President Donald Trump’s administration continued on Monday to enact brisk change across the federal government, with Elon Musk saying his Department of Government Efficiency was “shutting down” the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Staff with the U.S. Agency for International Development were told overnight that the agency’s Washington headquarters will be closed Monday, according to an email obtained by ABC News from multiple sources.
“Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remote tomorrow, with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership,” the email said. “Further guidance will be forthcoming.”
Elon Musk said he was “in the process” of “shutting down” the U.S. Agency for International Development and claimed he had briefed President Donald Trump on his efforts, which he said Trump supports.
Speaking on an audio stream described as the first “Dogecast” podcast, Musk said USAID was “hopeless” based on his team’s findings.
Musk was joined by former DOGE chair Vivek Ramaswamy and Sens. Joni Ernst and Mike Lee on the Spaces event, which was hosted on Musk’s X social media platform and which drew around 90,000 listeners over the hour-long stream.
“The reason for that, as opposed to simply trying to do some minor house cleaning, is that as we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms,” Musk said
Musk said he has been briefing Trump on his efforts and that Trump supports “shutting it down.”
“None of this could be done without the full support of the president,” Musk said. “And with regard to the USAID stuff, I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down. I want to be clear. I actually checked with him a few times, ‘Are you sure?’ Like, yes, so we are shutting it down.”