Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he is assuming the powers of acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) after the agency—which oversees tens of billions of dollars in foreign assistance—saw its funding frozen by President Donald J. Trump. USAID has long been the target of Republican scrutiny over its funding of foreign programs that promote far-left and anti-American ideologies.
“The attitude that USAID has adopted over the years is ‘No, we are independent of the national interests, we fund programs irrespective of whether it is aligned or not aligned with the foreign policy,'” Sec. Rubio said. “That’s ridiculous—these are taxpayer dollars.”
The National Pulse reported earlier on Monday that tech entrepreneur Elon Musk—who is heading up the Trump White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—had said USAID would be abolished entirely. Early Monday morning, Musk said, “We’re in the process of shutting down USAID. The reason for that, as opposed to simply trying to do some minor house cleaning, is that, as we got into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it. But we have actually just a ball of worms.” He went on to describe the agency as “hopeless.”
However, neither President Donald J. Trump nor any senior White House officials confirmed Musk’s assertions. “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision,” Trump told the press at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday.
USAID employees received an email last night informing them that the agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., would be closed to official personnel on Monday and directing them to work from home.
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