- USAID, the agency responsible for foreign aid, suddenly shut down its headquarters on Monday.
- DC-based employees got a text telling them to work remotely hours after Musk supported shutting down USAID
- On Monday afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “the acting director of USAID.”
Employees at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were told that the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. would be shut down for the day, according to a text alert seen by Business Insider.
By Monday afternoon, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he was “the acting director of USAID,” bolstering reports that President Donald Trump plans to fold the agency into the State Department, which Rubio leads. Rubio said that he had appointed someone else to handle the daily operations.
The message announcing the office closure went to all USAID workers who have signed up for the agency’s emergency notification system. It instructed all employees who report to the DC office— excluding those who perform “essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership”— to work remotely. It did not specify whether and when the office would reopen, and CNN reported that the message also came to employees via email.
Though the instructions in the text come from “the direction of Agency leadership,” Elon Musk said he supported shutting down the agency early Monday morning in a conversation on X Spaces, just hours before employees heard of the closure.
“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of a conversation he had with Trump. Musk, who is spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), continued posting about the agency throughout Monday morning, writing on X that “USAID is a criminal organization” and “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
On Sunday night, Trump echoed the disdain for the agency, telling reporters it is run by “radical lunatics.” Trump has already ordered a 90-day freeze on freeze on foreign aid
On Friday, January 24, Rubio paused all new funding for aid programs facilitated by USAID. The memo specified that all foreign assistance will be reviewed to ensure it is not redundant and aligns with Trump’s policies, according to CBS News.
A 15-year veteran employee at USAID told BI that staffers are feeling “nervous, annoyed, sad, anxious, what you’d imagine.” BI has verified their identity and employment.
“We wish they would tell us directly what’s happening instead of waking up to emails and texts telling us things,” they said.
Congress established USAID, the agency responsible for government humanitarian aid, in 1961. The US government is the world’s biggest humanitarian donor.
The agency had a budget of $32 billion for the fiscal year 2024, according to an archived press release. That accounts for approximately 0.47% of the FY 2024 federal budget, which came in at $6.75 trillion.
The press release states the agency requested $10.5 billion for humanitarian assistance across 65 countries, including Ukraine and Syria. It also requested $1.11 billion for Feed the Future programs. Other areas of spending included $4.1 billion for healthcare issues and $3.1 billion for gender equity efforts.
USAID employs more than 10,000 employees, according to the Congressional Research Service, with most of them stationed overseas.
Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said in a letter on Sunday that only Congress can merge USAID into the State Department. They also said reports about DOGE personnel accessing USAID headquarters and sensitive data “raises deep concerns.”
“No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.” Katie Miller, a DOGE spokeswoman, said in an X post on Sunday.
The agency’s website has been shut down and its social media pages deactivated. Retired and former employees are planning a protest at the Capitol on Wednesday, according to a flyer BI has seen making the rounds on social media accounts.
Representatives for the White House, USAID, and Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
Correction: February 3, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misstated the day Rubio ordered a pause on new funding for USAID. The pause occurred on Friday, January 24, not Friday, January 31.
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