The Trump administration on Monday reportedly moved to shut the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), putting many agency staffers on leave and locking out workers in a push that prompted backlash and a protest in front of agency headquarters.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he was now the acting director of the agency, which distributes billions of dollars a year in humanitarian assistance. Rubio told reporters that USAID has been “completely unresponsive” to State Department policy directives, has ignored U.S. national interests and that its officials had been insubordinate, refusing to cooperate with Trump administration questions about its programs.
“We’re spending taxpayer money here,” Rubio said. “These are not donor dollars. These are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people the assurances that every dollar we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interest. And so far, a lot of the people that work at USAID have just simply refused to cooperate.”
The State Department said in a news release that Rubio had notified Congress “that a review of USAID’s foreign assistance activities is underway with an eye towards potential reorganization.” The State Department said the goal was to ensure that the agency is in alignment with the president’s American First agenda and does not waste taxpayer money.
Rubio reportedly named Peter Marocco to oversee the agency. The Associated Press reports that Marocco “is a political appointee whose short stint at USAID in the first Trump administration generated unusual staff protests for pushing program cuts and investigations that ambassadors and other senior officials complained slowed work to a crawl.”
Trump calls USAID ‘radical left lunatics’: President Trump ordered a freeze on most foreign aid when he took office. On Monday, he accused USAID of “tremendous fraud” and called its employees “radical left lunatics.” He told reporters he believes he has the authority to do away with USAID, especially because of the fraud he alleges.
The administration has already been working to shutter the agency in recent days. “Senior officials have been suspended, and hundreds of civil servants and contractors have been iced out of U.S.A.I.D. systems without warning,” The New York Times reports. “Many of the cuts were rolled out in secret and without warning, as representatives of Elon Musk, who was deputized by President Trump to lead a task force to reduce government spending, took over its operations despite objections from aid workers and Democrats in Congress.”
Musk, the billionaire Tesla founder, has levied harsh criticisms against the agency, calling it a “criminal organization,” “beyond repair” and saying it was “Time for it to die.”
Democrats say they’ll put up a fight: Democratic lawmakers responded by staging a protest at the agency headquarters, with two senators, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, pledging to block confirmations of Trump’s State Department nominees. “We will do everything we can to block State Department nominees from going forward until this illegal action is reversed,” Van Hollen said.
And Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland pointed his criticism at Musk. “You don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does,” he said at the agency headquarters.
Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a letter to Rubio on Sunday asking for details about reports that employees of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency had accessed USAID headquarters and classified spaces. They also said that Congress had intentionally established USAID as an independent agency “to ensure that we can deploy development expertise and U.S. foreign assistance quickly,” especially during crises.
“For this reason, 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,” they wrote. “Congress has also made clear that any attempt to reorganize or redesign USAID requires advance consultation with, and notification to, Congress.”
In an appearance on CNN, Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride warned that USAID is only one part of a larger, unconstitutional power grab: “If they can get away with this, with USAID, they can do it anywhere. And that means that no part of the federal government, including programs like Medicare and Social Security, will be safe from this administration. So it is illegal, and it is just the first stop on this administration’s effort to undermine programs and benefits in order to line the pockets of uber-wealthy donors and friends of the president.”