Trump Wants to Shut Down USAID, Elon Musk Says

Elon Musk said early Monday that President Trump believes the U.S. Agency for International Development should be shut down, adding to the questions over the administration’s plans for the U.S. government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance.

Mr. Trump has stopped short of saying the agency should be dissolved. Mr. Musk said during an event broadcast on X, his social media platform, that he had discussed U.S.A.I.D. in detail with the president who agreed “that we should shut it down.”

“I want to be clear,” Mr. Musk added. “I actually checked with him a few times. I said, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes.’ So we’re shutting it down.”

In comments to reporters on Sunday, Mr. Trump said that he believes the agency is run by “radical lunatics.”

“We’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision,” he said.

The Trump administration’s moves to slash international aid programs that operate with grant money from U.S. agencies have thrown humanitarian groups around the world into crisis. U.S.A.I.D. spent about $38.1 billion on health services, disaster relief, anti-poverty efforts and other programs in fiscal year 2023. That was less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

In Washington, there has been talk among current and former U.S.A.I.D. employees and lawmakers that the agency, which is funded by Congress, could be subsumed within the State Department in a significantly reduced form. The State Department and U.S.A.I.D. did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

Trump administration appointees have already suspended dozens of senior U.S.A.I.D. officials and issued stop-work orders that led to the firings of hundreds of contractors. On Saturday, the agency’s two top security officials were put on administrative leave after they refused to allow representatives of Mr. Musk’s task force access to internal systems, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.

Mr. Musk’s task force, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is not a department. But President Trump has given him wide latitude to find ways to slash government spending.

Mr. Musk is not a neutral player on the subject of U.S.A.I.D. He is a harsh critic who has posted a series of messages in recent days that promoted conspiracy theories about it. He labeled it “a criminal organization” in a post on Sunday, without offering evidence, and added: “Time for it to die.”