation | | 18:36 | Political appointees with vendettas; “they killed my dog” anecdote | | 32:27 | Detailed account of blocked Ebola response in Uganda | | 37:23 | On-the-ground impacts: deaths, projected millions at risk | | 39:13 | Transfer and “dumping” of remaining contracts to State | | 41:05 | Staffing and funding figures before/after | | 43:11 | Litigation overview | | 44:56 | The rationale and content of whistleblowing memos | | 45:12 | Role of documentation & memo dissemination | | 47:07 | Estimated 2.6 million excess deaths/year in memo | | 48:17 | Urging for data release, critique of motives for agency closure | | 49:56 | Prospects for rebuilding expertise and lost trust | | 51:22 | Broader warning: risk of hollowing out government expertise |

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Conclusion

Nicholas Enrich’s firsthand story, as told in this episode and detailed in his book Into the Woodchipper, paints a picture of careless, vindictive, and sometimes bizarre bureaucratic destruction at the cost of global health and American credibility. He shares harrowing anecdotes, offers hard numbers, and gives context for those seeking to understand—or someday rebuild—the U.S. humanitarian footprint. This episode will be essential listening and reading for national security, law, and global health watchers alike.

Transcript

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[Lauren Voss]

Hi, I'm Lauren Voss, senior editor at lawfare. You probably know me best for my obsession with domestic military deployments. At lawfare, we're dedicated to tackling the hard national security questions, the ones without easy answers. We provide in depth, nonpartisan analysis on issues that impact not just policymakers and legal experts, but anyone who cares about democracy, foreign policy, and the rule of law. From conflicts abroad to challenges at home, the stakes in national security and the rule of law are high, and understanding them isn't optional. Lawfare is a 501 nonprofit, and everything we produce is accessible to anyone who wants it. That only works if readers and listeners like you step up. Become part of our growing lawfare community, a network of smart, informed people who are invested in understanding the moment. Just like you. Head to lawfaremedia.org support and become a material supporter. Just $10 a month or more if you're able, and it really makes a difference. Plus, you'll help us continue to offer all of our content for free to everyone. Thanks for listening and for caring about things that matter.

[Nick Enrich]

I was kind of like nervous but optimistic and waiting for some sort of supplemental guidance that would describe what was actually meant by because they couldn't possibly mean what it said, because that would result in potentially millions of people losing their lives and us pulling the rug out from promises we had made around the world to keep people safe.

[Anna Hickey]

It's the lawfare Podcast. I'm Anna Hickey, associate editor of communications at lawfare, with Nicholas Enrich, former acting assistant administrator of global Health at USAID and author of into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded usaid.

[Nick Enrich]

In my mind, when the dust settles on the Trump presidency, this is going to end up being its legacy. This is one of the most consequential policy decisions that the Trump administration will have ended up making. And they didn't even know what it was that they were closing out.

[Anna Hickey]

Today we're talking about his experience within the agency as Elon Musk's newly created Department of Government Efficiency dismantled it and the global impacts of the end of United States Agency for International Development.

[Interviewer]

Before we dive into what happened with the agency last spring between like January and March of 2025, can you describe your background? You know, how did you end up at USAID and what did you do there prior to January 20, 2025?

[Nick Enrich]

Sure. I was in the Global Health Bureau. And unlike most people in the Global Health Bureau who were doctors, epidemiologists, public health specialists and the like, I was actually a lawyer. And my job was to basically create a framework, a procurement framework for, for USA to move money in ways that would allow us to, to implement the, the technical objectives of those doctors and epidemiologists. So my, my, my job as, as we came into the Trump administration was the director of policy plannings and programs for the Global Health Bureau. And that basically just meant that we needed to make sure that we had enough, we had the right levels of funding to achieve those objectives and that we were using those funds as effectively as possible to achieve those objectives.

[Interviewer]

And when we think about objectives like what was USAID doing for, you know, I'm sure many people in America, at least some of our listeners, didn't really know about the agency prior to last year when it really hit the News. What were USAID's objectives and what was the scale of, you know, especially the Global Health Bureau of that service and like impact?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah. Our big overarching objectives were to increase global life expectancy and to expand access to quality healthcare around the globe. We had a budget in global health of approximately $8 billion a year. And we worked through a variety of disease and health areas like hiv, malaria, tuberculosis, maternal and child health, family planning, nutrition, and a couple of others. And the, the basic model was to work in partnership with host governments to strengthen local health systems to be able to address health problems for the long term.

[Interviewer]

Obviously, there's the reason of the US Government should do this because it is morally good, it is saving people's lives. But why was it important, at least in your eyes, that the US Government was doing this work in other countries to Decrease maternal mortality, increase life expectancy for especially children. What's the pitch to the US People?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, I mean, the shortest term pitch is that it keeps Americans safer from the potential spread of infectious diseases. Right. And we're five years out from a global pandemic of COVID And so I don't think anyone is confused that diseases don't stop at international borders at this point. And since COVID we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars through USAID to help countries strengthen like a global early warning system to be able to detect and respond to outbreaks of infectious diseases, prevent before they potentially could become a threat to the US So that's in the shortest term sense. Another way is that, however, like in, in a more broad sense, USAID was really the embodiment of American generosity and soft power. In a lot of ways, we strengthened partnerships and, and built stability and security around the world in ways that were founded on, on goodwill and partnership and made the world a more stable place for, for the benefit of all Americans.

[Interviewer]

Now, kind of turning to what happened last spring. So starting in January 2025, I mean, you start the book of you end up on vacation at the beginning of the transition. Can you describe what January 20th to January 22nd, 23rd looked like, what information was coming into the agency, and how you all were thinking about the second Trump administration coming in and changing the objectives or directions of the agency?

[Nick Enrich]

Sure. I mean, I should start even before the inauguration, reading kind of anything I could possibly find about what the administration might be planning for USAID, including Project 2025. A lot of speculation as to who were going to be the potential political appointees that might come in. And what it seemed like was we were concerned about that some of our programs might be in jeopardy, especially those related to family planning, those related to climate and resilience, and those related to partnering with the World Health Organization. But it never really crossed my mind, honestly, that the entirety of our broader programs would be threatened. I mean, again, the objective of expanding health access around the world and increasing global life expectancy and keeping Americans safe from infectious diseases seemed to have broad bipartisan support over decades. On January 20, however, there were a series of executive orders that the President issued that first day, including one that issued a blanket freeze on foreign assistance. And to me, I was reading that, like you said, I was actually on vacation. I did not know how quickly this was all going to move, and I thought I might have some time as the transition would go into place. But, boy, was I wrong. But as reading that the executive order that was freezing foreign assistance. I thought it must be a mistake, overly broad, because if taken at its letter, my assumption was that that would mean that it would shutter health clinics that we had, that USA was running all over the world. It would interrupt clinical trials, that we had patients that needed to take treatment the next day. It would disrupt the distribution of everything we were planning to do to prepare for the rainy season for malaria around the world. And just the effects would be so catastrophic that I just couldn't believe that that's really what they meant. And so I was kind of like nervous, but optimistic and waiting for some sort of supplemental guidance that would describe what was actually meant by this, because they couldn't possibly mean what it said because that would result in potentially millions of people losing their lives and us pulling the rug out from promises we had made around the world to keep people safe.

[Interviewer]

Just to kind of drill down on two parts of the question, first you mentioned family planning. I know there's a lot of people, especially online, that think about family planning from USAID in terms of abortion or other reproductive health access things. Is that what you mean by family planning?

[Nick Enrich]

No, I mean, we did not do abortions. We were actually legally prohibited by statute to not promote or provide any sort of abortion services. What we mean by family planning is counseling, providing contraception, providing the basic frameworks to allow women and girls to have children in the timing that they wanted to, and to help prevent teenage pregnancies, to help women continuing their education so that they could help contribute economically. And it was a program that actually saves a lot of lives by giving women more education and choice over when they have families. But to be very, very specific and clear, we did not fund abortions under any circumstances, despite that being like a insidious rumor. But again, we had strict safeguards in place to prevent that. None of our funds were ever used for abortion.

[Interviewer]

I know. Especially kind of this year. I feel like I've seen a lot of people both who support the administration and oppose the administration have responded to Koenigseggs saying, like, nothing is surprising. Everything that the administration has done has been laid out either in President Trump's 2024 campaign by his advisors in Project 2025. And just to really hammer the point home, the destruction of USAID was not mentioned during the campaign trail in Project 2025 by any of his advisors or spokespeople in the run up, even after he won before January 20th.

[Nick Enrich]

That's correct. I mean, nothing that I had seen. I mean, well, I will say that there were certain fringe podcasters and right wing social media commentators who were certainly calling for the abolition of USAID and calling it a front for the CIA. And unfortunately, it was those voices that somehow caught the ear of Elon Musk as he was coming in with his Department of Government Efficiency. And while this was not a political priority for, in anything that I saw in terms of, for the, for the Trump administration or his political appointees, where DOGE is concerned, unfortunately that's exactly what they got into their heads is what they wanted to do.

[Interviewer]

Thinking about DOGE and what DOGE did, as I read the book, I kind of became aware of three buckets of people who worked at USAID in between January and March or July 2025. And so I kind of want to pull at the intentions and roles of each of those buckets. So the first was people like you, people who had served at USAID prior to January 2025, the civil servants, foreign service officers. The second bucket was DOGE personnel who came in at the behest of Elon Musk. And then a third were political appointees who came in who had some had previously worked at USAID and people like Pete Maracu who ended up leading much of the agency. So do you think about the people who worked at USAID in those three buckets? Is there anybody I'm missing who had significant roles to play in that time period?

[Nick Enrich]

No, I think those are the three main buckets, as you say, the political appointees that were coming in from the Trump administration, the DOGE team that was coming in under Elon Musk and the, the career officials or the civil service, foreign service contractors, all those groups that were already there. I think that's a fair assessment.

[Interviewer]

And so thinking about the DOGE people, first, you mentioned much of the actions by the DOGE personnel kind of were at some points appeared to be random. You mention in the book, sometimes it even appeared to be unintentional. In your view, in your time there, how much of what the actions of specifically the DOGE personnel were done to target specific programs? How much was done just to end all foreign aid? How did you think about their intent and then also what they did?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, I think it's really important here to be very clear that the DOGE personnel that came in had absolutely no idea what USAID did, and they really didn't care to find out. They never participated in any sort of meetings where they could find out what it was the agency did when they started tinkering with, and I refer to them as in the book as basically children in a toy spaceship messing around and pressing buttons and not really knowing or caring what any of those things did. And some of the destruction that they initiated, actually, all of the destruction that they initiated was not based on and totally in disregard for what the impacts of that would be on global health and international development in general. And the other thing is that from the DOGE perspective, they really didn't. Whereas the political appointees were kind of focused on closing out the agency in a smooth way, that Marco Rubio even issued a waiver to allow life saving humanitarian assistance activities to continue. But DOSHA really didn't care about that. They were working quickly, and it was pretty smart for them to do that because it allowed them to break everything down before there was any way to save any parts of the program. So it often ended up with kind of yelling and screaming between the political appointees and doge, as the political appointees who were, to some degree, some of them were trying to figure out what the impacts would be of the damage when they realized, oh, wow, we do need to turn some of this work back on or people are really going to die. And they realized that the damage that had been done to the systems by DOGE through breaking our payment system or canceling our contracts or slashing the staff were so broken that there was no way to even fix them at that point. They were beyond repair.

[Interviewer]

So did you have any personal interactions with any of the DOGE personnel during your time at usaid?

[Nick Enrich]

I did. I wish I did earlier, because I would have loved to try to get the chance to explain them what the damage they were causing. But by the time I started interacting with doge, it was them getting very angry at me for what they called slowing down their process of canceling, terminating our contracts. And the reason that, that we had that bit of a conflict was, as I mentioned, Rubio had issued this waiver to allow, even though foreign aid was paused, to allow for life saving activities to continue. So this entire time, from January through the beginning of March, when I got kicked out, that was my goal, was to restart the life saving activities. And I was stopped at every turn. And one of the things that was preventing us from, actually, maybe the most permanent thing that was preventing us from turning those activities back on was that DOGE was terminating the contracts that we needed to do those activities. So I would continue to try to say, wait, before you terminate that contract, you should know that it's needed to implement the waiver that Rubio put in place that Musk is standing at the White House and saying, you know, we're still doing these activities that Rubio and Pete Morocco are telling Congress that, yeah, we have this waiver in place. All the lifesaving things are continuing. We can't do those if you terminate our contracts. And Doge basically just said, absolutely not, stop slowing down our process. All these contracts have already been vetted by the sec, the Secretary of State, which was just, frankly, not true. And so that ended up being my first interaction with Doge.

[Interviewer]

What was your position in between January and March when you left at usaid? Because you mentioned that you started doing more of the lawyer y work within Global Health, but you obviously don't end up in that position at the end.

[Nick Enrich]

Sure. About one week into the Trump administration, Doge put the 60 most senior career officials at USAID onto administrative leave. And that included my boss, who was acting as the assistant Administrator for Global Health, and all of her deputies. And the next day I found out through a notice that went to the entire agency without any warning or heads up, that I was actually the one that was now going to be put in charge of Global Health because they had gotten rid of all of the career leadership. So from that point on, about one week into the Trump administration, I was the acting Assistant Administrator for Global Health. As I mentioned, or as you mentioned, I was on vacation at the time that I found this out and had to hurry back to Washington and just kind of jumped right into a world of chaos. Again, my number one priority trying to be to get Doge and the political appointees to understand what it was that they were destroying so that hopefully we could save some of the key programs on the way up in a kind of desperate attempt to avoid a catastrophic loss of life.

[Interviewer]

So we've mentioned the term political appointees. I think that term, we probably should define it at this point. So when we talk about political appointees, what are we referring to and how are the political appointees who came in in the second Trump administration maybe distinct from the types of appointees that came in during prior transitions?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah. So unlike the career staff or the civil service and the Foreign Service and those that are kind of the consistent federal employees that stick around and non, partially or in a nonpartisan way implement the work of usaid, every four years there's a new political leadership that's determined by and appointed by the President, and that's common. That happens every four years. And usually that's experts in the field where, like in Global Health, our previous political appointee to lead Global Health was a guy named Atulga one day who is a renowned surgeon and global health strategist. And so that's normally what you get in terms of political appointees. In this case, the people that were brought in as the Trump political appointees were actually people that had little to no information about what the agency did or really understanding of how government worked. That was the primary collection of political appointees. There were a few, a handful who had been political appointees previously under the first Trump administration that came back. So that included Pete Morocco and the guy who ultimately became my boss, Mark Lloyd. And these, the people who were returning, they fall into the category of vindictive. These were people who came back into the government with an ax to grind because they felt that they had been wronged during the first Trump administration. Morocco, for example, had been removed from USAID after only four months in the first Trump administration for severe mismanagement that he blamed on. On the career staff. My boss, Mark Lloyd, also had been there and also blamed the career staff for his ouster as well, saying that they had. The staff had, like, leaked things to the press and had harassed him. And he even went as far as saying that the. The career staff during the first Trump administration had killed his dog. So, I mean, these are the kinds of people that we were trying to convince that needed to save our programs. They were people who were really happy to be there trying to get rid of the civil servants, really. Absolutely. It was a pleasure to them to disregard and get rid of the expertise of the agency in what felt like revenge. I mean, again, my boss was pretty convinced that me and my colleagues were pet murderers.

[Interviewer]

So that was a part of the book that I wanted to make sure I asked about, because it was like, stop me in my tracks, where the quote that you have him saying is, they referring to USAID civil servants at the time, tracked down my family and sent pictures of my son's house to threaten me, and then they killed my dog. Did you ask him what he meant by that? I just. I can't imagine having somebody who was my boss accusing me and my colleagues of that.

[Nick Enrich]

So I've been asked that before, and the answer is no. I was. I was nervous to follow up. I didn't. I didn't believe it, honestly. It, like, sounded unhinged and again, needs to be taken in the context of the reason he brought it up was because I kind of asked him, like, when you came in for this position, were you looking forward to doing the position that you were brought in for, which was to be an assistant administrator for. For a part of the agency, or were you excited to be tearing down this agency? And he was just happily telling me that he was excited to be tearing down the agency, that he had a list of staff that he wanted to take revenge on. And so honestly, when he told me that the staff had killed his dog, I asked no follow up questions. I just said something like, oh, that sounds terrible, and tried to kind of like remove myself from the conversation because I was afraid of where that was going.

[Interviewer]

Thinking about Mark Lloyd ending up as acting assistant administrator for Global Health, one of the other, I guess, people you mention in the book is Tim Meisberger, who was acting assistant administrator for the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance. You obviously, as a civil servant also ended up in that role. Very briefly, do you have a sense of how or why you as a civil servant ended up as an acting administrator for or acting assistant administrator for a period of time when much of the other acting assistant administrators were political appointees?

[Nick Enrich]

So I think the reason is because they hadn't yet brought in a political appointee to be the assistant administrator for Global Health, whereas they had for the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which was Tim Meisberger, and for the Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization, which was what Marc Lloyd was brought in for. But yeah, the bureaus that did not have political appointees at that period, one week into the administration when all the senior leadership was removed in those cases, all of those bureaus were then led by civil servants. So for example, the all the regional bureaus, like the Bureau for Africa, for Asia, for Latin American, Caribbean, for example, all were kind of the same situation as me, career officials who were elevated to that position because their bosses had been removed.

[Interviewer]

Did you ever get an explanation as to why putting political appointees in wasn't a priority for the administration that early on when all of those senior folks were put on admin leave? Did you ever get an explanation of why certain bureaus got political appointees and not others, or is that just unknown?

[Nick Enrich]

Well, I mean, it certainly within two weeks of the Trump administration coming in when Elon Musk tweeted that he just spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. At that point, they weren't really interested in, you know, bringing in a team of political leadership to run an agency. Right. They were at that point getting rid of it. As far as I can tell, the only political appointees that came in were the ones that came in with Pete Morocco, his kind of like group of people who had been there with an ax to grind from the first administration. And I did not hear this directly, but I wouldn't have been surprised if they had had a conversation about how much fun they were going to have when they came in, because that's, that's sort of how it seemed. I guess that's not true. There are a couple of other political appointees that I don't know what their relationship was to. Pete Morocco, who did come in like and kind of seem like they were trying to do something. And by that I mean they were trying to draw down. Drawdown was their their word to close out and shutter the agency in a way that caused as little damage and as few headlines as possible. Those are people like the the Chief of Staff, Joel Borkert, the Director of Policy, Megan Hanson. These were people who didn't seem necessarily, at least to me, to have like a specific animosity towards the agency, but were just kind of like, this is what's happening. We're taking this agency apart. These were people who did seem to think that there was some priority related to following Rubio's waiver for life saving humanitarian assistance, where those other appointees that I talked about that came in with Morocco and certainly the Doge staff had no interest in fulfilling that part of their duties.

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[Interviewer]

You know. Now, thinking about the impact to people on the ground of the closure of usaid, you mention in the book an Ebola response that was at least mildly thwarted last spring by the actions of the people who are trying to close down the agency. Can you talk about what the standard, if there is a standard USAID response to an Ebola outbreak is, and then compare that to what happened last spring?

[Nick Enrich]

Sure, yeah. I mean, an Ebola outbreak anywhere in the world is considered a national security threat to the United States. So that usually triggers a National Security Council level response. And the international development piece of that is led by the Global Health Bureau, usaid. So we usually, we consider that in the Global Health Bureau had always considered that an all hands on deck incident. So that meant we're pulling staff from other teams, we're sending response teams immediately to the affected region. We're coordinating with our partner agencies like the CDC for testing, with the World Health Organization, with the host government, in this case in Uganda, and we're mobilizing a massive response effort. So that means bringing in personal protective equipment into the area to make sure that healthcare workers are able to quickly respond without putting themselves at risk. It means conducting screening and contact tracing to try to identify the extent of the outbreak and to be able to contain it where it is and a variety of other measures. And in this case we were thwarted at every attempt that we made to set up a response. First, at the time we were barred from communicating with our partners in the country, with the who, but even with our own sister agencies, we weren't even allowed to communicate directly with the cdc. And when the National Security Council came and asked for updates, why are they hearing that Elon Musk is saying that Ebola activities have restarted where the government of Uganda is saying that they haven't. Pete Morocco would just basically lie to the National Security Council and be like, I don't know, we've approved everything. When he had refused to approve the activities that we had asked for. And some of those were like, not just to help contain the outbreak in Uganda, but to keep Americans safe. For example, they refused to allow us to provide screening at international airports in Uganda to make sure that passengers didn't have symptoms of Ebola before getting on international flights. You know, some of those people could be going onward to the United States. And that's, you know, a way to get Ebola into America. And we weren't even allowed to do that. Similarly, we had pre positioned personal protective equipment at a WHO owned warehouse right outside of the Ugandan border in Kenya and were not allowed to move those that PPE into the country directly by Pete Morocco because he was upset. That would have involved engaging with the World Health Organization, which he refused to do at all costs. At one point he actually told me that I should go and get the PPE out of the warehouse without engaging with the who, WHO owned the warehouse. And it was, I mean, it was this crazy scenario where he was basically suggesting that I break into the warehouse myself or my team and like, go get this ppe, bring it across the border without telling anyone. And he actually gave me 12 hours to do that, or he threatened to fire me. And I never, I was not able to get it done. He did not fire me at that point, luckily. But, you know, we were never able to get the, the PPE into the country. And it's just sitting still, as far as I know, in that warehouse, not being used for what was a critical national security threat.

[Interviewer]

Do you have a sense of what the outbreak of Ebola on the ground in Uganda looked like? Given the lack of U.S. aid assistance,

[Nick Enrich]

it actually ended up not being the worst outbreak that we had seen. I mean, there was only a handful of people who ended up dying from the outbreak, and the number of cases were actually contained. It was pretty miraculous given that it was an outbreak that actually involved people within the capital city. Often that exacerbates the problem. I think it's kind of a testament to the work that we had done since the, since COVID especially to help provide technical expertise and training to build up the Ugandan system to be able to identify those things, even sometimes without our help. But at the time, that's not a good enough reason to the fact that we got lucky and this didn't turn into an out of control Ebola outbreak as we've seen in other cases in other countries over the last few years. It just felt like we were kind of conducting global health policy by crossing our fingers and hoping, which obviously is a terrible way to conduct global health policy.

[Interviewer]

And it's now been just about a year since the official drawdown of USAID has occurred. Do you have a sense of what the on the ground impacts have been? I mean, obviously the end of USAID has been deeply impactful for those who used to work at the agency or who used to work at a contractor of the agency. But what has it been like for the people who used to receive aid from the agency?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, it's been catastrophic. I mean, even while I was still working there, we started to receive the first reports that people were starting to die because of the cuts to USAID and those. You know, it was, I think in Sudan where families were going to food distribution sites that USAID had run that ended up being closed and shuttered when they spent all day walking there. It was pregnant women who were unable that had emergencies during childbirth that were unable to access emergency ambulance services and get to clinics. Some of the clinics were closed when they got there and they ended up perishing. So the anecdotal examples started that were truly heart wrenching came in right away. What we've seen over the last year or so is that through conservative estimates, at least 750,000 people have already died. And about 500,000 of those are being children. And unfortunately, it looks like the worst is very much yet to come with. We've stopped our global immunization campaign. We are totally stopping our prevention activities for major disease portfolios. And we're starting to see some clinics, babies are being born with HIV at high rates again, when just a year later at those same clinics, those numbers were near zero. And so researchers are estimating that potentially up to 14 million people could die over the next five years alone. Which is like, you know, in my mind, when the dust settles on the Trump presidency, this is going to end up being its legacy. This is one of the most consequential policy decisions that the Trump administration will have ended up making. And they didn't even know what it was that they were closing out.

[Interviewer]

Are you aware of any grants or contracts that might have been transferred to other departments like the Department of State from usaid.

[Nick Enrich]

So what I know is that the few remaining contracts that did not get canceled by DOGE did shift over to being run by the Department of State. And unfortunately, what we're seeing is that the contracts that do remain were not because they're like the perfect alignment of, from a global health perspective to actually address our global health needs. These were just the contracts that had the most room to park a bunch of money in. And so what we're seeing is it didn't really matter what, what those contracts were for before. So, for example, we have tuberculosis contracts that are. Now they're just dumping in, you know, malaria and polio and family planning money into, into these contracts for work that was supposed to happen in countries where those contracts never even operated in the first place. So it's a way for them to. To claim that they're moving the money. But these contractors are not in a position to use those funds to actually do the work that they're meant to do, at least not in the short term until they're able to, you know, change the scope of their work, bring aboard the experts that would, would do those things, establish offices or, or outposts in the countries where those funds are for. So what we're seeing is kind of just a dumping of the remaining global health funds into anywhere that, that, that funding can go, but certainly in probably the least strategic manner that you could imagine.

[Interviewer]

Can you give at all, like, a monetary or numerical figure of what the drawdown of USAID has meant, either both for personnel, you know, how many people between civil servants and, you know, like institutional support contractors that you mentioned in the book worked for USAID at the beginning, you know, how many work doing humanitarian aid now and then how much grant money was going out from USAID prior to January 2025 and what's left today?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, I mean, the impact of people that were a part of USAID or the contractors that implemented the working countries was enormous. I mean, the staffing footprint for USAID was, depending on how you measure in contractors and our locally hired staff, for example, between 10 and 16,000 people and then another couple hundred thousand people. If you also consider the contractors who were working on implementing that work, we were moving about $8 billion a year of global health funds across the world and across these different health categories, approximately. And so it's just an enormous industry of people and American businesses and local organizations and local staff that have all kind of like, without even looking at the recipients that have been affected by these cuts.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So there's nobody left at usaid. Is the footprint of the agency zero now?

[Nick Enrich]

No, I believe my understanding is that there's still this tiny skeleton crew that's responsible for closing out the remaining contracts. The latest that I actually saw was that the political appointees. Now, it's now actually currently being run under Russ Boat and the Office of Management and Budget shop, rather than via the State Department or other leadership. And they're saying that they're expecting about $19 billion in administrative closeout costs for the agency, which is just an astronomical waste of money that could have been used to save millions of lives.

[Interviewer]

Obviously, you know, that's a lot of people who have lost their jobs. And this would not be the law for a podcast if we didn't mention litigation surrounding actions from the Trump administration. So can you talk about either from grant recipients or from those who have lost their jobs, what kind of litigation or legal challenges have occurred since the drawdown or closure of the agency?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, so there's a variety of different kinds of litigation because people were fired in so many different ways. But for a lot of the Foreign Service and civil servants staff, the way that they got rid of the staff was totally illegal. This was not a layoff. It was a politically motivated mass firing. And so there's an appeal that was filed to the Merit System Protection Board, which is the independent federal body created to protect civil servants from exactly this kind of personnel action. And those cases are sort of making their way through the courts to be able to show that if you do a reduction in force, like there are legal ways to do a reduction in force, this was absolutely not what that was. And again, there's similar lawsuits related to those who didn't have federal protection. I mean, people were fired three times and then reinstated and then unfired. And it was just like an absolute legal mess. And so those cases continue to make their way through the courts. And there's also arguments that this was done by the Doge Group, who didn't actually have legal authority to be making those decisions at all. And there's a separation of powers argument because they basically abolished an agency that's authorized by Congress. And so there's a whole litany of different legal claims that are facing the agency for this dismantling that's not even taking into account all the contractors who had their contracts illegally terminated as well.

[Interviewer]

At the end of the book, you detail your and your colleagues writing memos to document what happened to the agency and what the effects might be. Why did you all find it important to write these memos and then also disseminate them to USAID and then also to the public.

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah. After several weeks of doing everything I could to restart our life saving programs pursuant to Rubia's waiver, at some point I realized that the waiver itself was a farce, that we were not going to be given the opportunity to actually do that. But yet at the same time, I was hearing publicly Marco Rubio, Pete Morocco, Elon Musk shout publicly that everything was fine, there was this waiver in place, and it dawned on me that the career staff were actually going to get blamed for why the life saving programs didn't actually happen, because they had this waiver. And the reality was we had tried and been stopped at every single turn by exactly those people. And so it was really important to me to preserve the record of what actually happened for the former staff of USAID to be able to point to the actual facts of how we were prevented from doing that and the warnings that we had issued to the administration of what would happen if they really went through with all these cuts. At some point I knew that this was like, that I was going to have to send that information out. And I knew that, that that was probably going to be the end of my career. But I felt like at that point I could no longer stay silent. And that to continue to allow the agency to tear its programs apart that way without saying anything, felt like complicity from my perspective. And so it was important to me to get the word out there to warn the war, but also to establish that record and hopefully to one day bring some amount of accountability. Because a lot of those, these people who we were talking about, these political appoint doge staff, they are now in very high ranking government positions in other agencies and have never been held accountable for their actions.

[Interviewer]

What specifically, like, what specific information did you include in the memos?

[Nick Enrich]

Right, so there's three memos. So the first was basically documenting everything we had tried to do to restart life saving programs and how we had been stopped at every step of the way and the specifics of how that happened in kind of like a chronological order. The second was documenting the destruction of our staffing footprint, the daily putting people on and off administrative leave and firing and ending our probational employees and ultimately getting rid of all the leadership to show the impact of that on our ability to implement our programs. And then the third memo was the kind of assessment of what the impacts of these cuts would be on global health around the world. And that was the one that estimated through the modeling of our disease experts that we could expect potentially up to 2.6 million additional deaths each year due to these cuts.

[Interviewer]

As you're thinking about in like the months to years to come of what a post USAID world looks like, both for the United States and for countries globally, what are you trying to keep your eye on to understand the impact of the end of the agency?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, I mean, what I think needs to happen right away is that the State Department needs to release the data, which is something that they haven't done. It's required by Congress and it's still being collected for a lot of these diseases. And we need to be able to see what the actual impact because right now we're doing it based on modeling, based on estimates, based on anecdotes. It's difficult because they have shut down a lot of the monitoring and evaluation and surveillance programs that we have that make it more difficult to assess that data. But it's required by Congress and I hope that Congress will put their foot down and demand that we see what the impacts of this are. I expect that in whatever the form of the next administration is, that we'll need to re establish usaid. And it doesn't need to be exactly the same. But remember that USAID was not torn down because that was a way to better align foreign assistance with the President's agenda. It wasn't because there was so much waste, fraud and abuse. It was torn down just like for the sole purpose of satisfying the ego of the world's richest man. And that's not a good reason. I mean, this is an organization that functioned. And while of course it can be improved, it's going to need to be brought back in the future, if the

[Interviewer]

agency is brought back in the future. Obviously, there's a dearth of institutional knowledge now in the federal government about, you know, global health or humanitarian assistance. Do you have a sense of whether you or your former colleagues would go back to such an agency and whether the United States has lost trust with its contractors globally? Do you have a sense of whether or not people will trust working with the agency going forward?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah, I think the expertise will be the easiest thing to replace. I mean, we're all still here. I've seen surveys showing that over 60 or 70% of former USAID staff are currently either unemployed or significantly underemployed. You know, they made us cut up our badges. But, you know, aside from that, we're, we're still here. Like, I would love to go back to work for an agency for international development would do so in a heartbeat. I think it will be much more challenging to rebuild properly than it was, unfortunately, for Elon Musk and his team to tear it down, which is sad. We have broken that trust and it will be difficult, especially for partner countries, to rely on support from the United States when we made it very, very clear how easy it is to break those promises and pull the rug out. But at the same time, I think that we'll whatever the next version of aid looks like, it'll have to deal with those issues and we'll have to make strong and firm commitments that we're able to stand behind in order to start rebuilding that trust.

[Interviewer]

And is there kind of anything you want to say as we draw down the conversation about your experience working at USAID, either prior January 2025 or between January 2025 to March 2025 that you think, you know, listeners or the American public in general might not know about the agency and what happened to it?

[Nick Enrich]

Yeah. Well, I would just say like this is it's a cautionary tale and like it's too late for usaid, at least in its previous version. But if you if you see what's happening at other agencies or you're seeing policy decisions that make absolutely no sense like related to the Iran war or ICE or in the FBI or in all of these other age like, I hope that people will recognize that this isn't just like necessarily policy decisions a lot like we can't underestimate the sheer level of incompetence and what happens when agencies are hollowed out of their expertise and replaced by uninformed and unqualified sycophants who really don't understand the work of the agencies or how those governments work. And it so it's often no surprise that things, when things go wrong, they end up getting worse, that decisions get flip flopped and seem confused. It's not always part of the plan. This is why there's a value in having expert and nonpartisan civil servants to administer the policies of something as complicated as the U.S. government.

[Interviewer]

Well, I think we'll leave it there. On that note, Nick, thank you so much for joining me today on the Lawfare Podcast. And for listeners into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the US Administration shredded usaid. Essential reading for understanding what the first three to six months of the Trump administration look like via Insider's view. Thank you so much.

[Nick Enrich]

Thanks for having me.

[Anna Hickey]

The Lawfare Podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad free. You can become a Lawfare material [e-mail] Supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us wherever you listen. It really does help. And be sure to check out our other shows, including Scaling Laws, Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. You can also find all of our written [e-mail] the podcast is edited by Jeff Jen Pacha with audio engineering by Kara Shillin of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is by Alibi Music and as always, thank you for listening.

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