USAID has been "fed into the wood chipper," just as Elon Musk promised.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that after a six-week review of the US Agency for International Development, the Trump administration was "officially cancelling 83%" of its programs. The remainder will be merged into the State Department "in consultation with Congress," Rubio said.
"The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States," Rubio wrote in a Monday morning post on X. "Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform."
USAID was one of the first agencies that President Donald Trump and the White House DOGE office targeted for cuts. DOGE has set out to slash government spending and gut the federal workforce.
As the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, USAID channeled nearly $32.5 billion in aid to countries such as Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia.
In an X post on February 3, Musk accused the agency of being a "criminal organization" and said he "spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper." Hours later, USAID workers were told to stay home from work, and within days, the agency announced that all direct hire personnel would be placed on leave globally, with a few exceptions.
By the end of February, USAID workers were told to clear out their desks as construction crews removed signage from the front of the agency's Washington, DC, headquarters.
Some constitutional law experts have said that shutting down USAID without congressional approval is illegal. And Asia-focused policy analysts previously told Business Insider that ending USAID would make China more powerful on the world stage.
