Tech mogul Elon Musk, recently appointed to lead President Donald J. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has announced plans to close the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Speaking on X Spaces, Musk stated, “We’re shutting it down,” indicating that President Trump concurred with him after a detailed discussion about the agency, which funds non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other entities across the globe.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk posted on X. However, despite these declarations, President Trump has not officially confirmed a decision to dismantle USAID fully.
The move comes against a backdrop of actions by the administration that signal skepticism about the agency. USAID’s funding was recently frozen, and many of its employees were placed on leave.
Officially, USAID is supposed to assist charities and poor countries—including Taliban-ruled Afghanistan—but there are widespread allegations the agency is funneling U.S. taxpayer cash into overtly leftist political projects and losing billions to corruption.
In 2023, under the former Biden-Harris regime, USAID pushed transgender and abortion activism. The agency also gave cash to NGOs such as the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which was involved in the first Democrat-backed impeachment of President Trump.
While the OCCRP claims to be politically neutral, its co-founder, Drew Sullivan, has been anything but neutral on social media, pushing the narrative that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Catholic-inspired tattoos are “far right,” for instance.