The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is not, in the scheme of things, a big part of the federal government. It dispersed $43.8 billion in the last fiscal year. That adds up to just 0.7 percent of the $6.1 trillion federal budget. USAID isn’t even a full Cabinet agency, but a subset of the State Department.

But USAID is worth paying attention to, both because it does important work that belies its size and status, and because it’s become an early case study in how the second Trump administration plans to dismantle major parts of the federal bureaucracy.

On his first day back in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order placing a 90-day freeze on all foreign aid spending, a week before issuing a similar order affecting most of the rest of the federal budget. Secretary of State Marco Rubio took implementing the order seriously and issued stop-work orders for essentially all foreign aid on Friday. The pause was sweeping, including life-saving programs like PEPFAR, which provides AIDS drugs and preventative services to tens of millions of people. More than a week after Trump’s first order, Rubio signed a partial waiver for humanitarian aid, including some AIDS drugs.

Despite the order’s questionable legality, sources in the agency tell me USAID staff largely complied. Nonetheless, the Trump team initiated a crackdown: About 60 senior leaders in the agency — not political staffers, who usually leave when presidential administrations transition, but career civil and foreign service employees — were placed on administrative leave on Monday. Acting Administrator Jason Gray explained the move in an all-staff email to USAID by citing “several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the president’s executive orders and the mandate from the American people.” He did not cite any specific actions.

In response to a request for comment, a USAID spokesperson wrote to Vox: “We aren’t going to comment on personnel matters. We are judiciously reviewing all the waivers submitted and have a process in place to ensure urgent humanitarian aid continues. In line with the President’s E.O. and to execute the implementation of the 90-day foreign assistance pause, several contracts have been paused to include personal services contracts (PSCs). These actions were not terminations or furloughs. These actions allow for a thorough and transparent review of the expenditure of all taxpayer dollars per the President’s E.O. and Secretary Rubio’s guidance. There have been no furloughs, no termination of contracts or personnel under the foreign aid freeze E.O.”

While USAID may not comment on personnel matters, others say the consequences of putting these leaders on leave could be immense. “This would lead to the destruction of US foreign assistance as we know it,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former veteran USAID official and current president of Refugees International, said in an interview. “That’s probably something they want.”

Even this, though, was not the end of Trump’s changes to the agency. So far he has also hit USAID’s contractor workforce, and his Office of Personnel Management has made USAID civil service staff vulnerable to reclassification and removal under so-called Schedule F moves.

Disrupting USAID’s operations could quite........

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