World News | USAID Headquarters in Washington Blocked After Musk Says Trump Agrees to Close the Aid Agency
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Staffers of the US Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency's Washington headquarters, and yellow police tape and officers blocked the agency's lobby on Monday, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
Washington, Feb 3 (AP) Staffers of the US Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency's Washington headquarters, and yellow police tape and officers blocked the agency's lobby on Monday, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
USAID staffers also said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the 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, Feb 3”. The agency's website vanished Saturday without explanation.
The fast-moving developments come after thousands of USAID employees already have been laid off and programmes shut down in the two weeks since President Donald Trump took office and show the extraordinary power of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in the Trump administration.
Musk announced closing of the agency early Monday, as Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was out of the country on a trip to Central America.
Trump, a Republican, also has 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 in the centre of efforts to build alliances and counter adversaries including China and Russia.
They've forced US and international companies to shut down tens of thousands of programmes globally, leading to furloughs, layoffs and financial crises that have left many fearing the aid community already has been too damaged by the freeze to resume work even if funding resumes.
Democratic lawmakers have protested the moves, saying Trump lacks constitutional authority to shut down USAID without congressional approval and decrying Musk's accessing sensitive government-held information through his Trump-sanctioned inspections of federal government agencies and programs.
On Monday, two State Department employees who tried to gain access to the USAID offices in the building said they were turned away by security guards, who told them the offices were open but people could not go in. Later in the morning, uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers and security officers blocked the lobby of the USAID's headquarters using yellow tape with the words “do not cross”.
The white USAID flag still flew on the empty plaza in front of the agency headquarters Monday morning. A State Department staffer stood in front, and he said he just wanted to pay his respects. Staffers said employees earlier Monday had been able to reach other parts of the agency to clear personal belongings from their offices.
The developments come after Musk, who's leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with Trump's agreement, said early Monday that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade 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,” 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.”
“We're shutting it down,” he said.
Musk, Trump and some Republican lawmakers have targeted the US aid and development agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programmes in some 120 countries, in increasingly strident terms, accusing it of promoting liberal causes.
Since 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.
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 Musk's government-inspection teams, a current and a former US official said.
Musk's DOGE earlier carried out a similar operation at the Treasury Department, gaining access to sensitive information including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official had resigned over Musk's team accessing sensitive information.
USAID, meanwhile, 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.
“It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we're getting them out,” Trump said to reporters about USAID on Sunday night.
The Trump administration and Rubio have imposed an freeze on foreign assistance that has shut down much of USAID's aid programmes worldwide and ordered furloughs and leaves that have gutted the agency's leadership and staff in Washington.
The funding freeze has shut down 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 spreading 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.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a post on Sunday that Trump was allowing Musk to access people's personal information and shut down government funding.
“We must do everything in our power to push back and protect people from harm,” the Massachusetts senator said, without giving details. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)