USAID -staff was told to stay home after Elon Musk says Trump wants to close it

Employees of the US Agency for International Development were asked at night not to report working on Monday because its Washington, DC, headquarters would be closed, which burned fear that the already heaped agency would soon be closed too well.

The unusual personnel -covering Directive was sent out around 1 p.m. 12:45 AM, shortly after Elon Musk said he and President Trump agreed that the government’s leading humanitarian aid agency should be dissolved. Employees said the most important offices are rarely closed to them on weekdays.

Mr. Musk’s message, during a live event he hosted X, the social media platform he owns worsened the panic, which had already taken hold of the agency’s staff. Many have aligned with a shutdown, since representatives of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an ad hoc task force located on the white house plot, included the agency’s headquarters last week.

Two top security officials were put on administrative leave to try to deny this representative access to internal systems, including a safe space where classified materials were housed.

On Monday, hundreds of USAID employees were locked out of their E -mail accounts, and contractors as well as regular staff discovered that they could no longer access their official items, according to three employees with knowledge of the changes. In Washington, DC, a number of USAID employees were gathered outside the agency’s headquarters in the Ronald Reagan building, a few blocks away from the White House.

The E -Mail that directs employees not to show up to the agency’s headquarters was From Gavin Kliger And sent from an agency server, though Mr. Kliger is said to be an engineer in Mr. Musk’s Taskforce. Mr. Kiger did not respond to requests for comment.

Foreign aids distributed by the Agency, which supports healthcare, disaster relief, anti-poorness efforts and a number of other programs, make up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

Democratic legislators have claimed that any steps to settle USAD are illegal as Congress set up the Agency and continues to finance its operations.

“Any effort to merge or fold USAD to the State Department must be, and must, by law, be preview, discussed and approved by Congress,” the Democrats wrote in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee in a letter on Sunday to State Secretary Marco Rubio.

The senators pointed out that they had not received any advance announcement that Mr. Musk’s Taskforce would enter USAID or that they were trying to close the operations.

“It would be illegal. He cannot unilaterally close a federal agency. Another attack on the constitution, ”Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wrote on social media during the weekend’s reported plans to shut down USAID

Mr. Musk said overnight that he and Mr. Trump fully agreed that the agency should be closed.

“I actually checked with him a few times,” Mr. Musk. “I said, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes.’ So we shut it down. “

Shortly after his event was completed, Mr. Musk out to celebrate, sending, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID in Wood Chipper.”

Theodore Schleifer and Stephanie Nolen contributed with reporting.