[WaPo] Trump moves to wrest control of USAID as Musk says, ‘We’re shutting it down’

If you think moving something to State removes a "cloud of CIA involvement" I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

 

The richest man on earth is basically doing pro bono work for the world's lone superpower. What exactly is he getting out of this is a question most above a thermostat level IQ would ask.

 

People voted for lower grocery bills. Only far right wing extremists voted for this.

 

Rich people cant wotk for the executive branch? That seems to be a new standard. I'd quit my job and take a chainsaw to the federal government pro bono as well if i was offered the job, so i can totally relate to elon's motives

 

I disagree with your assessment, what was anyone talking about when this was going on?

Inflation, egg prices and illegal immigration(lol what a joke), Trump even said it himself thats why he got elected.

Or were they just lying?

 

Wrong. This wasnt some secret plan. Trump campaigned on hiring musk to do literally this and people said they wanted it. Also, reducing government spending does bring down grocery bills. Do you know what inflation is and how it works?

 

Why would you ever think he has your best interest at heart??? Do you really think corporations have people's best interest at heart??? Because thats what happens when you do things like this, less government oversight=more corporate control.

 

The MAGA(far right extremists) are not representative of the U.S. population. Neither liberals nor centrists, there are also a substantial amount of people who did not vote this election.

Also do you have any idea how TAX CUTS WORK. They add to the debt. Like you have no idea how marco or micro economics work.

 

How many CEO billionaires do volunteer work for the federal government on the side? FYI he's scheming to make himself even richer and doesn't care about wasteful spending.

 

I'm b****ing about the hypocrisy and concern trolling, thank you very much.

I have mixed feelings about what is happening.

Shrinking the federal government? Largely a good thing.

Doing it with a sledgehammer vs a razorblade? Less than ideal but I understand how we got here.

Letting Elon be involved at all? Stupid at best.

 

USAID fought apartheid. Musk is killing it

https://the.ink/p/usaid-fought-apartheid-musk-is-killing

USAID, it turns out, was important in bringing about the end of apartheid in South Africa.

So the Apartheid-ist is taking revenge

The insane amount of trust the anti-immagrant crowd is putting into an immigrant (because he is white from a place where white supremacy was institutionalize) is amazing

Rocket River

 

There's just no logical way that Elon is not doing this for vast personal gain. There's just something inherently sinister behind nearly everything he does and this is no different. He is figuratively an amalgam of every comic book super villian.

 

He about to rob us blind . . . .

Rocket River

 

Democrats push back after Musk says Trump agrees to close USAID and workers are kept out

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have delivered a strong rebuke against the Trump administration’s attempt to gut an agency that provides crucial aid overseas to fund education and fight starvation and disease, calling it illegal, vowing a court fight and lambasting billionaire Elon Musk for wielding so much power in Washington.

Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters, and officers blocked the lawmakers from entering the lobby Monday, after Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.

The fast-moving developments come after thousands of USAID employees already have been laid off and programs shut down in the two weeks since Trump became president. And they show the extraordinary power of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration. Musk announced closing of the agency early Monday, as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was out of the country on a trip to Central America.

Trump said shutting down USAID “should have been done a long time ago” and was asked whether he needs Congress to approve such a measure. The president said he did not think so, and accused the Biden administration of fraud, without giving any evidence and only promising a report later on.

“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 told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland called it an “illegal power grab” and said it was “a corrupt abuse of power that is going on.”

“It’s not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal,” the Maryland senator said.

The upheaval follows Trump ordering a freeze on foreign assistance, with widespread effects around the world. The moves by the U.S., the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, have upended decades of policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance in the center of efforts to build alliances and counter adversaries such as China and Russia.

U.S. and international companies have been forced to shut down tens of thousands of programs globally, leading to furloughs, layoffs and financial crises that have left many fearing the aid community has been too damaged by the freeze to resume work even if funding resumes. Other organizations have filed for bankruptcy after being told USAID would not be paying its invoices for projects that have already been approved and implemented around the world.

The Democratic lawmakers gathered outside the agency building for a rally and press conference and gave the most forceful pushback since Trump took office last month. They said they expected a flurry of lawsuits to be issued in the coming days against the Trump administration. They tried to walk into the offices to talk to staff about the changes but were denied entrance.

They said Trump lacks the constitutional authority to shut down USAID without congressional approval and decried Musk’s accessing sensitive government-held information through his Trump-sanctioned inspections of federal government agencies and programs.

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said USAID is not just about saving other countries from starvation and disease. “There is a reason that USAID is an arm of American foreign policy, and it is because we understand that a stable world means a stable America,” he said.

USAID staffers said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.” The agency’s website vanished Saturday without explanation.

On Monday, two State Department employees who tried to get into the USAID offices said they were turned away by security guards. Later, uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers and security officers blocked the lobby of the USAID’s headquarters using yellow tape with the words “do not cross.”

Musk, who’s leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with Trump’s agreement, said early Monday that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade U.S. aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”

“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,” Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”

“We’re shutting it down,” he said.

Musk, Trump and some Republican lawmakers have targeted the U.S. aid and development agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programs in some 120 countries, in increasingly strident terms, accusing it of promoting liberal causes.

Since Trump took office, appointees brought in from his first term such as Peter Marocco placed more than 50 senior officials on leave for investigation without public explanation, gutting the agency’s leadership. When the agency’s personnel chief announced that the allegations against them were groundless and tried to reinstate them, he was placed on leave as well.

It is widely known among current and former State Department and USAID employees that Marocco has been delegated authority over the agency by Rubio.

In his remarks Rubio stressed that some and perhaps many USAID programs would continue in the new configuration but that the switch was necessary because the agency had become unaccountable to the executive branch and Congress.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official said.

Musk’s DOGE earlier carried out a similar operation at the Treasury Department, gaining access to sensitive information including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official had resigned over Musk’s team accessing sensitive information.

USAID, meanwhile, has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the Trump administration in an escalating crackdown on the federal government and many of its programs. The U.S. spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share overall than some other countries.

The Trump administration freeze on foreign assistance has shut down much of USAID’s aid programs worldwide, including an HIV-AIDS program started by Republican President George W. Bush credited with saving more than 20 million lives in Africa and elsewhere. Aid contractors spoke of millions of dollars in medication and other goods now stuck in port that they were forbidden to deliver.


Other programs that would shut down provided education to schoolgirls in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and monitored an Ebola outbreak spreading in Uganda. A USAID-supported crisis monitoring program, which was credited for helping prevent repeats of the 1980s famine in Uganda that killed up to 1.2 million people, has gone offline.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-musk-usaid-c0c7799be0b2fa7cad4c806565985fe2

 

https://www.public.news/p/usaids-history-of-regime-change-destabilization

USAID has the distinction of being both a "deep state" agency, involved in covert actions aimed at destabilizing foreign governments, and one of the main US government agencies that comprise the foreign policy establishment, which many on both the Left and Right refer to as "The Blob," because it is comprised of amorphous shape-shifting and self-perpetuating imperialistic elite, like the famous gelatinous alien in the 1958 science fiction movie by the same name.

A few hours after USAID's website went dark, Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, wrote on X, "Most governments don't want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up. While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements. At best, maybe 10% of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda. Cutting this so-called aid isn't just beneficial for the United States; it's also a big win for the rest of the world."​

 

Do you guys just eat up anything Trump says without questioning it?