Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that he has become acting administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after the Elon Musk, the world's richest man in charge of rebuilding the federal government, said President Donald Trump signed the shutdown of USAID.
In Washington, the USAID headquarters was closed during the day, and employees were told to stay at home in an email.
Logos and photographs of humanitarian work have been removed from the walls of buildings. USAID's website and social media accounts have been blacked out and replaced by a scaled-down version of the website on the State Department's website.
"There is an apocalypse in USAID," said one USAID official, according to CNN.
USAID has come under fire from Trump and Musk's efforts to reform the federal government. Trump and his allies have said that USAID, which was created by Congress as an independent body, is openly biased.
Democrats have rejected that claim and say Trump does not have the authority to disband the agency.
Lawmakers and aid workers were bracing for Trump to shut down the agency entirely and bring it under the auspices of the State Department. The move seemed inevitable following Musk's comments during a chat on the X social network.
"Regarding the USAID thing, I discussed it in detail with President Trump and he agreed to close it," Musk said.
Trump: "A bunch of radical lunatics"
Trump reaffirmed his disdain for USAID and its foreign aid mission during a question-and-answer session with reporters late Sunday.
"It was run by a bunch of radical lunatics and we're taking them out, and then we'll make a decision about the future of USAID," he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews.
USAID workers, most of whom are career civil servants, received an email shortly after midnight saying they should not come to their office in Washington.
"At the direction of Agency management, USAID headquarters in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025. Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will be working remotely tomorrow, with the exception of personnel with basic on-site and building maintenance functions who are individually contacted by senior management,โ the email said.
Thousands of employees and civil servants lost access to email and USAID systems overnight.
The sudden chaos left employees scrambling to get any answers as they received no information.
