For some of the thousands of USAID employees left in limbo after the Trump administration nuked their agency, there are few ways to get back to work.
To regain access to their computers, per an email reviewed by TPM, some employees have been told that they need to go through political appointees. To get grants or other money flowing again, workers need to submit applications to the State Department’s Office of Foreign Assistance, known as “F” within USAID and State.
The new directives create a series of hurdles to releasing money that has long been appropriated or awarded, and come amid the chaos that the Trump administration’s maiming of the agency has unleashed. In conversations with TPM, one USAID employee described how many political appointees declined to engage with staff after arriving, setting an ominous tone; another described watching on a computer screen from an overseas posting as millions of dollars of food assistance was frozen.
In some cases, the people manning these roadblocks have a long history with the Trump movement. Pete Marocco, a former national security official during Trump’s first term, is in charge of foreign assistance at State. Marocco drew attention in part because, NBC News reported, open source researchers identified him as allegedly having entered the Capitol through a broken window on January 6.
In another example, TPM can report that the USAID’s new head of the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which coordinates food, health care, shelter, and other forms of basic overseas aid, is Tim Meisburger, a first term Trump appointee who departed the agency in January 2021 after expressing support for the January 6 insurrection. Since then, Meisburger has maintained an X account on which he frequently posted in support of the insurrection attempt, suggested at one point that Republicans should mimic the tactics used by insurgents in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and has called to “gut” the Senior Executive Service.
The State Department did not return a request for comment. Neither Marocco nor Meisburger returned requests for comment.
Locked Out
President Trump’s campaign of wrecking the government, with Elon Musk and DOGE at his side, notched its first kill with USAID. The first weeks of the administration saw the bureau issue orders that froze nearly the entire aid budget while placing huge swaths of its staff on administrative leave. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would become the acting administrator of a new version of USAID that would exist within the State Department – a series of actions that openly defy Congress’ decision to create and fund the agency as an independent body.
Since then, a series of scattered court orders have sought to undo some of the damage, or at least keep the agency in suspended animation. This week, one judge extended an order mandating that USAID retain employees that it placed on administrative leave; another judge ordered that the agency temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid.
But over the past week, several employees have told TPM that resuming their work has been difficult.
Many workers remain locked out of their computers. When one contacted USAID’s tech support help desk to regain access, the person received a message saying that the desk could not restore the accounts “without authorization from political leadership.”
“In the event that a user is no longer able to access their USAID account, please have the user’s mission/bureau career leadership work with their political leadership to request confirmation of the action,” reads the message, which was viewed by TPM.
It presents an explicit political obstacle to USAID workers, many of whom are stationed overseas, that want to regain access to their accounts in order to resume working.
A parallel situation has emerged with the resumption of foreign assistance grants, two current USAID employees told TPM.
There, Trump officials have set up a process by which existing grants can be unfrozen subject to a waiver issued by the Office of Foreign of Assistance, per interviews and records obtained by TPM. It creates another bottleneck to allowing some aid dollars to resume flowing.
Who is in Command?
The question of who is running things mysterious to some USAID employees, who remain locked out their accounts and powerless to resume aid work.
But the people that the Trump administration installed in key positions can offer a revealing look.
Take Meisburger, the new assistant to the administrator for the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance.
During the first Trump term, Meisburger worked as an appointee in charge of democracy and governance initiatives at USAID. Per a person who worked with him, he seemed relatively normal — conservative, but not particularly Trumpy or out of the ordinary for the rest of the federal workforce.
“The next time I saw him was in the Washington Post, being recorded for defending January 6,” the person recalled.
Meisburger reportedly departed USAID before Trump’s term ended in January 2021 after telling staff on a video call that “a few violent people” caused the riot, while “millions” were peaceful.
Over the past several years, Meisburger has repeated those claims on X. He replied to one July 2024 post featuring Steve Bannon by writing that “this is the way insurgencies win. Never give up. The revolution was our longest war for a long time for a reason. Vietnam and Afghanistan provide further examples of this principle in action.”
On another occasion, Meisburger wrote on X, in response to a post suggesting that senior civil servants had taken over for a sundowning President Biden, “that’s why we need to gut the SES, and term limit federal employees.”
After a January 6 rioter was sentenced to six years in prison for pepper-spraying Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who later died, Meisburger posted: “that is unbelievably disgusting. What has happened to this country? Sicknick had to wash his face and that is worth six years in prison?”
There’s nothing to suggest that Meisburger’s views about January 6 extended beyond words.
The official in charge of foreign assistance, Marocco, was never charged over anything to do with the Capitol insurrection. Online investigators with sedition hunters identified him as having allegedly entered the building through a broken window on Jan. 6; he has dismissed the claim as “petty smear tactics.”
For USAID, it’s a reminder that the agency’s destruction has a lineage that goes straight back to the obstruction of Congress on January 6.
