On the day of his inauguration, Donald Trump sat at a small table in front of his so-called victory rally crowd and signed an executive order targeting United States foreign aid.
It put in motion a "domino effect" across the world.
Megan* was in an office of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Asia, coordinating life-saving programs.
She was told to stop work, and cease communicating with the network of local organisations USAID had teamed up with.
Megan, who is not using her real name for fear of reprisals, said it was as if the US government had "ghosted" its partners in the region.
"These are people that have no other options to get food or water or health care. It's like this domino effect," Megan said.
"I felt so helpless. Not only did I feel like my hands were tied, but I felt they were cut off in a sense that I couldn't tell them that we can't talk to them."
It's been one month since Trump returned to the White House with a promise to slash public spending.
While USAID has been among the most high-profile and hardest-hit institutions, it seems nothing is safe from the new administration's razor gang, led by Elon Musk.
The tech billionaire is running something called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been running around Washington, culling wherever, and whatever, it can.
Musk and the president say the drastic measures are needed to balance the federal budget, which runs at a deficit of roughly $US2 trillion ($3.13 trillion) each year.
Critics argue what they're doing could be unconstitutional, given the US Congress is generally responsible for allocating cash to government agencies.
USAID, which until last month had a staff of more than 10,000 people globally, is expected to be cut to just a few hundred employees.
Megan was there for the chaos sparked by Trump's executive order.
"One of my colleagues said: 'Oh, I can't access my email'."
At that moment, everyone in the office tried to log on, Megan said. Those who could downloaded as many important documents as possible, including their own employment contracts.
"Suddenly, one by one, my colleagues started getting shut out of their emails," she said.
The next day, Megan could no longer log into her work laptop, staff were locked out of offices and the website was no longer accessible.
Some USAID workers still had access to their email accounts when a notable item arrived in their inbox. The subject line read: "Fork in the road".
They knew where it had come from.
What outcome is DOGE after?
Trump is particularly scathing of USAID — the whole thing is "a fraud", he says — but it's just one government agency he wants to chop.
In the weeks since he's returned to the White House, there have been new cuts almost every day.
The Department of Defence was sent a memo warning it to prepare to slash its annual budget by 8 per cent every year until 2030.
Department of Education contracts worth hundreds of billions of dollars have been cancelled. Eventually, the plan is to shut it down completely.
Everyone at the US's spy agency, the CIA, has been offered the change to resign.
Elsewhere, there are more micro changes happening. The State Department this week ordered a pause on all of its media subscriptions.
This week, DOGE claimed on its website that more than 1,000 contracts across 39 federal agencies had been terminated, equating to about $US8.9 billion in savings.
Overall, Musk's operation says it has cut $US55 billion in spending.
"If we don't solve the deficit, there won't be money for medical care, there won't be money for social security ... it's got to be solved or there's no medical care, there's no social security, there's no nothing," Musk told Fox News this week.
"It's got to be solved. It's not optional ... that's why I'm here."
The idea of cutting spending in the US, where the national debt has reached $US37 trillion, is not particularly controversial.
Jennifer Pahlka, a senior fellow at Washington-based think tank the Niskanen Centre, former deputy chief technology officer in the Obama White House and author of Recoding America, knows how frustrating government can be
She's previously written that: "If anyone on the left should be rooting for Elon Musk, it's me."
"I don't think bureaucracy needs to be eliminated. I think it has a very useful place in in our system of government. In fact, it's necessary, but it's gotten overly proceduralised, so that we're too focused on the process and not focused enough on the outcome," she told the ABC.
"I think when I look at DOGE I'm asking, what outcome are they after? I certainly hear that efficiency is the goal, and I think efficiency can be a very nice side-effect of more effective government, but I would put effective first."
Ms Pahlka helped found the US Digital Service, an agency designed to improve government services, under former president Barack Obama.
It gave her an intricate understanding of the barriers that exist for people trying to get things done in the US public service. But that doesn't mean she agrees with what Mr Musk is doing.
"I think one thing DOGE has done that's positive is broad attention to a topic that I've been shouting about for 15 years, which is the sclerosis of government and the need to revitalise it," Ms Pahlka said.
"They're not doing it the way I would have done it, but I am glad people are paying attention."
Megan said she knew Donald Trump would take aim at the size of the federal government, but didn't realise USAID would be such a high-profile target.
"Before the inauguration, he alluded to whittling down the number of agencies," she said.
"I didn't think that USAID would be affected. I think because we were small enough in general, I thought there were a lot bigger agencies, maybe that would be targeted first."
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: "Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?"
Megan said USAID has not been given the chance to prove it does all of those things.
"We were cut off from our emails. We were cut off from the ability to show actually all these programs that do feed hungry people and support with essential medicines the vulnerable people that can't access them ... were effective and that they do make America stronger," she said.
"It helps our national security. It does make us safer, and it does make us more prosperous, because if you can deal it with it over abroad, you're not dealing with in the United States.
"For example, Ebola ... you can contain it abroad and avoid [the disease] coming to the States."
'We are going to make mistakes': Musk
The frenetic approach has caused consternation within the government.
"We are moving fast, so we will make mistakes, but we'll also fix the mistakes very quickly," Musk said during a press conference in the Oval Office earlier this month.
A program to support survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York was cut, then reinstated amid an outcry two days later.
Hundreds of employees working on US nuclear weapons programs were told they'd been fired - although, amid safety concerns, that decision was largely reversed.
"If there's any one thing that anyone on government's inside would quietly agree about, it's that the current civil service is badly broken and that the system is full of wasteful bloat," emeritus professor Donald Kettl, an expert in the civil service from the University of Maryland, told The Washington Post this week.
"But a clumsy fix is worse than no fix at all. It's like going to a meat market, getting a piece of steak, and trying to cut out the fat with a sledgehammer. That would only make a mess of the meat."
Numerous court challenges have slowed the mission a little, with judges around the country ordering some edicts from the White House and DOGE be paused while their legality is assessed.
The "fork in the road" email — one of the new administration's headline cost-cutting measures — is among those being examined by the judiciary.
It was sent to an estimated 2 million federal employees last month offering them "buy-outs", or redundancies.
Anyone who replied "resign" to the email would be offered their full salary until September, without being required to work.
About 75,000 workers have signed up for deal, according to a government official, as reported by Reuters. That is equal to more than 3 per cent of the civilian federal workforce.
On Thursday, local time, the plan for mass exodus began when a judge ruled the buyout offer could proceed.
The decision triggered the first of the job losses — these were the tens of thousands of people who had signed up to take the money.
Labour unions have warned people to be sceptical of the offer, pointing out that beyond March 14 there was no guarantee that workers' salaries would be funded because it is Congress that makes the decision on whether or not the government can spend that money.
Megan is a USAID contractor and so the buyout offer was not made to her, but that also means she has even more uncertainty about her future at the organisation.
"I was out on my assignment, and I was one of the few that got pulled back early, and so I'm back in the States [and am] kind of in limbo, waiting on hearing what's next," she said.
When her pay arrived on Monday, she thought she was one of the lucky ones.
But over the course of the week, colleagues began receiving "letters of termination", and eventually, Megan got one too.
