Trump administration moves to fire remaining USAID staff
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What are the recent changes at USAID under the Trump administration?
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson and today is Saturday, March 29th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today the latest at USAID, plus a major earthquake slams Asia and some American travelers are fearing border crossings. Personnel at the U.S. Agency for International Development were told yesterday that all positions there not required by law would be eliminated. That's after the State Department notified Congress it would discontinue USAID functions that do not align with Trump administration priorities. USAID staffers were informed of the decision by an internal memo from a member of the Department of Government Efficiency. Over the next three months, the State Department would assume USAID's remaining life-saving and strategic aid programming, according to the memo. The death toll is rapidly rising after a devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Southeast Asia.
How has the earthquake in Myanmar affected the region?
The death toll in Myanmar rose past 1,000 earlier this morning, while at least nine people were killed in neighboring Thailand, where massive buildings were destroyed. In Myanmar, the U.S. Geological Service's predictive modeling estimated the death toll could exceed 10,000 and that losses could exceed the country's annual economic output. The U.S.
What are American travelers fearing about border crossings?
has said it will provide some assistance, though it has previously sanctioned officials with the ruling military. Some American travelers are fearing U.S. border crossings under recently increased vetting. I spoke with USA Today consumer travel reporter Kathleen Wong for more. Hello, Kathleen. Thanks for hopping on the show today.
Hi, thanks for having me.
So would you just start by telling us about Ginny Williams and her experience here?
Ginny is from the United States but is living in the UK for quite a few years and she is married to someone from the UK so she has dual citizenship between the US and the UK. She's planning to come to the States to visit her elderly parents in September but feels a lot of nerves just with everything she's hearing about deportations, and detainments, higher scrutiny at the borders, and just everything seems to be changing very quickly. And that's kind of making her very anxious about what could happen between crossing the border to come back home. And we're kind of hearing that across the board, we're hearing more border control checks, we're hearing more random stops, even to US citizens, so not just visa holders and green card holders.
How is increased border scrutiny impacting citizens?
So how does her either anxiety or experience reflect an increased anxiety from a lot of Americans and folks in the country about crossing borders in this moment?
So we're seeing a lot of high-profile cases of detainments and deportation and just higher security across the borders. And a lot of those cases have to do with people who exercised their freedom of speech, maybe being outspoken against certain things, and they're getting in trouble for that. And so a lot of people are kind of scared that maybe they could also get in trouble or be seen as doing something wrong. And so no one really... knows what is safe right now. And that's just causing a lot of concern for Americans.
And I mean, are legal residents actually facing detention or deportation in some of these border crossing situations?
So what we're seeing are mostly green card holders and visa holders, so student or work visas. They're lawfully allowed to live here or being targeted by ICE for, like I mentioned, being outspoken, being considered a threat to public safety or terrorist sympathizers. That's kind of under the administration's increased, I guess you could say, targeting for national security.
Yeah. Well, I mean, in terms of those increases, Kathleen, what specifically has this administration really instructed immigration officials to do in this moment?
An immigration attorney put it this way to basically not leave any stone unturned. So they're going to be doing enhanced vetting. They're given a broad level of discretion. So really just able to interrogate you. Border control has always been able to search your devices, but that wasn't very frequent. And now we're going to see that a lot more.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What are the recent changes at USAID under the Trump administration?
0:05–1:04
2
How has the earthquake in Myanmar affected the region?
1:04–1:24
3
What are American travelers fearing about border crossings?
1:24–2:40
4
How is increased border scrutiny impacting citizens?
2:40–6:41
5
What measures should travelers take before crossing borders?
6:41–8:26
6
What are the implications of the case against Mahmoud Khalil?
8:26–9:36
7
How is free speech being threatened under the current administration?
9:36–13:11
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Excerpt
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