Into the Woodchipper

A civil servant discovers his breaking point when the Trump administration’s cruelty and indifference threaten to violate the oath he swore.
About this Event

Nicholas Enrich had finally achieved his lifelong dream: becoming USAID’s lead official for global health. But that dream turned out to be a nightmare in the tumultuous time after President Trump’s second inauguration. In the months that followed, USAID became the first target of Elon Musk’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The mission to which Enrich had dedicated his career was being dismantled before his eyes—even the name of the agency was removed from the building’s facade. Enrich witnessed firsthand the Trump administration’s lies, how it systematically prevented USAID from providing lifesaving foreign aid, and the death and suffering around the world that resulted from careless decisions. Finally determining he could no longer keep quiet, and risking the career that he loved deeply, Enrich released a set of whistleblowing memos exposing the administration’s illegal and destructive actions.

Enrich was put on administrative leave, yet his memos went viral and had a sustained impact. In the days following their release, hundreds of canceled aid projects were revived, and the documents were cited in a Supreme Court case on the legality of USAID’s dissolution. While his memos were too late to save USAID, Enrich was one of the first government officials to publicly blow the whistle on DOGE’s reckless destruction, sounding an early alarm bell for other federal agencies that would soon find themselves in the crosshairs.

Urgent and profoundly human, Enrich’s story offers an astonishing behind-the-scenes look at a federal agency under siege, from the early days when Enrich and his team were unaware of what was to come to the shockingly ignorant, callous, and bigoted conversations they witnessed. Enrich reveals in this detailed, no-holds-barred account what was truly at stake when DOGE set out to dismantle one of America’s most effective humanitarian institutions, and how millions of lives hung in the balance.

Nicholas Enrich is the author of the New York Times best selling book, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. He 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, and was removed from federal service later that year.

Nancy Lindborg has served as the president and CEO of the Packard Foundation since 2020. She has spent most of her career working internationally on democracy, conflict resolution and humanitarian response. She previously served as the President of the United States Institute of Peace and before that as the Assistant Administrator of the USAID Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Response during the Obama Administration. During her time at USAID, she led the agency’s response to the 2011 East Africa drought, the 2012 Somalia famine and the 2014 West Africa Ebola response for USAID.