The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is on the cusp of being shuttered, said Elon Musk, billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump’s administration.
The Tesla CEO has been wrestling for control of the agency in recent days.
Early yesterday, Musk held a live session on X Spaces, previously known as Twitter Spaces, and said that he spoke in detail about USAID with the president.
Photo: AFP
“He agreed we should shut it down,” Musk said.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
“We’re shutting it down,” he added.
His comments come after the administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a current and a former US official told the Associated Press on Sunday.
DOGE members eventually did gain access on Saturday to the ai agency’s classified information, which includes intelligence reports, the former official said.
Musk’s DOGE crew lacked high enough security clearance to access that information, so the two USAID security officials — John Voorhees and deputy Brian McGill — believed themselves legally obligated to deny access.
The current and former US officials had knowledge of the incident and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.
Musk on Sunday responded to an X post about the news by saying: “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.”
Kate Miller, who serves on an advisory board for DOGE, said in a separate post that no classified material was accessed “without proper security clearances.”
It comes a day after DOGE carried out a similar operation at the US Department of the Treasury, gaining access to sensitive information, including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official had resigned over Musk’s team accessing sensitive information.
Musk formed DOGE in cooperation with the Trump administration with the stated goal of finding ways to fire federal workers, cut programs and slash federal regulations.
USAID, whose Web site vanished on Saturday without explanation, has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the Trump administration in an escalating crackdown on the federal government and many of its programs.
“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Trump said to reporters about USAID on Sunday night.
The Trump administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have imposed an unprecedented freeze on foreign assistance that has shut down much of USAID’s humanitarian, development and security programs worldwide — compelling thousands of layoffs by aid organizations — and ordered furloughs and leaves that have gutted the agency’s leadership and staff in Washington.
The US is by far the world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid, with USAID administering billions of US dollars in humanitarian, development and security assistance in more than 100 countries.
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