Bangladesh

More USAID staff ousted after clash with Musk’s team as Trump dismantles agency

A view of the USAID building in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 1, 2025. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

 

Senior security staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development have been put on leave by the
administration of U.S. President Donald Trump after they refused to allow representatives from billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to access restricted parts of the building, people familiar with the matter have said. The security officials contended that staff with Musk’s team lacked the required clearances, making them legally obliged to deny access, the people said.

 

“DOGE did access the building yesterday,” a senior Senate Democratic aide said, requesting anonymity to discuss the incident. “They (security personnel) were threatened with action by the federal Marshals Service,” the aide said. Following the incident, the director of USAID security, John Voorhees, and his deputy were removed from their positions and put on leave, the sources said.

Members of the group from DOGE were allowed to access several secure spaces, including the office of security and the agency’s executive secretariat. There was no record of what information DOGE officials were able to obtain in those areas, but the offices they accessed included classified files and personal information about Americans who work at USAID, sources said.

Asked Sunday about the situation, U.S. President Donald Trump said the agency — Washington’s primary agency funding billions of dollars’ worth of life-saving aid globally — had been run “by a bunch of radical lunatics and we’re getting them out.”

The fast-moving developments follow an executive order by Trump last month to halt and reevaluate U.S. foreign aid, saying his administration will review spending to ensure money is distributed in line with his “America First” foreign policy. Billions of dollars in U.S. assistance that are typically coordinated by the independent agency were frozen, and several senior officials suspended.

That order left many aid recipients, especially across Africa and in Ukraine, scrambling. The agency provides support for everything from humanitarian projects to health initiatives to disaster relief. Field hospitals in Thai refugee camps, landmine clearance in war zones, and drugs to treat millions suffering from diseases such as HIV are among the programs at risk of elimination.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued a waiver for certain “life-saving humanitarian assistance” as a three-month review is carried out to determine which of the thousands of U.S. foreign aid projects align with Trump’s vision. But much aid remains halted, and agency staff are also battling a suspicion among Trump appointees and loyalists that USAID was secretly funding abortions even though it is barred from doing so.

The USAID website was taken offline on Saturday afternoon, a sign that the end is near for the agency, with a network error or blank page encountered when attempting to access the site, usaid.gov, across various countries and devices.

That came amid a barrage of tweets from Musk on Saturday and Sunday attacking USAID. At one point he accused it of funding bio weapon research “including COVID-19.” At another he said it was “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” On Sunday, he accused it of being “a criminal organization,” without providing any evidence, and added “Time for it to die.”

The situation has been shaping up as a test of Trump’s power, with Musk in a supporting role, to hobble an agency that was codified by Congress in 1998.

Last week more than 50 senior officials at USAID’s Washington office — the majority of the agency’s senior career leadership — were put on administrative leave. The total number of agency staff put on leave over the past week is now close to 100, some losing access to their emails overnight.

“It becomes a fundamental question of the Constitution and the separation of powers,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former senior official at USAID. “What they seem to be attempting to do is assert by presidential fiat that DOGE can just shut down a federal agency. We’re in uncharted territory here.”

The confrontation at USAID added to signs that Musk’s team of government efficiency enforcers have been gaining access to government systems. He said earlier that DOGE is shutting some down payments to federal contractors. He had also said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was cutting payments to Lutheran Family Services, a faith-based charity that has been providing social services to refugees.

Musk’s team pushed back against the idea that they had done anything wrong at USAID.

“No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” Katie Miller, who Trump said in December was joining DOGE, wrote on X. The standoff was first reported by CNN.

Democratic senators said that Trump’s team was preparing an executive order to fold USAID into the State Department. Trump suggested Sunday that a decision about the agency’s future would be made later.

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the attempted “total destruction” of USAID was “happening as we speak” but that Trump “cannot unilaterally close a federal agency.”

USAID funding goes to programs on everything from women’s health in conflict zones to access to clean water and anti-corruption work, and its programs are also often built into key foreign policy priorities such as helping countries’ energy transition, competing with China on infrastructure projects, and countering Moscow’s and Beijing’s influence.

Under the administration of Joe Biden, the U.S. and its Group of Seven allies agreed on several initiatives to compete with China’s massive infrastructure program and clout seen everywhere from Asia and Africa to Latin America.

The new administration sees foreign aid as charity and doesn’t consider how it serves U.S. geopolitical interests, said a diplomat from a G7 country who declined to be identified to discuss sensitive issues.

a G7 country who declined to be identified to discuss sensitive issues.

Democratic lawmakers warned on the social network X, where USAID’s primary account also went dark over the weekend, that any move to eliminate the agency’s independence would be illegal, against U.S. interests, and would benefit China.

But U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Brian Mast, a Republican, said Sunday that he would support moving USAID under the State Department and that there needs to be “more command and control.”

Asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” if congressional approval was needed or whether Trump could act unilaterally, Mast did not answer. The “purging of people throughout the State Department, other agencies” and freezing aid were “all very important and necessary steps to make sure that we secure America,” he said.

By Reuters

Related Articles

Back to top button