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Tuesday 04 Feb 2025
LOCAL EDITION
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LOCAL EDITION
Lawmakers engage with media outside the US Agency for International Development (USAID) headquarters in Washington, DC, following demonstrations on february 3, 2025. (Photo/Sadiq S. Bhat/TRT World)
Washington, DC — Senators and members of Congress have joined a tense crowd outside USAID's headquarters in Washington, DC, chanting, holding signs, and blasting the world's richest man Elon Musk, who has been wrestling for control of the US foreign aid agency in recent days.
Many of those who protested on Monday were USAID employees, now locked out of their offices. Some had already begun clearing out their desks at an annex office near the National Mall, hauling away tote bags stuffed with their personal belongings, unsure if they'd ever return.
Democratic Senators and Congresspeople who joined the protesters included Chris Van Hollen, Ilhan Omar, Jim McGovern, Chris Murphy, Jamie Raskin, and others. They spoke with force, condemning what they saw as the seizure of the agency.
"I lived in a camp," Representative Omar told TRT World. "I know how USAID kept my family alive. It is key to US soft power."
Representative McGovern made a short speech, "USAID helps fix bridges, creates goodwill. People are dying of malaria, they're fleeing war, and US aid helps. That's what creates goodwill."
Senator Van Hollen also joined the chorus.
"Billionaires who don’t give a damn about America have not been elected, not been confirmed. They cannot tell American employees they cannot access the building they work at."
Musk's big bombshell
Musk ignited Democratic fury after dropping a bombshell during a live discussion on X, his social media platform, in which he claimed President Trump was ready to shut USAID down.
"I actually checked with him a few times," Musk said. "I said, 'Are you sure?' 'Yes. So we're shutting it down."
Trump himself stopped short of confirming that outright. But his comments to media on Sunday night were just as ominous. He called USAID a bloated bureaucracy run by "radical lunatics."
"We're getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision," he said.
That decision, it seems, is already in motion.
Over the past week, USAID has been gutted. Senior officials placed on leave. Contractors fired en masse. On Saturday, the agency's two top security chiefs were put on administrative leave after refusing to grant access to a team sent by Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Across the world, USAID contractors found themselves stranded, cut off from official systems and left in limbo
Musk has been given wide latitude by Trump to trim down government waste. He has started with USAID, with its sprawling $38.1 billion budget.
????Elon Musk speaks on shutting down USAID:
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 3, 2025
"As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have a ball of worms. It's hopeless. That's why it's got to go. It's beyond repair."
pic.twitter.com/t6gOgKovMM
World's biggest spender on aid
For decades, USAID has been one of Washington's most powerful tools of influence and foreign policy, funneling aid to disaster zones, fragile democracies, and war-ravaged regions.
The US is the world's biggest spender on international development, and USAID operates in more than 100 countries, providing everything from food security to health services to education programs. The vast majority of that money is spent in Eurasia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe — primarily on humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
Now, those efforts may be headed to a halt. Trump's move to freeze foreign aid last month left humanitarian groups around the world scrambling. Many rely almost entirely on grants from USAID.
In Washington, speculation is rife over what happens next. The prevailing theory among current and former officials is that USAID could be folded into the State Department in a vastly reduced form, if it survives at all.
Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, meanwhile said on Monday that he is the acting administrator of USAID, signalling that any transition could involve bringing the agency under tighter State Department control rather than outright dissolving it.
Later in the day, the State Department announced in a statement, "The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has long strayed from its original mission of responsibly advancing American interests abroad, and it is now abundantly clear that significant portions of USAID funding are not aligned with the core national interests of the United States.
"As an interim step toward gaining control and better understanding over the agency’s activity, President Donald J. Trump appointed Secretary Marco Rubio as Acting Administrator. Secretary Rubio has also now notified Congress that a review of USAID’s foreign assistance activities is underway with an eye towards potential reorganisation."
‘A criminal organisation’
Musk, however, has made his views clear.
He sees USAID not as an arm of American diplomacy but as a corrupt relic of the past. On Sunday, he went so far as to call it "a criminal organization" on X. "Time for it to die," he added.
Trump administration has adopted a hardline approach to global affairs: tariffs over aid and diplomacy.
"Tariffs—that's a beautiful word," Trump has repeatedly said in recent days.
And Musk has framed his intervention as a necessary disruption.
"With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (Trump) in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down," Musk said. "USAID is a ball of worms."
His supporters argue that the agency is an inefficient bureaucracy that wastes billions with little accountability.
But can Trump simply sign an executive order and erase USAID? Not quite.
USAID was created through the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, passed by Congress. President John F. Kennedy then established the agency via executive order, and its status was further solidified by another law in 1998, which confirmed USAID as an independent executive agency.
That means shutting it down isn't as simple. Any attempt would almost certainly face legal challenges and opposition from Congress, particularly given the significant role USAID plays in America's global influence strategy.
'A ball of worms'?
USAID employees warn that what’s happening is not reform.
"The one element of the US government that understands how to work in fragile environments around the world is USAID," a senior USAID official told TRT World.
Some Democratic lawmakers share that concern. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has demanded an immediate review of Musk's actions, calling them an "unauthorised breach" of USAID operations.
"The potential access of sensitive, even classified files... raises deep concerns about national security," committee members wrote in a letter to Rubio.
As protests carried on outside the USAID office in Washington, Congressman Jamie Raskin put the moment into stark relief, telling TRT World, "We need to ask ourselves what kind of America are we becoming?"
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Source: TRT
