USAID headquarters in Washington are blocked

USAID headquarters in Washington are blocked

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters, and yellow police tape and officers blocked the agency’s lobby on Monday, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.

USAID staffers also said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.” The agency’s website vanished Saturday without explanation.

The fast-moving developments come after thousands of USAID employees already have been laid off and programs shut down in the two weeks since President Donald Trump took office and show the extraordinary power of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in the Trump administration. Musk announced closing of the agency early Monday, as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was out of the country on a trip to Central America.

Trump, a Republican, also has ordered a freeze on foreign assistance that has had widespread effects on programs around the world. The moves by the U.S., the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, have upended decades of policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance in the center of efforts to build alliances and counter adversaries including China and Russia.

Democratic lawmakers have protested the moves, saying Trump lacks constitutional authority to shut down USAID without congressional approval and decrying Musk’s accessing sensitive government-held information through his Trump-sanctioned inspections of federal government agencies and programs.

On Monday, two State Department employees who tried to gain access to the USAID offices in the building said they were turned away by security guards, who told them the offices were open but people could not go in. Later in the morning, uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers and security officers blocked the lobby of the USAID’s headquarters using yellow tape with the words “do not cross.”

The white USAID flag still flew on the empty plaza in front of the agency headquarters Monday morning. A State Department staffer stood in front, and he said he just wanted to pay his respects. Staffers said employees earlier Monday had been able to reach other parts of the agency to clear personal belongings from their offices.

The developments come after Musk, who’s leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with Trump’s agreement, said early Monday that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade U.S. aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”

“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”

“We’re shutting it down,” he said.

Source: Paradise Post