The fate of the US Agency for International Development appeared bleak Monday after Elon Musk, the world’s richest man charged with overhauling the federal government, said President Donald Trump had signed off on shutting the agency down.
In Washington, USAID’s headquarters was closed for the day, with employees told in an email to remain at home.
Logos and photos of its aid work have been stripped from building walls. And its website and social media accounts have gone dark, replaced with a reduced version of its webpage on the State Department’s website.
The longtime international aid agency has found itself in the crosshairs of Trump and Musk’s effort to reform the federal government. Trump and his allies have said the agency, created by Congress as an independent body, is overtly partisan. Democrats have rejected that assertion and say Trump does not have the authority to dismantle the agency.
Lawmakers and aid workers have been bracing for Trump to shut down the agency entirely and place it under the umbrella of the State Department, a step that appeared imminent Monday morning following Musk’s comments during a talk on X, the social media platform that he owns.
“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in a X Spaces conversation early Monday.
CNN has reached out to the White House and USAID for comment. Trump himself affirmed his disdain for the agency and its mission of providing foreign aid during a question-and-answer session with reporters late Monday.
“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision” on its future, he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews