Democrats have condemned the Trump administration’s attempts to gut an agency that provides aid overseas to fund education and fight starvation and disease, calling it illegal and vowing to fight it in court.
Staff of the US Agency for International Development (USAid) were instructed to stay out of the organisation’s Washington headquarters, and officers blocked Democratic legislators from entering the lobby on Monday, after Elon Musk announced that Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
Thousands of USAid employees have already been laid off and programmes shut down in the two weeks since Mr Trump became president.
The development shows the power of Mr Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) in the Trump administration. The tech billionaire announced the closing of the agency early on Monday as Mr Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio was out of the country on a trip to Central America.
USAID is a criminal organization https://t.co/Xzl70dmow1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
Mr Trump said shutting down USAid “should have been done a long time ago” and was asked whether he needs Congress to approve such a measure. The president said he did not think so, and accused the Biden administration of fraud, without giving any evidence and only promising a report later on.
“They went totally crazy, what they were doing and the money they were giving to people that shouldn’t be getting it and to agencies and others that shouldn’t be getting it, it was a shame, so a tremendous fraud,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Mr Rubio told reporters in San Salvador that he was now the acting administrator of USAid but had delegated his authorities to someone else. The change means USAid is no longer an independent government agency as it had been for decades — although its new status is likely to be challenged in court — and will be run out of the State Department.
Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said it was “a corrupt abuse of power that is going on”.
“It’s not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal,” the Maryland senator said.
The upheaval comes after Mr Trump ordered a freeze on foreign assistance, with widespread effects around the world. The moves by the US, the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, have upended decades of policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance at the centre of efforts to build alliances and counter adversaries including China and Russia.
The Democratic legislators gathered outside the USAid building for a rally and press conference, giving the most forceful pushback since Mr Trump took office last month. They tried to walk into the offices to talk to staff about the changes but were denied entry.
They say Mr Trump lacks the constitutional authority to shut down USAid without congressional approval and condemned Mr Musk’s move to access sensitive government-held information through his Trump-sanctioned inspections of federal government agencies and programmes.
Hawaii senator Brian Schatz said USAid is not just about saving other countries from starvation and disease. “There is a reason that USAid is an arm of American foreign policy, and it is because we understand that a stable world means a stable America,” he said.
USAid staff said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the aid agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to agency personnel on Monday February 3”.
The agency’s website vanished on Saturday without explanation.
Mr Musk, who is leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with Mr Trump’s agreement, said early on Monday that he had spoken with the president about the six-decade-old US aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down”.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Mr Musk said on 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.”
“We’re shutting it down,” he added.
Mr Musk, Mr Trump and some Republican legislators have targeted the agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programmes in 120 countries, in increasingly strident terms, accusing it of promoting liberal causes.
Since Mr Trump took office, appointees brought in from his first term such as Peter Marocco placed more than 50 senior officials on leave for investigation without public explanation, gutting the agency’s leadership.
When the agency’s personnel chief announced that the allegations against them were groundless and tried to reinstate them, he was placed on leave as well.
It is widely known among current and former State Department and USAid employees that that Mr Marocco has been given authority over the agency by Mr Rubio.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAid on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Mr Musk’s government-inspection teams, officials said.
USAid has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the Trump administration in an escalating crackdown on the federal government and many of its programmes. The US spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share overall than some other countries.
“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Mr Trump said to reporters about USAid on Sunday night.
The freeze on foreign assistance has shut down much of USAid aid programme worldwide, including an HIV-Aids programme started by Republican President George W Bush credited with saving more than 20 million lives in Africa and elsewhere.
Aid contractors spoke of millions of dollars in medication and other goods now stuck in port that they were forbidden to deliver.
Other programmes that would shut down provided education to schoolgirls in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and monitored an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. A USAid-supported crisis monitoring programme, which was credited for helping prevent repeats of the 1980s famine in Uganda that killed up to 1.2 million people, has gone offline.
