USAID headquarters closed on Monday, Musk says aid agency should be ‘shut down’

Washington: Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who heads an agency entrusted by US President Donald Trump to increase the efficiency of the federal government, said on Monday that he wants to shut down US Agency for International Development (USAID), an autonomous body of the State Department that is one of the world’s largest official aid agencies and accounts for more than half of US foreign assistance.

“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of the agency on X. “And I actually checked with him a few times [and] said ‘are you sure’?”

“The answer was yes,” he said. “And so we’re shutting it down”.

Musk also called the agency a “criminal organization”.

President Trump has not weighed in on Musk’s comments publicly yet but his allies have made clear the administration will pursue an ‘American First’ path on every issue and Secretary of State Marco Rubio re-emphasised the importance of that principle in American diplomacy in his first public remarks at the State Department upon taking charge.

The USAID was founded in the 1960s.

On Saturday, two top officials of the USAID were removed from office for blocking officials of the Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) accessing rooms and floors at the USAID headquarters in Washington DC.

DOGE officials had their way, finally.

USAID workers at the headquarters were told in an email the agency will be closed on Monday.

“Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remotely… with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership,” they were told in an email.

The agency has had a long history of work and partnerships in India, among many other countries. “In recent years, USAID established 34 public-private partnerships that leverage $380 million in additional financial resources,” said an archived webpage of the agency from 2021. The latest figures and extent of USAID work in India were not immediately available