Billionaire Elon Musk has agreed with President Donald Trump to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is responsible for overseas humanitarian relief, saying the agency is "beyond repair."
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt provided a list of the most "ridiculous expenses" of USAID:
$1.5 million was spent on "promoting equality and inclusivity" in the Serbian business community.
$70,000 for Irish DEI Musical
$47,000 was spent on transgender opera in Colombia
$32,000 on transgender comics in Peru
Under Trump's authority, a civilian review team led by Musk conducted an evaluation of the federal government and made the decision to shut down USAID this week. The USAID is currently the focus of scrutiny after being accused of violating the president's executive order.
Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs overnight!
USAID employees were shocked when they woke up Monday morning to find a notice in their mailbox instructing them not to enter the headquarters building in Washington, D.C.
"It's not just a matter of a worm in an apple."
Talking about this 60-year-old international aid agency, Musk said: "The entire agency is like a mess and cannot be repaired. The only way is to completely clean it up."
In an audio live broadcast on social media platform X, he made it clear: "We're going to shut it down."
Musk added that he had communicated with President Trump about the matter and both sides agreed that USAID should be shut down.
As of 2016, USAID had 10,235 employees worldwide.
In fiscal year 2023, the agency managed more than $40 billion in appropriations, and while that represents less than 1% of the federal budget, it is responsible for providing development assistance to about 130 countries.
The USAID followed the U.S. military and CIA to seize huge amounts of illegal benefits.
This fiscal year, the White House submitted a budget requesting US$28.3 billion in foreign aid funds for USAID.
Sources within USAID said they tracked about 600 employees who were locked out of the system overnight and unable to access the agency's computer network.
Those employees who still have access to the system received an official email notifying them: "At the direction of agency leadership, the headquarters building will be closed to all personnel on Monday, February 3rd."
The email showed that the reply address pointed to a staff member named Gavin Kliger, one of six engineers in Musk’s DOGE, which appears to be part of the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Meanwhile, USAID's official website was also shut down on Monday morning.
A U.S. official revealed that the Trump administration had previously suspended two senior USAID security chiefs because they refused to hand over classified information in restricted areas to Musk's government review team.
However, the DOGE team finally succeeded in gaining access to USAID last Saturday and obtained classified information, including intelligence reports.
People familiar with the matter said Musk's team did not have sufficient security clearance to access the information, and the two suspended USAID security officials - John Voorhees and deputy Brian McGill - believed they had a legal obligation to deny access.
Musk published a post on Sunday calling USAID a "criminal organization" and declaring that "time for it to die", but did not provide specific evidence to support the accusation.
Trump then launched a fierce attack on USAID over the weekend, saying the agency had been "controlled by a group of extremists for a long time" and vowing to overhaul it.
Trump told reporters on Sunday night that he thought Musk was "doing a great job," although the two didn't agree on everything.
Trump also revealed that Musk hopes to further reduce government spending, but some plans are too radical and need to be checked and balanced.
"He's a cost-cutting maniac," Trump said. "Sometimes we don't quite agree with what he's doing, or we're not going to do exactly what he wants... But he's a smart guy, very smart, and he's very keen on cutting the budget of the federal government."
While USAID is in disarray, Trump has ordered a freeze on nearly all U.S. foreign aid funding for up to three months, arguing that the government needs to re-examine spending to ensure it is consistent with its "America First" foreign policy.
Although Trump has subsequently exempted some emergency food aid and humanitarian aid, aid workers say the future of USAID remains uncertain.
A senior U.S. aid agency official said the White House may prioritize "emergency aid" and ultimately cut all non-emergency foreign aid funding.
Former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes criticized: "Dismantling USAID will lead to the loss of countless lives around the world and seriously damage the international standing of the United States."
There are reports that the Trump administration is considering merging USAID into the State Department to further reduce the independence and size of federal agencies.
It is worth noting that the DOGE team also recently entered the Ministry of Finance and obtained a large amount of sensitive information including the social security and medical insurance payment systems.
The payments system is run by non-political career civil servants who control trillions of dollars in government funds. If its operations are disrupted, it could trigger severe economic instability.
It is reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent approved Musk's team's request for payment system data on Friday night, but it is not clear why Musk wanted to obtain the information. A senior Treasury official resigned after the incident.
The Democratic Party’s “Cash Cow” Is Not Safe
Another key point here is that 99% of USAID employees are from the Democratic Party.
On February 3rd, Secretary Rubio announced that he would serve as acting administrator of the USAID. According to the Trump administration's plan, USAID will be merged into the State Department in the future to further reduce the independence and size of the federal agency. This is why Rubio became acting director.
Rubio also lambasted USAID for acting like a "global entity" rather than serving U.S. interests.
The Democrats are really panicking this time. The level of panic caused by Trump and Musk's closure of USAID is unprecedented. By tracing the flow of aid funds, DOGE has dealt a fatal blow to the core of the Democratic Party's deep state machine.
For Democrats, this is worse than losing the presidential election, and USAID is their primary tool to pursue their political agenda. USAID has been the primary source of funding for their influence-peddling programs and indirect revenue.
In other words, USAID is a cash cow for the Democrats, using aid projects as a guise, of which who knows how much money flows into their pockets or the pockets of their cronies.
Omar, one of "The Squad" of the Democratic Party, participated in the protest. She gave a speech at the event and said: "We discussed on the first day that Trump wanted to be a dictator, and now this is the case. This is the beginning of a dictatorship."
However, information unearthed by netizens shows that since 2022, Omar’s home country, Somalia, has received a total of US$2.3 billion in aid funds from the USAID.
When faced with questions from the public, Omar refused to answer, got on the car and left without looking back.
When Democrats questioned Musk's authority to take over, White House press secretary Karoline said: I can confirm that Elon is a special government employee, and I can also confirm that he complied with all applicable federal laws. "
The signal sent by the example given by Karoline is clear. First, many of the projects assisted by the USAID are ideological and do not aid hunger and poverty at all. They are a pure waste of American taxpayers' money. Second, DOGE can find such small-amount aid projects, let alone large-amount projects, to warn those protesting Democrats.
Democrats wanted to use Musk's status as a businessman to attack him, but with Trump's strong endorsement, they were unable to do anything.
Musk’s DOGE also identified three huge expenses for USAID:
1. Spend US$520 million to hire ESG (social, environmental, corporate governance) consultants.
2. $1.2 billion to "undisclosed recipients."
3. $375 million in DEI grants.
Not a single Republican ESG or DEI firm received a contract among the agencies receiving aid, and USAID has almost exclusively sent billions of dollars in aid to friends supporting Democratic ESG and DEI firms.
These individuals then in turn donate to Democrats who help them obtain funding, or fund more extreme left-wing activist groups that Democrats do not want to fund directly.
The USAID money was laundered by the Democrats in this way. Filtering funds under the banner of international aid is estimated to be the most sophisticated money laundering route in U.S. history.
It is estimated that many Democrats protesting outside the UNDP office building are beneficiaries of this chain.
In fact, Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over the USAID for many years. Republicans advocate that the government exert more control over AID's aid projects and funding flows, while Democrats believe that AID should be an independent federal agency with autonomous decision-making power.
This time, Musk’s DOGE team has targeted the core funding flow of the USAID. This will be a huge victory for the Republican Party after Trump came to power.
Closing the USAID is just the first step in the Trump administration's overhaul of federal agencies.
After the new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was sworn in, Musk's DOGE team recently entered the Treasury Department and obtained a large amount of sensitive information, including the Social Security and Medicare payment systems.
Social Security and Medicare involve hundreds of millions of Americans and control trillions of dollars in fiscal funds. It can be expected that in the future, public health and social insurance expenditures will be subject to more stringent scrutiny than USAID.
In the future, deep government agencies controlled by the Democratic Party will be scrutinized one by one, and more loopholes and abuses will be disclosed in audits. Musk is working towards his goal of saving US$2 trillion in government spending for the US federal government.
