The Trump administration moved ahead Friday with the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) — despite legal challenges from department employees — by tearing down or covering up signage on the building’s headquarters.
Federal workers removed USAID lettering from the façade of the Ronald Reagan Building, even as the agency’s 10,000 or so employees and foreign aid programs remain in limbo.
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union repping USAID workers, sued President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other administration officials for recalling at least half of the agency’s more than 10,000-member workforce back to Washington, DC, from foreign posts.
Work crews at the beleaguered agency also blocked out signs at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, just a 10-minute walk from the White Huse, with duct tape and trash bags — and the building’s lease was terminated, according to sources who spoke with Politico.
A reduced workforce of roughly 600 are expected to continue distributing critical humanitarian assistance and public health funding for projects, one of the sources told the outlet, after a federal judge barred Trump from laying off more than 2,000 other employees.
“USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE,” President Trump posted on his Truth Social account Friday.
“THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!”
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk began the process of shuttering USAID last weekend with his team of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) engineers, who gained access to the agency’s HQ as part of their mission to review more than $40 billion in funding programs and trim wasteful spending.
The White House later put out a press release touting millions of dollars in “ridiculous” grant approvals for groups promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), LGBTQ and left-wing climate initiatives abroad, among others.
On Monday, all staff who work in Washington, DC, office were also ordered to stay at home and Rubio was announced the acting administrator of USAID.
“This is not about ending the programs that USAID does, per se,” he told reporters while on an official visit to El Salvador. “There are things that it does that are good, and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about.”
Rubio added that the agency had a “level of insubordination [that] makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid writ large should have.”
Foreign Assistance Director Peter Marocco is serving as deputy administrator of USAID to “review” and reorganize the agency into the State Department, the secretary of state said at the time.
USAID employees stationed abroad were also ordered to return to Washington — and thousands more workers from nongovernmental groups who rely on the agency’s funding were furloughed in the process.
Musk told listeners on an X Spaces event early Monday morning that President Trump gave him the greenlight to “shut it down.”
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm,” the richest man in the world said. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
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