OAN Staff James Meyers
7:33 AM – Monday, February 3, 2025
Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, according to a notice distributed to them, after Tesla founder Elon Musk announced that President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut down the agency.
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“At the direction of Agency leadership, the USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C. will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025,” an email sent to staff overnight said, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
The message said agency personnel who normally work at USAID’s headquarters “will work remotely tomorrow” except for people who perform essential on-site and building maintenance duties. “Further guidance will be forthcoming,” it said.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it,” 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.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is considering placing USAID under the State Department’s authority, according to officials who are involved. As of Monday, USAID’s website no longer loads on the web, resulting in a message that its server IP address cannot be found.
In 1961, USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy and has been the U.S. government’s main international humanitarian and development arm.
According to the most recent Congressional Research Service report, over 10,000 people work at the agency, with about two-thirds serving overseas. In recent years, USAID has “provided significant humanitarian, development, and economic support to Ukraine and countries affected by Russia’s war in Ukraine, as well as humanitarian assistance in Gaza and elsewhere,” the report says.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official told the Associated Press on Sunday.
“No one feels safe to go anywhere near the Ronald Reagan building,” one USAID official told NBC News. “We just had Elon Musk call us a criminal organization. Our security chief was escorted out. We know we are being surveilled by DOGE.”
In his announcement Monday that he was working to shut down USAID, Musk said that Trump supported the move.
“With regard to the USAID stuff, I went over [it] with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said of the president. “I actually checked with him a few times [and] said, ‘Are you sure?’” Musk added that Trump responded, “Yes.”
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