Trump administration officials have fired workers for the main American aid agency who were sent to Myanmar to assess how the United States could help with earthquake relief efforts, three people with knowledge of the actions said.
The firings, done Friday while the workers were in the rubble-strewn city of Mandalay, raise doubts about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s stated commitment to continuing some humanitarian and crisis aid even as the aid organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development, is dismantled by the Trump administration.
More than 3,300 people were killed and more than 4,800 injured in Myanmar, according to Burmese government estimates. A tropical storm was lashing much of the country on Saturday, with heavy rain and winds leading to flooding. The Trump administration has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers and others for what they called its paltry response.
The three experienced aid workers got termination emails addressed specifically to them just days after arriving in Myanmar, said the three people with knowledge of the situation, who are current and former U.S.A.I.D. officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
One of the aid workers had flown in from Washington, and the other two from Bangkok and Manila, where the aid agency has regional operations.
Other aid agency employees said they were furious over the way the workers in Myanmar had been fired. Separately, U.S. diplomats said on Friday they were worried that changes in the top ranks of the State Department that took place that day could presage wider purges and layoffs to come there. Besides enacting American foreign policy, the department is taking over all foreign aid now that U.S.A.I.D. is being dismantled.
Employees at the aid agency heard about the latest firings during a meeting of its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance on Friday. The move shocked employees in Washington, and soon word of it spread across the agency. Although senior agency officials had sent out an email to all employees on March 28 alerting them to mass terminations effective this summer, as the State Department absorbs the aid agency, the fact that the three workers in Myanmar got their notices while in the quake zone was seen as especially cruel.
It is unclear what they will now do in Myanmar and when they will leave their jobs.
The State Department and U.S.A.I.D. did not answer requests for comment.
The Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance at U.S.A.I.D. sent an email to employees on Friday evening saying the overall situation “continues to be challenging and uncertain.” The New York Times obtained a copy. The email said the aid agency has 898 active grants and contracts, a fraction of the number before the dismantlement began. More than 60 percent are related to humanitarian assistance, the email said.
Trump appointees continue to cut humanitarian aid contracts, say employees. U.S. foreign aid spending was less than 1 percent of the annual federal budget before Mr. Trump’s severe cuts.
The government of Myanmar, ruled by authoritarian generals, asked other nations to send help after the earthquake hit on March 28. China, Russia and India sent teams and supplies, as did Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The United States did not send any aid specialists into the country until this week, when the three-person assessment team arrived.
The State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, pointed to that team on Monday as a sign that the United States was willing to help Myanmar despite widespread doubts over Washington’s ability to perform aid operations given the slashing of the agency since late January. The cuts were carried out by Mr. Rubio; Pete Marocco, a divisive political appointee at the State Department; and Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Mr. Trump.
When asked by a reporter on Friday in Brussels about the inability of the United States to provide any substantial aid to Myanmar, Mr. Rubio said that other large countries, including China and India, should step up in global foreign aid as the United States cuts back.
“We are the richest country in the world, but our resources are not unlimited,” he said.
He alluded to the American assessment team in Myanmar, saying that “we already have people there.” He also noted that the country’s ruling military junta can make it hard to work there.
The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar announced on March 30 that the American government would provide up to $2 million in aid for earthquake relief. That is only one-tenth of the $20 million in aid that the United States, India, Japan and Australia have together committed; the four nations announced that number in a joint statement on Thursday.
Six Democratic senators sent a letter to the Trump administration on Wednesday denouncing its lack of aid efforts in the earthquake zone, saying it was failing its first test of the nation’s ability to continue humanitarian aid amid the dismantlement of U.S.A.I.D.
The senators cited a New York Times report from March 30 that revealed the shortfalls in American aid in Myanmar, including the lack of any team on the ground at the time and crippled logistics operations at headquarters in Washington.
At the State Department on Friday, career diplomats and the union representing 18,000 of them were grappling with a shake-up in the top ranks that has led to great anxiety.
The union, the American Foreign Service Association, released a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” by Mr. Rubio’s appointment of Lew Olowski to the position of senior bureau official in charge of global talent management. The union said that position, which oversees all personnel and human resource matters, is supposed to go to a senior career diplomat with deep management experience.
Mr. Olowski is a former lawyer who has written opinion essays on politics, including one in January 2020 praising Mr. Trump as an “unapologetic nationalist” and denouncing the impeachment trial over Mr. Trump’s withholding of military aid from Ukraine in exchange for political favors.
He joined the State Department the next year and did one tour as a consular officer issuing visas in the embassy in Beijing. He is considered entry-level and does not have what is known as tenure in the agency. He is a member of a new group of mostly pro-Trump diplomats called the Ben Franklin Fellowship that, among other things, is dedicated to “the primacy of American sovereignty and the obligation to defend national borders.”
On Friday, Tibor Nagy, a veteran diplomat temporarily overseeing department management, stepped down. Mr. Nagy is also a Ben Franklin fellow, and he managed the position to be occupied by Mr. Olowski, known as the director general.
Various plans have circulated at the State Department proposing closings of consulates, wider layoffs and personnel changes, and diplomats say Mr. Olowski could now play a major role in all of that.
The union said his appointment was “akin to placing a junior military officer, who has not yet completed a command tour, in charge of the Pentagon’s personnel system. It undermines the structure, discipline and standards that are vital to maintaining an effective national security work force.”
Mr. Trump issued an executive order on March 27 to try to end collective bargaining by unions at the State Department and other national security agencies.
The State Department said it does not comment on personnel matters.
