Roughly a week after several senior USAID staffers were placed on leave for not complying with President Donald Trump’s executive order to pause all foreign aid, DOGE stepped up its efforts to apply pressure to the agency.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it,” Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
The independent body, which oversaw the disbursement of $38 billion in 2023, appears destined to be one of the first major cuts DOGE will make to government spending after Musk said Trump gave him the green light to overhaul the agency.
“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Trump told reporters after returning from a weekend in Palm Beach, Florida.
USAID’s social media accounts were shut down on Saturday, and its webpage was moved, in a diminished capacity, to appear under the State Department’s website. Migrating the site is the first step in bringing the agency under the umbrella of the State Department and slowly suffocating it, lawmakers have warned.
Early Monday morning, USAID employees received an email instructing them that the agency’s headquarters would be closed.
“Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remotely … with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership,” the email stated.
The email comes as 600 employees reported being locked out of USAID’s computer systems overnight. On Sunday, USAID’s X and Instagram accounts were both taken offline, and its website has been down since Saturday. However, it is unclear if the website is down because of a Trump administration directive or due to technical difficulties.
Also on Sunday, two USAID security officials, John Vorhees, and Brian McGill, were placed on leave after refusing to grant members of DOGE access to a sensitive compartmented information facility where highly classified information is reviewed. The security officials were operating within the law by denying the DOGE officials access to the documents because they did not have the proper security clearance. The members of DOGE were later granted access to the files.
Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for DOGE, said on X that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”
On Saturday, the vast majority of USAID’s Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs staff were placed on leave, which follows a decision made a week earlier to put USAID workers on leave. In an email sent by acting USAID administrator Jason Gray, he identified several actions within USAID that appear to be “designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Order and the mandate from the American people.”
“As a result, we have placed a number of USAID employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until further notice while we complete our analysis of these actions,” a copy of the email obtained by Politico read.
USAID, the largest provider of food assistance in the world with a $22.6 billion budget, had its funds frozen by Trump through an executive order.
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Members of Congress have been highly critical of Trump and Musk’s moves with USAID, claiming that it would be unconstitutional to upend the agency without congressional approval, according to a letter signed by 10 Democratic senators addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Any effort to merge or fold USAID into the Department of State should be, and by law must be, previewed, discussed, and approved by Congress. Congress has also made clear that any attempt to reorganize or redesign USAID requires advance consultation with, and notification to, Congress,” the letter stated.
