Nicholas Enrich

Nicholas Enrich is a former civil servant who worked at USAID under four administrations. He served as the Bureau of Global Health’s director of policy, programs, and planning until January 2025, when he was designated as USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health. On March 2, 2025, he was placed on administrative leave for exposing the Trump administration’s illegitimate and dangerous dismantling of USAID, which ended up going viral and his memo has been cited in a Supreme Court case on the legality of USAID’s dissolution. While the public release of his memos was ultimately not enough to save USAID, Enrich was one of the first government officials to publicly blow the whistle on DOGE’s reckless operations and inform other federal agencies of what was to come. He is the author of Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID, published in April 2026.

Click ‘Listen’ to hear Dominic Bowen in conversation with Nicholas Enrich on how the impact of USAID cuts is being felt one year since the federal agency was dismantled by DOGE and the context around his new book Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID.