Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that he had taken over as acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, but that he planned to delegate its day-to-day business to another person whom he has not yet named.
Speaking to reporters in El Salvador, Mr. Rubio said that many of U.S.A.I.D.’s programs were worthwhile and would continue under the umbrella of the State Department. He added that the organization change was prompted by what he described as efforts by U.S.A.I.D. officials to obscure details about their work and cooperate with reasonable questions from the incoming Trump administration.
Mr. Rubio faulted U.S.A.I.D. employees for “deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest or taxpayer dollars.” He added, “That sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review.”
Mr. Rubio’s criticism of U.S.A.I.D. was still markedly softer than that of Elon Musk, who has accused the agency of doing “criminal” work, and said overnight that he and President Trump had decided it was time to dissolve the agency.
“We’re shutting it down,” Mr. Musk said during a live chat on X, his social media platform, early Monday, later adding in a post that “we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
U.S.A.I.D. employees were told overnight not to report to work on Monday because its Washington, D.C., headquarters would be closed, fueling fears that the already-hobbled agency would soon be shuttered for good.
The unusual staffwide directive was emailed out around 12:45 a.m. Eastern time, shortly after Mr. Musk’s announcement.
The notice exacerbated the panic that had already taken hold among agency employees, who have been bracing for a shutdown since representatives of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an ad hoc task force housed on the White House grounds, entered agency headquarters last week.
Two top security officials were put on administrative leave for attempting to refuse those representatives access to internal systems, including a secure space where classified materials were housed.
By Monday, hundreds of U.S.A.I.D. employees were locked out of their email accounts, and contractors as well as regular staff discovered they could no longer access their official records, according to three employees with knowledge of the changes. In Washington, D.C., a throng of U.S.A.I.D. employees gathered outside the agency’s headquarters at the Ronald Reagan Building, a few blocks away from the White House.
The email directing employees not to show up to the agency’s headquarters was from Gavin Kliger and sent from an agency server, although Mr. Kliger is said to be an engineer on Mr. Musk’s task force. Mr. Kliger did not respond to requests for comment.
Foreign assistance distributed by the agency, which supports health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and a range of other programs, makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.
Democratic lawmakers have argued that any moves to dismantle U.S.A.I.D. are illegal, as Congress created the agency and continues to fund its operations.
“Any effort to merge or fold USAID into the Department of State should be, and by law must be, previewed, discussed, and approved by Congress,” the Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote in a letter on Sunday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The senators pointed out that they had received no advance notice that Mr. Musk’s task force would be entering U.S.A.I.D., or that they were trying to shut down operations.
“That would be illegal. He cannot unilaterally close a federal agency. Another assault on the constitution,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote on social media over the weekend of the administration’s reported plans to shutter U.S.A.I.D.
Theodore Schleifer Erica L. Green and Stephanie Nolen contributed reporting.
