Workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were ordered to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, according to a notice distributed to them, after billionaire Elon Musk announced that President Donald Trump had agreed to close the agency.
USAID workers said more than 600 employees reported that their computer systems had been locked overnight. Those who were still logged in received emails saying that “at the direction of agency leadership,” the headquarters building “will be closed to agency personnel on Monday, February 3.”
The events came after Musk, who is leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with the Republican president’s approval, said early Monday that he had spoken to Trump about the six-decade-old U.S. aid and development agency and that “he agreed that it should be closed.”
“It’s become clear that this is not an apple with a worm in it. What we have is just a ball of worms. You really have to eliminate the whole thing completely. It can’t be fixed. We’re closing it down,” Musk said in a live session on X-Space early Monday.
Musk, Trump and some Republican lawmakers have been attacking the U.S. aid and development agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programs in about 120 countries, using increasingly harsh language, accusing it of promoting liberal causes.
Over the weekend, the Trump administration placed two senior security officials at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified materials in restricted areas to Musk’s government inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official told The Associated Press.
