I was part of the Reboot MEA workshop you hosted with Jerry Colonna this past fall (the Magic Makers). One of my cohort compadres forwarded me your Presidents Day blog post in which you expressed an interest in hearing from MEAers impacted by DOGE.
My wife and I run a consulting firm called Resonance. In 2024, we had about 100 employees in the US and 50-70 elsewhere in the world. For many years, USAID has been our largest client, accounting for 70-80% of our revenue. On Jan 24, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a stop work order (SWO) and simultaneously DOGE turned off the payments system at USAID.
For Resonance, this has been a life and death struggle because the USG is not paying its invoices. Right now, we have millions in past due invoices from December and January. Due to the vagaries of federal contracting, we are also compelled by law to carry a huge amount of on-going costs during the SWO. Normally, USAID reimburses those expenses on a monthly basis until an SWO is lifted (or a contract is canceled). However, with the USAID payments system turned off, it appears unlikely that we will be paid any time soon for these costs. With unpaid invoices stacking up and cash running low, we have laid off about 80% of our US workforce in an attempt to remain solvent.
Twenty years of painstaking work building up our company has gone down the drain in the space of a few weeks.
To add to all of this, our son, who worked for a small NGO monitoring terrorist groups in the Middle East was also laid off as a result of DOGE.
We are not alone. Nationally, the current estimate is that 50,000 people have lost their jobs in the last three weeks due to the SWO and DOGE’s refusal to pay outstanding invoices. Hundreds of organizations – both for-profit and non-profit- are teetering on insolvency. This is just with USAID – a single federal agency that accounts for less than 1% of federal spending.
USAID employees themselves – especially those overseas- have also been under intense assault with many being effectively abandoned in the midst of conflict zones such as Congo and elsewhere.
This is to say nothing of the needless suffering this is causing around the world. The UN estimates more than 6 million could die of HIV in Africa alone absent USAID support. The best estimate is that more than $240 million in stalled supplies are already spoiled and unusable with more piling up each day at ports and warehouses around the world. Meanwhile, the systems to monitor things like famine and the spread of infectious diseases, such as Bird Flu, are switched off.
All of this comes on top of the lies from the President and Elon Musk about USAID and its mission.
I have been trying to do what I can to call attention to what is happening with stories in the NYT, Boston Globe, Reuters, Foxnews.com, and an appearance on CNN. Meanwhile, dozens of lawsuits have been filed.
Elsewhere, 60 Minutes did an excellent overview of what is happening and why it matters – not just for those concerned about foreign aid and the impact on our national security, but also those concerned about the constitutional order of our republic when the world’s richest man (and a large federal contractor) gets to decide whether entire federal agencies exist or not.
The ironies in this current mess abound. For example, one of our USAID projects that has been halted is a trade and investment program focused on Greenland – a project that originated in the first Trump term. Meanwhile, we’ve also had to halt work on a women’s economic empowerment partnership championed by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.
All of this has taken a major emotional toll for our family. Lots of tears and sleepless nights as we try to navigate this crisis on the personal, family, business and citizen levels all at the same time.
MEA has been a godsend during this crisis in a couple of ways. I find myself frequently going back to the sessions with you and Jerry Colonna in which we talked about having compassion for ourselves and to forgive ourselves. I’ve found that giving myself that grace both opens my heart to others who are also suffering and also gives me much greater strength to continue. In addition, the support of my fellow Magic Makers cohort has simply been fantastic – whether it is a virtual shoulder to cry on or sharing useful meditation exercises to calm the storm and get centered.
-Steve
Steve Schmida is the founder of Resonance, a global development and corporate sustainability consulting firm he runs with his wife, Nazgul. The couple have two grown children and split their time between Vermont and Florida.
P.S. If you want to explore this topic further, listen to The Daily podcast’s recent episode, Inside the Trump Purge: Federal Workers Tell Their Stories,