CEO Alisa Planson Churchill, left, lead account manager Katya Planson, center, and company founder Connie Justice inside the warehouse at Planson International on Wednesday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

The Trump administration’s hobbling of USAID is upending Planson International in New Gloucester, and its revenue could be cut in half this year if USAID’s dismantling is allowed to stand, the company’s founder said.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has provided humanitarian aid around the world since the 1960s. But the Trump administration has crippled USAID, ending contracts, laying off workers and gutting the agency. The future of USAID is now playing out in the courts after opponents challenged the president’s authority to make the cuts without congressional approval.

The moves by the White House have created uncertainty about the future of Planson, which provides IT and communications support for USAID recipients in developing countries.

Connie Justice, Planson International’s founder, said it’s “awful and shameful” to see USAID gutted when, for a tiny fraction of the federal government’s funds, “we can help people who through no fault of their own are starving and miserable and persecuted.”

Planson is a for-profit company, but its mission is to provide IT support and communications devices to developing countries, the United Nations and non-governmental organizations that provide humanitarian assistance.

Justice said there’s much uncertainty about what’s going to happen next. Planson doesn’t directly get USAID funding, but many of the humanitarian agencies it works with across the globe do, and many contracts with those agencies have ended.

“We’ve seen a real uneven year,” Justice said. “We hope to keep everyone employed, get foreign assistance reestablished in the U.S. where we can re-take our place helping the less fortunate in this world.”

Justice said some examples of Planson’s work include giving laptop computers to every K-12 student in El Salvador, delivering satellite radios to countries hit with natural disasters, and providing IT support to countries that are trying to set up more robust identification systems for their citizens.

“If you don’t have an identity, you can’t get access to services, vote or participate in government,” Justice said. “We do a lot of work on election integrity in these countries.”

Phil Thaxter, left, Planson’s accounts and logistics manager, and Steve Clark, its logistics director, work with imaging laptops at the New Gloucester company on Wednesday. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

Planson’s annual revenues are in the “tens of millions,” Justice said — she declined to name a specific number for the privately held company — and about half of that is threatened by the dismantling of USAID.

Layoffs are possible if USAID funding isn’t restored, she said, although they are trying to do everything possible to keep from having to cut their workforce of 37 employees — 25 in Maine, five out-of-state and seven in Denmark.

A Maine nonprofit, Hallowell’s MCD Global Health, is also feeling the effects of the cutbacks. It administers a multimillion-dollar USAID grant to combat malaria in Africa, but work has been halted and the contract is in jeopardy.

The future of USAID — which had a $40 billion budget — is unsettled. While the Trump administration is attempting to dismantle it, a federal judge ruled this week that such efforts were unconstitutional. USAID was created by federal law in the 1960s, and it would take Congress to pass another law to end the agency, the court ruled.

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang wrote in an opinion issued this week that the Trump administration, working with billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, “deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.”

Nevertheless, the Trump administration is attempting to fold USAID into the State Department. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this month that 83% of USAID’s functions would be eliminated.

Musk has said on social media that USAID is a “scam” and “one of the biggest sources of fraud” and a “criminal organization.” Musk has not provided supporting evidence for his claims.

USAID’s humanitarian efforts have included action to prevent and treat malaria and AIDS, and provide food assistance and polio immunizations.

A DOGE official, Jeremy Lewin, who was part of the effort to hobble the agency, is now its chief operating officer, The Associated Press reported on Thursday.

Vika Planson, Justice’s daughter, works for USAID in Washington. She told the Press Herald that she was fired, reinstated and is now on paid administrative leave, with her job and many others in limbo. She declined to comment further.

Planson was part of a delegation that met with Maine’s U.S. senators, independent Angus King and Republican Susan Collins, to urge them to use their influence to restore funding.

E.J. Dupont, of Wiscasset, a retired U.S. Army Foreign Area Officer who worked at U.S. embassies in sub-Saharan Africa, was also a group member urging Maine’s senators.

Dupont said reducing humanitarian aid not only harms people but also runs contrary to the U.S.’s geopolitical goals.

“It’s not just USAID employees complaining about being fired. This has serious national security implications for the U.S. What we are doing makes us less safe and hurts our credibility abroad,” Dupont said. “We were reducing the (destabilizing) conditions in those countries that lead to violent extremism and terrorism.”