Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has announced taking over the beleaguered United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as its “Acting Director.”
USAID has earned a top spot as one of the worst agencies the Trump administration must address, angering Democrats and career bureaucrats.
Sec. Rubio made the announcement while on a diplomatic trip to El Salvador. The Central American nation has agreed to take the most notorious U.S.-born criminals and illegal immigrants from other countries. Rubio accused USAID of refusing to coordinate its activities with U.S. Embassies abroad or the State Department, claiming it was independent and its employees “answer to no one.”
“They are supposed to take direction from the State Department, policy direction. They do not. Not only do they not take policy direction, they’re completely uncooperative.”
Rubio added that the agency refuses to answer important questions about who receives funding, what the program does, and who its contractors are. Trump has accused USAID of massive fraud.
“They went totally crazy, what they were doing and the money they were giving to people that shouldn’t be getting it and to agencies and others that shouldn’t be getting it, it was a shame, so a tremendous fraud,” Trump said.
“We will no longer allow it,” Rubio asserted.
According to Rubio, USAID also carries programs that contradict U.S. foreign policy objectives in the host country and the region and designates itself as an international charitable organization. “I’m the Acting Director of USAID,” Rubio stated, adding that he delegated his functions to somebody else.
USAID’s woes started when Trump announced a funding cut for the agency that diverts taxpayers’ money to foreign governments for projects that are allegedly unaligned to the country’s national interests or foreign policy.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently disclosed some of USAID’s wasteful expenditures using our tax dollars.
“If you take a look at the waste and abuse that has run through USAID over the past several years, these are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on,” Sec. Leavitt stated.
“I don’t know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don’t want my dollars going toward this crap, and I know the American people don’t either, and that’s exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do.”
They included $1.5 million for DEI in Serbia, $70,000 for a DEI musical concert in Ireland, $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia, and $32,000 for a transgender book in Peru. Other suspicious expenditures include $50 million to buy condoms for Gaza.
Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency also recently saved $228,730,692 after canceling 7 DEI contracts associated with the agency. Two of USAID’s top officials were also sent on administrative leave after denying DOGE employees access to unclassified documents stored in a building that ironically requires security clearances.
Musk even threatened to involve the US Marshals Service if USAID continued to deny DOGE employees access to the unclassified documents. Shortly after the incident, acting DC attorney ED Martin wrote to Musk regarding allegations that DOGE employees have been threatened after their identities were disclosed to the media.
Meanwhile, Musk says he totally agrees with Trump that USAID should be shut down. However, Rubio stated that some USAID functions will continue but in full compliance with the U.S. foreign policy and national interests.
Nonetheless, Musk is not so subtle about putting USAID to sleep.
“Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk posted on X.
Trump also agrees that USAID’s shutdown “should have been done a long time ago.” Interestingly, the agency’s website was taken offline, and its servers were allegedly carted away pending further investigation.
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to protest the USAID funding cut. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said burying USAID was unconstitutional, while Jamie Raskin said Elon Musk should not be the “fourth branch of government.”
Somali-born Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who participated in USAID protests, said cutting funding would endanger “Americans around the world.”
