by WorldTribune Staff, February 5, 2025 Real World News
When some Democrat members of Congress reportedly tried to enter the USAID building in DC on Monday, they were shut out by security guards. “Is DOGE in there?” one of the lawmakers asked.
That would be a yes.
Over the last two weeks, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been dismantling the alleged foreign assistance agency known as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
As of Feb. 7, the Trump administration will have placed all USAID direct-hire employees in the U.S. and around the world on administrative leave, except for core leadership and “mission-critical” staff, according to an email sent to employees and a message posted on the agency’s website.
For those tasked with draining the swamp, taking aim at what critics say is a bloated agency of 10,000 employees with a budget of $40 billion is a good start.
Trump has said the agency was being run by “radical lunatics.”
The White House said in a statement Monday that for decades USAID has been “unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats.”
On Feb. 1, DOGE representatives sought access to sensitive systems at USAID’s building in Washington. Security officials at the agency initially resisted the DOGE team’s requests. The security officials, John Voorhees and his deputy, then were put on administrative leave for not complying, people familiar with the episode told the Wall Street Journal.
Musk said on social media: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. USAID is a criminal organization.”
The Journal noted that the cuts at USAID “came so fast that one dismissed employee had to be rehired to process other employees’ time sheets.”
Photos of projects that the U.S. Agency for International Development had funded around the world — girls playing soccer in South America, families getting food in eastern Africa — were gone, and in their place were strips of nails and empty picture frames against white walls.
By Monday, the Trump administration had closed the agency’s main building and taken down its website.
By Tuesday, all of USAID’s Washington, DC facilities were closed.
“USAID appears to be a test case for whether the Trump administration can effectively restructure a decades-old agency without meeting much legal or political resistance. So far, the answer seems to be yes,” the Journal’s report said.
USAID was established in 1961 to fund efforts to manage disease outbreaks and reduce child mortality, among other aid programs.
That goal, the Journal’s report noted, “has run headlong into Trump’s America First approach and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is seeking to trim billions of dollars in government spending.”
Trump has moved to place USAID into the State Department, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepping in as its acting administrator. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Sen. Jim Risch said he would support merging the two.
“You cannot wave away an agency that you don’t like or that you disagree with by executive order or by literally storming into the building,” Hawaii Democrat Sen. Brian Schatz.
Remember what the other Democrat asked: “Is DOGE in there?”
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Draining the swamp is fun: ‘We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper’ added by Editor Two on
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