Senior USAID official ousted as he details problems providing lifesaving aid

The memo contradicts claims by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that he has put in place a functioning system for exempting lifesaving assistance from the aid freeze.

March 3, 2025

A sign is seen last month at an entrance to the former USAID offices at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. (Pete Kiehart/For The Washington Post)

By John Hudson

A senior career official at the U.S. Agency for International Development was placed on leave Sunday on the same day he disseminated a detailed memo to staff describing the U.S. government’s “failure” to provide lifesaving assistance around the world because of actions by President Donald Trump’s political appointees.

The memo, by Nicholas Enrich, the acting assistant administrator for global health, contradicts claims by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that a functioning system is in place for exempting lifesaving assistance from the aid freeze imposed by Trump on his first week in office.

“USAID’s failure to implement lifesaving humanitarian assistance under the waiver is the result of political leadership,” says the memo, obtained by The Washington Post.

“This will no doubt result in preventable death, destabilization, and threats to national security on a massive scale,” the memo says.

The broken system for providing waivers has been noted by aid groups for several weeks but never spelled out in such detail in an official government memo. The ouster of Enrich comes as the Trump administration has gutted USAID, placing the vast majority of the 10,000-strong workforce on administrative leave, terminating 90 percent of its foreign aid programs and cutting more than 1,600 jobs.

The memo says the problems with providing exemptions stem from “the refusal to pay for assistance activities conducted or goods and services rendered, the blockage and restriction of access to USAID’s payment systems followed by the creation of new and ineffective processes for payments, the ever-changing guidance as to what qualifies as ‘lifesaving’ and whose approval is needed in making that decision, and most recently, the sweeping terminations of the most critical implementing mechanisms necessary for providing lifesaving services.”

Enrich on Sunday sent a follow-up message to staff, obtained by The Post, thanking them for their service and saying he had been placed on “administrative leave, effective immediately.”

USAID did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A State Department spokesman also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In response to The Post report, Sen. Brian Schatz, the top Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, said “These new details confirm our worst fears: the illegal and systematic dismantling of USAID will cause real suffering and deaths that are entirely preventable.”

“Instead of addressing the issues outlined by … Enrich, the State Department has silenced and sidelined him. It’s completely inappropriate and wrong,” he said in a statement.

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Senior USAID official ousted as he details problems providing lifesaving aid