Trump administration appointees running the main United States aid agency have in recent days fired hundreds of employees who help manage responses to urgent humanitarian crises around the world, according to two U.S. officials and four recent employees of the agency. The firings add to doubts raised about whether Secretary of State Marco Rubio is allowing employees for the United States Agency for International Development, or U.S.A.I.D., to carry out lifesaving humanitarian assistance, as he had promised to do late last month during a blanket freeze of almost all foreign aid from the U.S. government. Trump appointees have fired or put on paid leave thousands of employees of U.S.A.I.D. A task force of young engineers working for Elon Musk, the billionaire tech businessman who is advising President Trump, has shut down many technical systems in the aid agency and barred employees from their email accounts. Mr. Musk has posted dark conspiracy theories about U.S.A.I.D. on social media, asserting with no evidence that it is a “criminal organization” and that it was “time for it to die.” The latest round of dismissals occurred on Friday night, when hundreds of people working for the agency’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance got emails saying their jobs had been terminated. The employees who agreed to speak for this story did so on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize the 15 days of pay they were scheduled to receive after being given a termination notice.
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