Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), a former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) employee, was among a chorus of Democrats on Monday blasting the turmoil surrounding the agency.
“You have mysterious people within this new administration sending out emails across the entirety of USAID telling them not to show up,” Kim said in a clip posted on the social platform X Monday by C-SPAN.
“I talked to … I talked to the security guard [just] in there,” he added, referring to the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “He said he has been given specific orders to prevent employees of USAID from entering the building today. And I just find that to be [absolutely] ridiculous. … This is no way to govern, this is no way to treat public servants and this is no way for us to conduct our foreign policy as a country.”
USAID has been targeted by tech billionaire Elon Musk as part of efforts to cut costs and gut parts of the federal government seen as opposing Trump’s “America First” agenda.
The agency’s website had been taken offline, hundreds of contractors were laid off and employees were barred from their accounts without a warning.
That followed President Trump freezing foreign assistance upon returning to the White House last month.
Musk on Monday said that Trump had “agreed” to shut down USAID, which has administered billions of dollars of humanitarian and development assistance worldwide for decades.
“None of this could be done without the full support of the President, you know. And with regard to the USAID stuff, I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” the tech billionaire said during an X Spaces discussion.
“And I actually checked with him a few times. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ He’s like, ‘Yes,’” Musk added. “So we’re shutting it down.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is being put in charge of USAID amid uncertainty over its future.
“There are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy,” Rubio told reporters in El Salvador on Monday.
The Hill has reached out to the White House and USAID for comment.
