 "Rubio now also heads USAID as Musk-led Doge shuts it down, staff locked out")
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the State Department’s de facto control of the humanitarian organisation by announcing that he is acting administrator of the US Agency for International Development.
In his remarks, Rubio stressed that some and perhaps many USAID programs would continue in the new configuration but that the switch was necessary because the agency had become unaccountable to the executive branch and Congress.
In a letter to legislators on Monday, Rubio stated that he had given interim administrator power to Pete Marocco, a Trump nominee who worked at USAID during the president’s first term and has been charged by officials and aid organisations of purposefully undermining the agency.
The instruction to halt nearly all international aid was written by Marocco, who is also the chief of foreign assistance at the State Department. Marocco “knows how the system works and is dismantling it at every turn,” according to one aid official.
USAID has become a touchpoint for the Trump administration’s efforts to seize control of federal spending in recent days through Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
And while a cute cartoon dog initially adorned the Doge website, its later replacement by a dollar sign in a gold circle underscored what the focus would be.
Doge Kids
Musk’s young team of so-called “Doge Kids,” drawn from his own companies, dramatically seized control of the US Treasury Department’s payments system and took key government positions.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThey have helped push a drive to get federal employees to take severance payments and quit, with an email that closely resembles a message sent to Twitter employees when Musk took over and later renamed the social network X.
Musk personally announced that the massive USAID humanitarian agency would be “shutting down” – during a live chat on X – and branded it a “criminal organization.”
Their no-holds barred style has raised eyebrows.
A dramatic stand-off reportedly ensued when Musk’s aides demanded access to a secure room at USAID where classified information was held.
There was a similar situation when a career Treasury official was reportedly put on administrative leave after refusing such access to aides.
Wrecking Ball
Musk has begun swinging his wrecking ball at the US government, with concerns growing over the unprecedented power that President Donald Trump has handed to the world’s richest man.
Musk has taken control over the US Treasury’s payments system that manages trillions of dollars. He single-handedly announced the demise of the USAID humanitarian agency. He has helped drive out top officials.
In the space of a few weeks, in fact, much of the agency was dismantled — work and spending ordered stopped, leadership and staff gutted by furloughs, firings and disciplinary leaves, and the website taken offline. Lawmakers said the agency’s computer servers were carted away.
Showing the extraordinary power of Musk and his budget-slashing Doge, thousands of USAID employees have been laid off and programs shut down around the world in the two weeks since Trump became president and imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance.
For a man who likes to rail against unelected bureaucrats, the unelected Space X and Tesla tycoon has been subject to little accountability as he pushes Trump’s drive to shrink the US government.
Trump sought to play down the issue Monday when asked about it in the Oval Office, saying “Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval.”
“We’ll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate we won’t. But he reports in,” insisted Trump. “It’s something that he feels very strongly about and I’m impressed.”
Musk’s powers have seemed almost unbounded, leading to accusations by Democrats of an unconstitutional power grab by both him and his fellow business mogul Trump.
So far Musk has been registered as neither a federal employee nor a government official – although US media reported Monday that he had now been registered as a “special government employee.”
Critics point to the fact that Musk was the biggest donor to Trump’s victorious election campaign, to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars.
Then there is the fact that his companies also have huge US government contracts.
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