Secretary of State Marco Rubio notified Congress on Monday that there is a potential reorganization of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), as the separate agency appears to have already been subsumed by the State Department.
President Trump appointed Rubio as the acting administrator for USAID on Monday, and the secretary said in a statement that he notified Congress that a review of the agency’s foreign assistance activity is underway “with an eye towards potential reorganization.”
The announcement came as Rubio is on diplomatic travel in Central America.
“This is not about ending the programs that USAID does per se,” Rubio told reporters.
“There are things that it does that are good and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about. It’s about the way it operates as an entity. And they are supposed to take direction from the State Department, policy direction. They do not.”
Democrats have raised alarm and warned of legal challenges to Trump’s pursuit of either shutting down USAID or merging it with the State Department, saying the intention of an independent aid agency is “to ensure that we can deploy development expertise and U.S. foreign assistance quickly, particularly in times of crisis, to meet our national security goals.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) announced he would impose a blanket hold on all of Trump’s State Department nominees until efforts to shutter USAID are reversed.
Rubio’s notification to Congress is another layer of fast-moving actions by the Trump administration that have essentially halted the work of the independent agency. Over the past two weeks, Trump issued an initial, blanket freeze on American foreign assistance; gave stop-work orders to NGOs receiving funds; laid off or furloughed senior USAID staff; and shut down the agency’s separate website, moving information to the State Department’s website.
USAID offices were closed on Monday and staff were told to telework. Tech billionaire and close Trump ally Elon Musk claimed on Monday that the president was in agreement to shut down the agency and criticized it as a “criminal organization.”
Two senior security USAID chiefs were reportedly put on leave after blocking access to classified material that Musk and individuals associated with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) were trying to access, The Associated Press reported.
Musk’s team later gained access to the information. Kate Miller, who serves on an advisory board for DOGE, said in a post on Musk’s social media site X that “No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”
