Usaid Building Closed As Agency’s Future In Doubt

Staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development were told the agency’s main building in Washington was closed on Monday and they should work from home.

The email came early Monday morning, soon after tech mogul and President Donald Trump ally Elon Musk said he had spoken to the president, who agreed to close down the agency.

“With regard to the USAID stuff, I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in a live X Spaces early Monday morning. Trump has tasked Musk with leading the Department of Government Efficiency group, which is exploring where cuts can be made in the executive branch.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk followed up his comments a few hours later with a post on X suggesting that the closure was already well underway.

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk wrote.

USAID handles billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, which is also largely frozen at the moment following a separate executive order by the president.

Trump told reporters Sunday evening that the agency was run by “radical left lunatics” which the administration was kicking out “and then we’ll make a decision.”

Any major structural reform to USAID is almost certain to need congressional approval.

Several USAID employees said that the person who sent the email telling people to stay home is a member of Musk’s DOGE. The person did not respond to a request for comment.

Phelim Kine, Nahal Toosi, Daniel Lippman and Robbie Gramer contributed reporting