The Trump administration presented a plan to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for US aid projects as part of its dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The proposed plan would see thousands of workers lose their jobs, with fewer than 300 positions left in the American organisation to administer humanitarian aid programmes around the world.

On Thursday night, a slew of federal worker associations filed a lawsuit asking the courts to stop the shutdown, arguing that President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation.

The plan was presented to the remaining senior officials of the agency on Thursday.

Two current USAID employees and one former senior USAID official told The Associated Press of the administration’s plan on the condition of anonymity in the face of a Trump administration order barring USAID staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency.

The USAID exodus would leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of what are currently 8,000 direct hires and contractors.

They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired international staffers abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for the time being.

It was not immediately clear whether the reduction to 300 would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says is a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio said during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the US government will continue providing foreign aid.

“But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” he told reporters.

The Trump administration with billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, has targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge to the federal government and many of its programs.

Since Mr Trump’s January 20 inauguration, a sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of the agency’s programs worldwide, and almost all of its workers have been placed on administrative leave or furloughed.

Mr Musk and Mr Trump have spoken of eliminating USAID as an independent agency and moving surviving programs under the State Department.

Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.

The same argument was made by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees in their lawsuit, which asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding.

Government officials “failed to acknowledge the catastrophic consequences of their actions, both as they pertain to American workers, the lives of millions around the world, and to US national interests,” the lawsuit says.