Top US university says ending 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.

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"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.