The website of the US Agency for International Development went offline without explanation Saturday (1 February) as thousands of furloughs, layoffs and programme shutdowns continued in President Donald Trump's freeze on US-funded foreign aid and development worldwide.
Congressional Democrats battled the Trump administration increasingly openly, expressing concern that Trump may be headed toward ending USAID as an independent agency and absorbing it into the State Department.
Democrats say Trump has no legal authority to eliminate a congressionally funded independent agency, and that the work of USAID is vital to national security.
Trump and congressional Republicans say much of foreign aid and development programmes are wasteful. They single out programmes they say advance liberal social agendas.
The fear of even tougher administration action against USAID comes two weeks into the administration's shutdown of billions of dollars of the United States' humanitarian, development and security assistance.
The US is the world's largest donor of humanitarian aid by far. It spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share overall than some other countries.
Administration officials had no comment Saturday when asked about concerns expressed by lawmakers and others that Trump may be planning to end USAID's separate status.
President John F Kennedy created the organization at the height of the Cold War to counter Soviet influence. USAID today is at the centre of US challenges to the growing influence of China, which has a successful "Belt and Road" foreign aid programme of its own.
Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961, and Kennedy signed that law and an executive order establishing USAID as an independent agency.
USAID staffers spent Friday and Saturday in chat groups monitoring its fate, giving updates on whether the agency's flag and signs were still up outside agency headquarters in Washington. As of late Saturday afternoon, they were.
In a post on X, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said presidents cannot eliminate congressionally appropriated federal agencies by executive order, and said Trump was poised to "double down on a constitutional crisis."
"That's what a despot — who wants to steal the taxpayers' money to enrich his billionaire cabal — does," Murphy said.
Billionaire Elon Musk, advising Trump in a campaign to whittle down the federal government in the name of efficiency, endorsed posts on his X site calling for dissolving USAID.
"Live by executive order, die by executive order," Musk tweeted in reference to USAID.
Trump placed an unprecedented 90-day freeze on foreign assistance on his first day in office Jan. 20. The order, a tougher-than-expected interpretation of Trump's freeze order on Jan. 24 drafted by Peter Marocco, a returning political appointee from Trump's first term, shut down thousands of programmes around the world and forced the furloughs or layoffs of many thousands.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since moved to keep more kinds of strictly life-saving emergency programmes going during the freeze. Aid groups say confusion surrounding what programmes are still allowed to operate is contributing to paralysis in global aid organizations.
Rubio, in his first public comments on the matter, said Thursday that USAID's programmes were being reviewed to eliminate any that are not in the US national interest, but he said nothing about eliminating it as an agency.
The shutdown of US-funded programmes during the 90-day review meant the US was "getting a lot more cooperation" from recipients of humanitarian, development and security assistance, Rubio said.
Republicans and Democrats long have fought over the agency, arguing whether humanitarian and development aid protects the US by helping stabilize partner countries and economies or is a waste of money. Republicans typically push to give State more control of USAID's policy and funds. Democrats typically build USAID autonomy and authority.
A version of that battle played out in Trump's first term, when Trump tried to cut the budget for foreign operations by a third.
When Congress refused, the Trump administration used freezes and other tactics to cut the flow of funds already appropriated by Congress for foreign programmes. The General Accounting Office later ruled that it violated a law known as the Impoundment Control Act.
