In an unprecedented flexing of the power of the executive branch, unelected billionaire Elon Musk is shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
On Monday morning, employees for USAID got an email telling them to stay out of their headquarters. The email was signed by Gavin Kliger, one of the young engineers working with Musk who helped him gain control of the Office of Personnel Management last week.
In a late-night X Space over the weekend, Musk said that he and his DOGE cronies had gotten into USAID and found it wanting. “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. “If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing. That’s why it’s got to go. It’s beyond repair.”
USAID is a criminal organization.
Time for it to die. https://t.co/sWYy6fyt1k
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
In America, Congress is supposed to control the purse strings, set the budget, and fund or defund government agencies. It’s their job to oversee departments like USAID and shut them down. Ending a six-decade-old government agency that spends billions of dollars around the world is under their jurisdiction. This move by Musk on behalf of the executive branch is likely illegal and unconstitutional.
It also seems like that doesn’t matter and no one will be stopping it. “Hearing that Trump is about to double down on the constitutional crisis,” Chris Murphy, a Democratic Senator from Connecticut, said in a post on the Musk-owned website X. “A President cannot eliminate an appropriated federal agency by executive order. That’s what a despot – who wants to steal the taxpayers money to enrich his billionaire cabal – does. Watch USAID tonight.”
Hearing that Trump is about to double down on the constitutional crisis. A President cannot eliminate an appropriated federal agency by executive order. That’s what a despot – who wants to steal the taxpayers money to enrich his billionaire cabal – does.
Watch USAID tonight.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 31, 2025
Despite Murphy’s strongly worded post, USAID is on the chopping block.
The promised shutdown of USAID was cheered by Russian politician and former president Dmitry Medvedev. “Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat. Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole,” he said in a post on X.
USAID is not a benevolent force. It’s a tool of American soft power. Global empires like America spend billions of dollars across the planet to influence other countries. China does a similar thing through its Belt and Road Initiative.
The end of USAID would mean the collapse of American soft power abroad and a decline in American influence. USAID did not always spend money well. It spent billions attempting to reshape Afghanistan in its own image and lost much of it to corruption and foolish nation-building schemes. It paid poppy farmers to grow soybeans instead of heroin-producing plants, paid for security forces who only existed on paper, and spent billions of dollars on roads that did not materialize.
But USAID also did a lot of good in the world. It helped prevent and treat the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa, built bathrooms in Ghana, and sent disaster relief teams to help after hurricanes devastated the Caribbean. This was about helping people, but on a more base level, it was about building the American brand abroad. It was about making people in other countries like America. People like it when you give them money and when you try to help them.
But Trump and Musk do not understand soft power and do not care about America’s reputation abroad. The only power they understand is the cold, hard, and brutal kind. For them, the world belongs to those able to seize territory and keep it. It’s the kind of power that eyes Greenland and the Panama Canal with an expansionist eye, punishes long-time allies with regressive tariffs, and knows that laws are meant for little people with no power of their own.
