4 months ago
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(NewsNation) —President Trump’s new DOGE task force is causing large shakeups wrong the national authorities with the Elon Musk-run bureau having efficaciously unopen down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The aboriginal of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) continues to stay uncertain arsenic the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has taken power of the agency's money, locked retired workers, accessed classified accusation and removed leadership.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk who runs DOGE announced that President Donald Trump had agreed with him to unopen the bureau down.
“USAID is simply a transgression organization. Time for it to die,” Musk posted to the societal level X, which helium owns.
USAID is successful complaint of administering U.S. humanitarian assistance astir the world. The bureau employs astir 10,000 radical and has an yearly fund of astir $30 billion.
Staffers of the bureau were instructed to enactment retired of the agency’s Washington headquarters, and yellowish constabulary portion and officers blocked the agency’s lobby connected Monday.
USAID workers besides said much than 600 further employees had reported being locked retired of the assistance agency’s machine systems overnight. Those inactive successful the strategy received emails saying that “at the absorption of Agency leadership” the office gathering “will beryllium closed to Agency unit connected Monday, Feb. 3.”
Two apical information chiefs astatine USAID were enactment connected permission aft they refused to crook implicit classified worldly successful restricted areas to Musk’s authorities inspection teams, a existent and a erstwhile U.S. authoritative told The Associated Press connected Sunday.
The large determination has ruffled respective feathers with Democratic lawmakers calling the DOGE takeover a large nationalist information mistake. They stressed that assistance from the bureau is not foundation but planetary wealth that goes to countries that the U.S. considers allies. The assistance besides provides a bulwark successful defence of adversaries, they added.
But Republicans accidental lone astir 10 to 20% of each USAID money goes to enactment connected the ground, adding that overmuch of the fund is inflated.
Legal challenges to DOGE’s shutdown are apt arsenic galore Democrats contend that it's amerciable for the president oregon anyone else to unilaterally unopen down a authorities bureau without legislature approval.
Congress controls national wealth and budgets.
DOGE has go an x-factor successful the national authorities successful the abbreviated clip of its existence. The task unit besides obtained unrestricted entree to the Treasury Department's highly delicate outgo systems, which pays retired taxation refunds, authorities contracts and Social Security and Medicare benefits.
