The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is getting the chop, according to Elon Musk.
Musk’s highly anticipated DOGE Spaces debut on X put the rumors to rest after a day of criticism lobbed at the agency, including reports that two top security officials were removed Saturday after refusing to allow DOGE representatives into restricted spaces.
Musk confirmed the administration was in the process of shutting USAID down. “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. 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,” he said. “USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple... that is why it’s gotta go. It’s beyond repair.”
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Musk had declared earlier on Sunday, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” He continued to take aim at the agency, which has an annual budget of more than $50 billion, with several more posts on his social media platform.
An email sent to staff told them not to come into the office on Monday morning except those with essential on-site duties.
Trump appeared to agree with the plan to kill off the department, telling reporters Sunday evening that the agency had “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out... and then we’ll make a decision (on its future).”
With his son, X, overheard in the background at around midnight or 9 p.m. as he was on the West Coast, Musk’s Spaces chat appeared more of an informal conspiracy-laden talk rather than a discussion of real national issues.
“It’s obviously a tremendous honor to be working on DOGE and for this to be something that President Trump recognizes as important enough to include in his inauguration speech,” Musk began.
“Meaning that President Trump takes the group of government efficiency very seriously. Obviously although it is a humorous name, ironically I think DOGE will have a very serious and significant impact on government waste and foreign abuse,” he continued.
Musk noted “tremendous progress” at the department already with a “rough estimate of a few billion dollars in savings” but claimed “we still need to do a lot better than thus far.”
The tech giant invited the MAGA senator from Iowa, Joni Ernst, into the chat alongside his former DOGE colleague Vivek Ramaswamy, who quit last month hinting at a run for governor of Ohio; reports suggested the pair had clashed, leading to Ramaswamy’s ouster.
“It was cool to lay the foundation for the first couple of months. You’ve been kicking ass the last couple of weeks,” Ramaswamy told Musk.
Ernst brought along some “powerful anecdotes” of apparent abuses of spending at the request of Musk, including “sending kitties to spas to find out whether they produce less furballs” and putting “shrimp on a treadmill to see how fast they run.”
Biologist Lou Burnett defended his experimentation of shrimp on a treadmill in 2011 after then-Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a report on wasteful government spending. He told NPR at the time that the treadmills were only a small part of a larger experiment which showed how shrimp respond to changes in water quality. He added the report was misleading “and it suggests that much money was spent on seeing how long a shrimp can run on a treadmill, which was totally out of context.”
Ernst then claimed to have been threatened by USAID for asking about taxpayer-funded humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. It comes at the same time the Trump administration is squeezing the agency to convert to Trump’s America First agenda.
