Johns Hopkins University abolishes 2,000 positions due to Trump cuts

The prestigious Johns Hopkins University said Thursday it is being forced to lay off more than 2,000 employees in the aftermath of the Trump administration's massive reduction in foreign aid funding.

"This is a difficult day for our entire community. The termination of more than $800 million in USAID funding is now forcing us to wind down critical work here in Baltimore and internationally," the school, a leading institution of scientific research, said in a statement.

Hopkins, in Maryland's largest city an hour's drive north of the US capital, is eliminating more than 2,000 positions -- 1,975 in projects across 44 countries and 247 jobs in the United States.

The cuts impact several key programs, including the university's medical school and school of public health, and Jhpiego, a global health non-profit organization founded at the university more than 50 years ago and which works to improve health in countries worldwide.

"Johns Hopkins is immensely proud of the work done by our colleagues in Jhpiego, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the School of Medicine to care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water, and advance countless other critical, life-saving efforts around the world," the university said.

The cuts make Johns Hopkins one of the universities most deeply impacted by the slash of federal funding for research.

The university receives roughly $1 billion annually in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is currently running 600 clinical trials, according to The New York Times, adding that Hopkins is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging such cuts.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest funding agency for Jhpiego, distributes humanitarian aid around the world, with health and emergency programs in around 120 countries.

US President Donald Trump, who is dismantling the humanitarian agency, signed an executive order in January demanding a freeze on all US foreign aid to allow time to assess overseas expenses. Critics warn that slashing USAID work will affect millions of people.

News agency contracts

A senior advisor to President Donald Trump said Thursday she was moving to cancel long-established contracts between three international news agencies and the federal body that oversees US government-funded news organizations.

In a post on X announcing the move to cut the contracts with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and The Associated Press, former journalist-turned-politician and staunch Trump loyalist Kari Lake said: "We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is."

Lake joined the US Agency for Global Media as a special advisor last month. The agency oversees a handful of media entities dedicated to reporting news and combatting censorship abroad, such as the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.

"I moved today to cancel expensive and unnecessary newswire contracts for US Agency for Global Media, including tens of millions of dollars in contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse," Lake said

"We should be producing news ourselves. And if that's not possible, the American taxpayer should know why," she added.

AFP has a number of long-running contracts to provide text, photo and video services to USAGM outlets.

Trump has made the federal-funded agencies overseen by the USAGM a particular target of his media reforms, and close advisor Elon Musk has called for VOA and Radio Free Europe to be shut down entirely for "torching" taxpayer money.

He tapped Lake in December to become the head of VOA, but she has yet to be confirmed.