Musk is attempting to take over the federal budget

The USAID Web Page: Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid in the Presence of President Trump’s Disaster Relief and Biden’s Response

The deletion of the website and social media accounts alongside significant layoffs and the near-total suspension of work is an effort to dismantle USAID entirely, Jeremy Konyndyk told NPR. Konyndyk led disaster relief under Obama and the COVID and mpox responses under Biden at USAID. He’s currently president of the aid group Refugees International.

“It needs to die,” he wrote. The two security officials at the US Agency for International Development refused to grant access to employees of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Saturday, and the Trump Administration subsequently put them on leave.

Online information about USAID, which is responsible for funding aid projects around the world and managed more than $40 billion in federal spending in 2023, is available at a new page that is part of the State Department’s website. That page was captured for the first time on Jan. 27, according to the Internet Archive.

In this section there are seven items, a drastic reduction of the reports and information on the original website which covered the wide range of the agency’s portfolio.

The first item that appears on the State web page is a press release: “Implementing the President’s Executive Order on Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid.”

President Trump temporarily halted foreign assistance in that order on the first day of his presidency, writing that foreign aid serves to “destabilize world peace.”

The dissolution would not end with the destruction of USAID’s life-saving work. The administration has developed a method for eviscerating other agencies at USAID.

“They just took everything down because they couldn’t announce the plan, and they didn’t give a reason for it,” Konyndyk said. He said that they don’t have to “defend what they’re doing” in the public announcements because they are behind the scenes.

USAID and Its Citizens: Why the shutdown of the Web will kill us, and why it will be destroyed in the U.S.

The consequences of a diminished or erased USAID would be dire, Konyndyk said, noting that one key component of its programs is keeping outbreaks and epidemics from reaching U.S. shores.

The web shutdown comes in the wake of both the stop work order and the furloughing or laying off of hundreds of USAID employees. In his first two weeks in office, the Trump administration placed senior leadership at USAID on leave and laid off or furloughed more than 400 contractors in the agency’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and also laid off hundreds more in its Global Health Bureau.

Democrats in Congress are upset with these actions. Schumer said on Bluesky Friday that the dissolution of the US Agency for International Development would be against national interests.

The question of the legality of any attempt to change the status of USAID is connected to its origins. The agency was created in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order after Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act, which mandated the creation of an independent agency to focus on development separate from politics and the military. The agency was formally established by Congress as an independent agency in 1998.

That means “it cannot just be undone, at this point, by an executive order,” Konyndyk said. “To actually disestablish the agency and dissolve it into the State Department will take an act of Congress.”

He said there are things that USAID does “that we should continue to do and we will continue to do. Everything they do needs to be in line with the national interest of the United States.

While he said he is acting director of the international organization, he didn’t identify the person he was giving authority to.

Why the Trump Administration Can’t Stop the FEMA: Elon Musk’s Business Interests Are at the Center of the Trump-Russia Upheaval

Billions of dollars in federal humanitarian assistance around the world are managed by the agency. But its work was thrown into upheaval in the last week, as the Trump administration halted nearly all its programs and took down its website.

A Democratic senator said the agency can’t be changed even though it was created through federal statute.

The agency was accused of not cooperating with requests for information on how it spent taxpayer dollars.

The Office of Personnel Management locked civil servants out of their computer system in order to get their personal data back, according to a report. Unnamed agency officials linked the action to Musk’s aides.

The senator said Musk’s business interests were at the center of the changes. “Let’s not pull any punches about why this is happening,” Murphy says. “Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China, and China is cheering at this action today. The billionaire class is currently attempting to take over our government and it is done based on self-interest. Murphy adds that Musk’s actions represent a “smoke screen” to “create the illusion that they’re saving money” to pass a major corporate tax cut.

In the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have reportedly gained access to core parts of the American government’s payment systems, including systems that affect Social Security and Medicare benefits — as federal workers and government officials struggle to respond.

X-ray Analyses of Musk’s Access to Treasury Pays: The Verge’s Edge on Trump’s Government Takeover

is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She worked at CNBC for 5 years, writing about tech policy.

The OPM spoke to The Verge but didn’t mention the report was not accurate. Representatives for the US Digital Service, the Treasury Department, and the US Agency for International Development did not answer questions about the recent reports.

Several of the engineers aiding Musk’s government takeover are just barely out of college, according to reports.

Trump has made few comments on Musk’s actions. Speaking with reporters on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews on Sunday, Fox News reports, the president said Musk was “doing a good job,” though he added that, “sometimes we won’t agree with it and will not go where he wants to go, but I think he’s doing a great job. He is a smart guy who wants to cut the budget of the federal government.

Musk has vested interests in various government policies and dislikes other private companies, which is why he is trying to get an unprecedented access to government systems. Over the weekend, X expanded its antitrust lawsuit over an advertiser boycott to include Lego, Nestlé, and Pinterest.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demanded answers from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Musk’s reported access to the Treasury payments system. DC Media Group reports a protest on Sunday where protesters attempted to block access to the OPM.

Even so, some anonymous Reddit users who identified themselves as government employees said they planned to keep plugging away more or less as usual. “I’m going to continue to do my job,” one user writes in a thread about how to handle the situation. “Use your headphones and remain unbothered,” says another. There are more offers that say head down eyes and ears open.