DOGE Destroyed America’s Ability to Respond to Myanmar’s Disaster

By Jen Kirby | April 5, 2025 | 10:39am

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

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DOGE Destroyed America’s Ability to Respond to Myanmar’s Disaster

On March 28, a magnitude 7.7-earthquake struck Myanmar (also known as Burma), near Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. The United States soon dispatched a three-person USAID team to assess the needs in the aftermath of the quake, though the team did not arrive on the ground in Myanmar until days after it.

But once in Myanmar, that USAID team received termination notices, according to current and former USAID officials. USAID sources said at least some of the staffers were believed to have received the news of their firing after sleeping through the night outside in a field.

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It is not clear what the actual date of termination was for these USAID employees. In an email, a spokesperson for the State Department did not specifically answer whether the administration had fired the USAID staffers who just landed in a disaster and conflict zone. Instead, the spokesperson indicated that overseas personnel would receive a USAID-funded return, “with a departure that will be considered as the employee’s end-of-tour date.”

“USAID offered significantly longer than required notice periods and is committed to working with employees on these matters,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that USAID’s “top priority is ensuring the continued safety and wellness of our personnel.”

The same day as the earthquake in Myanmar, the Trump administration told Congress it was “realigning“ certain USAID functions within the State Department by July 1. An internal memo sent to USAID staff said the agency was terminating nearly all of its remaining employees by July 1 or September 2. Still, the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has sent inaccurate firing notices before, and has a track record of chaotically firing, and then needing to rehire, and then re-firing employees again.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said last week that cuts at USAID would not prevent the U.S. from responding to the quake in Myanmar, which has killed more than 3,300 so far. But conversations with current and former USAID officials familiar with the region, and with USAID’s protocols in the aftermath of natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies, suggest otherwise.

DOGE has gutted USAID humanitarian and development aid, including many in Myanmar. That has left a mishmash of programs, which the remaining staffers are trying to manage amid disorderly communication and an ever-present uncertainty about the future.

Then, last week, as the United States pledged to help earthquake victims in Myanmar, DOGE dealt an effective deathblow to the agency.

The United States initially pledged $2 million to relief efforts in Myanmar. The State Department has since announced that it is dedicating an additional $7 million to support earthquake-affected communities. Current and former USAID officials familiar with the situation told Splinter that at least some of this money is coming from previously canceled USAID contracts that are now being reactivated, allowing partners to pivot to earthquake response and relief. A spokesperson for the State Department said this was an “additional $7 million in new funding,” which would go toward “emergency, shelter, food, medical support, and water.”

The United States’s $9 million contribution still falls short of the $14 million China pledged. Beijing sent more than 30 search-and-rescue teams with a personnel of about 600 to Burma in the immediate aftermath of the quake, according to Reuters. Even Russia reportedly sent a team of 120, including rescuers, medics, and dogs.

The U.S.’s three-person assessment team is there to do just that – assess the needs on the ground and inform the U.S. response to the crisis. But these are not the kinds of specialized teams that USAID once deployed to disaster zones, like in February 2023, when a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and Syria. Then, the U.S. dispatched Disaster Assistance Recovery Teams, deploying some 200 people to help with search-and-rescue efforts. Even if USAID had wanted to send search and recovery teams, DOGE canceled the transportation contracts that would have brought these rescue teams and equipment from the U.S. to Myanmar in the critical window to conduct such operations.

USAID also has commodities pre-positioned around the world to respond to disasters – things like food, tarps, and water-purification systems. But according to a former USAID official, these supplies weren’t available because so many contracts were canceled for things like transportation or warehouse storage. USAID wasn’t sure what, exactly, was available or whether they could even move it.

DOGE’s ransacking of USAID – done in the name of efficiency – has complicated the protocols and introduced new frictions, creating a more disjointed and hesitant U.S. response to the earthquake in Myanmar. As one former USAID official familiar with the situation said, normal procedures did occur, but “the difference was that when it happened, nobody was sure what process we would use.”

Beyond this disaster, the U.S. pullback from Myanmar will compound a country already in crisis. A military coup in 2021 set off a fractious civil war, adding to long-standing conflicts between armed ethnic groups and the armed forces. The Chinese-backed military junta remains at war with many of its citizens – the military even conducted bombing campaigns amid earthquake recovery efforts. Millions have been displaced because of the conflict. The country’s economy is decimated, its middle class halved.

Before the earthquake, the United Nations estimated about 19.9 million people – about a third of the country’s population – required assistance in 2025. But lack of funding is hindering the ability to address these needs: only 4 percent of the international appeal for nearly $1 billion was funded as of April, according to the United Nations Office for Coordination of International Affairs.

Last year, the United States funded 30 percent of that, or $128.6 million. It also provided another $111 million in non-humanitarian aid, for healthcare, governance, agriculture, and education. Since 2019 – the first Trump administration – the United States has been the primary humanitarian donor to Burma.

The decision to cut billions in USAID funding has already interrupted vital aid in Myanmar. USAID was projected to spend about $259 million in 2025, according to Human Rights Myanmar. That included healthcare and education support, and yes, for civil society programs in a country where pro-democracy rebels are fighting a brutal military dictatorship. The long-tail effects of all of that support disappearing will be difficult to measure, though countries like China – one of the few countries cozy with the military junta – may be more than willing to fill at least some of the gaps left behind.

The Burma earthquake also reveals the complicated logistics and coordination required to deliver cost-effective humanitarian and emergency assistance. In the aftermath of this deadly quake, the U.S. scrambled to assess what contracts still existed, what resources it could apply, which local partners they could rely on, and how to get entry visas for a USAID team that was also apparently getting pink slips. All of those hurdles likely inhibited a rapid and comprehensive response to a humanitarian disaster in place that needed all the help and resources it could get, as soon as it could get them. According to the International Federation of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, about 17 million people were affected by the quake. Telecommunication systems remain down, and the country is dealing with extreme heat, exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The “smell of dead bodies fills the air,” a resident of Saigang, a city close to the epicenter, told Al Jazeera days after the quake.

USAID wasn’t perfectly efficient before the DOGE cuts, as many current and former employees mentioned in recent conversations, even those before the Myanmar earthquake. But its staffers had the institutional knowledge and understood best practices, and many of the people trying to hold USAID accountable to those – from the Office of the Inspector General to the agency’s economists – were among the early DOGE casualties.

DOGE dismantled the USAID infrastructure so that even the many of the programs spared on paper – even the aid the Trump administration may see as in its interests – struggles to function in the same way. Maybe USAID can be reconstituted in the State Department, but it is likely a few more disasters might occur before July.

And ultimately, it may never be clear what the obstacles, inefficiencies – or even successes – of this U.S. response to the Myanmar earthquake. As a former USAID official pointed out, the administration said it wants to terminate all USAID employees by this summer or fall. Who will finish managing the award and make sure the millions the U.S. pledged to Burma was spent appropriately? That the aid aligned with America’s “core interests” of making the nation safer, and stronger, and more prosperous? If there’s no accountability around the award, a former USAID official said, “it’s not because of USAID. It’s because of DOGE.”