President Donald Trump is disciplining government employees for defying his order to halt foreign aid payments. According to multiple reports, top staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been placed on leave after attempting “to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders and the mandate from the American people.” USAID Acting Administrator Jason Gray wrote in a memo Monday, “As a result, we have placed a number of USAID employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until further notice while we complete our analysis of these actions.”

In one of the first executive orders he issued last week, Trump mandated a “90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.” The order freezes all “funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors…” Trump’s order states, “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, explained, “It’s critical to thoroughly review and track where exactly our money is going. Under the Biden administration, there were far too many examples in which USAID and the State Department funded woke projects that promoted gender ideology and other leftists causes.” She added, “The gross misuse of foreign assistance by the previous administration requires a reevaluation of our priorities and a reset — I hope the 90-day pause will accomplish this.”

“Putting USAID officials on administrative leave as they are investigated for trying to undermine President Trump’s executive orders is part of the process,” Del Turco continued. “President Trump only has four years to enact his agenda and make a change in how the U.S. government is spending taxpayer money, and he’s going to need people in place who are willing to carry out his policies.”

Under the Biden administration, USAID prioritized initiatives focusing on “environmental justice” and “LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development” and explicitly de-prioritized religious liberty efforts. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on programs supporting “gender equality and women’s empowerment” and “Latinx politics.” One of the most controversial programs USAID has funded recently was a $15 million initiative to provide condoms to Afghanistan.

Travis Weber, Family Research Council’s vice president for Policy and Government Affairs, told TWS, “President Trump is rightly revaluating the way U.S. tax dollars have been spent overseas. In no sane universe should the U.S. taxpayer’s hard-earned money be going to fund abortions, LGBT ideology, and other anti-family policies around the world.”

Citing numerous examples of foreign aid funding culturally contentious projects, he commented, “This new cultural imperialism is harmful to the nations it is being imposed upon, as well as giving the United States a black eye as we become more known for promoting anti-family policies than truly helping people.” Weber continued, “It is also simply counterproductive on diplomatic and strategic grounds: as we compete with China in more places like Africa; instead of truly helping build goodwill among African countries, we are alienating them due to our pressure and coercion tactics.”

In addition to USAID staff being placed on leave, Trump’s executive order also resulted in nearly 400 USAID contractors being fired. One major contractor told employees that it had “received a Stop Work Order, and without the authority to proceed, we have no work for you to perform.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is permitting funding for certain “life-saving” humanitarian programs, as of Tuesday, but newly-minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio has remained firm in halting all funding of abortion or programs rooted in gender and race-based ideology.