By Jonathan Landay and Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were informed on Monday that their headquarters in downtown Washington was shut for the day, hours after billionaire Elon Musk said President Donald Trump agreed that Washington’s primary humanitarian agency should be closed.
Hundreds of USAID programs covering billions of dollars worth of lifesaving aid across the globe came to a grinding halt after Trump on Jan. 20 ordered a freeze of most U.S. foreign aid, saying he wanted to ensure it is aligned with his “America First” policy.
Over the past week, mayhem has prevailed at USAID’s offices in DC where dozens of staff have been put on leave while people working for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) attempted to gain access to USAID documents, triggering a row between his aides and career staff.
The billionaire is heading Trump’s drive to cut wasteful spending within the federal government but his increasingly harsh accusations of USAID – for which he has not provided evidence – has raised questions on whether the effort to gut the agency and possibly bring it under the State Department was solely driven by cost-cutting purposes.
Musk said in a broadcast on Monday that USAID was “beyond repair,” and that Trump agreed that it should be shut down. Trump told reporters on Sunday that USAID has “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics,” adding: “We’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision.”
“At the direction of the Agency leadership, the USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, DC will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025,” an internal email to USAID staff seen by Reuters said.
There was no information in the email about whether the offices would remain shut in the coming days. “Further guidance will be forthcoming,” it said.
The row between DOGE staff and USAID triggered outrage among Democrats. A group of Democratic lawmakers said they will gather at 1 p.m. outside the USAID headquarters to protest the closure, calling it “the Trump administration’s and Elon Musk’s illegal shutdown.”
MORE CONTRACTORS LOCKED OUT
The United States is the world’s largest single donor. In fiscal year 2023, the country disbursed $72 billion of assistance worldwide on everything from women’s health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. It provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024.
Following the executive order, the State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives, effectively freezing all foreign aid with the exception of emergency food assistance in a move experts warned risked killing people.
The move sent shockwaves around the world. Field hospitals in Thai refugee camps, landmine clearance in war zones, and drugs to treat millions suffering from diseases such as HIV are among the programs at risk of elimination.
Three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that USAID personal services contractors (PSC) who carry out the bulk of the work in the agency’s humanitarian bureau, have also been locked out of their government accounts, in the latest action affecting contractors at the agency.
“Without PSCs, there is no longer functionally a Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) in USAID. The waivers from Secretary of State (Marco) Rubio for emergency food and other urgent assistance are a smokescreen and farce if there is no one to make the awards happen,” a USAID official said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay, Humeyra Pamuk, Erin Banco, Daphne Psaledakis and Pete Schroeder; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Mark Porter)
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