Washington
AP
—
The website of the US Agency for International Development went offline without explanation Saturday as thousands of furloughs, layoffs and program shutdowns continued amid President Donald Trump’s freeze on US-funded foreign aid and development worldwide.
Congressional Democrats have battled the Trump administration increasingly openly, expressing concern that Trump may be headed toward ending USAID as an independent agency and absorbing it into the State Department. Democrats say Trump has no legal authority to eliminate a congressionally funded independent agency, and that the work of USAID is vital to national security.
Trump and congressional Republicans say much of foreign aid and development programs are wasteful. They single out programs they say advance liberal social agendas.
The fear of even tougher administration action against USAID comes two weeks into the administration’s shutdown of billions of dollars of the United States’ humanitarian, development and security assistance.
The US is the world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid by far. It spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share overall than some other countries.
Administration officials had no comment Saturday when asked about concerns expressed by lawmakers and others that Trump may be planning to end USAID as an independent agency.
President John F. Kennedy created USAID at the height of the Cold War to counter Soviet influence. Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961, and Kennedy signed that law and an executive order establishing USAID as an independent agency. USAID today is at the center of US challenges to the growing influence of China, which has a successful “Belt and Road” foreign aid program of its own.
USAID staffers spent Friday and Saturday in group chats monitoring the fate of their agency, giving updates on whether the USAID flag and signs were still up outside headquarters in Washington. As of late Saturday afternoon, they were.
In a Friday post on X, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said presidents cannot eliminate congressionally appropriated federal agencies by executive order, and said Trump was poised to “double down on a constitutional crisis.”
“That’s what a despot — who wants to steal the taxpayers’ money to enrich his billionaire cabal — does,” Murphy said.
Billionaire Elon Musk, advising Trump in a campaign to whittle down the federal government in the name of efficiency, endorsed posts on his X site calling for dissolving USAID.
“Live by executive order, die by executive order,” Musk posted Saturday in reference to USAID.
Trump placed an unprecedented 90-day freeze on foreign assistance on his first day in office January 20. Days later, the State Department froze nearly all foreign assistance worldwide, shutting down thousands of programs around the world and forcing the furloughs or layoffs of many thousands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since moved to keep more kinds of strictly life-saving emergency programs going during the freeze. Aid groups say confusion surrounding what programs are still allowed to operate is contributing to paralysis in global aid organizations.
Rubio said Thursday, in his first public comments on the matter, that USAID’s programs were being reviewed to eliminate any that are not in the national interest, but he said nothing about eliminating USAID as an agency.
The shutdown of US-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the US was “getting a lot more cooperation” from recipients of humanitarian, development and security assistance, Rubio said.
Republicans and Democrats have fought over the agency for years, arguing whether humanitarian and development aid protects the US by helping stabilize partner countries and economies, or whether it is a waste of money. Republicans typically push to give the State Department more control of USAID’s policy and funds, while Democrats typically build USAID autonomy and authority.
A version of that legal battle played out in Trump’s first term, when the president tried to cut the budget for foreign operations by a third.
When Congress refused, the Trump administration used freezes and other tactics to cut the flow of funds already appropriated by Congress for foreign programs. The General Accounting Office later ruled that it violated a law known as the Impoundment Control Act.