USAID Merger with State Department: Trump Administration's Plan and Reactions

The Trump administration intends to merge the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) with the US Department of State after days of upheaval.

Plans involved a significant reduction in USAID’s funding and the workforce, CBS News, BBC’s US partner, reports, but it would continue its function as an aid agency.

The reported plan portends even more significant disruption for USAID, whose employees were told to stay home on Monday as Elon Musk claimed the agency would be shut down.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters he would assume the role of the agency’s acting director.

Rubio said the agency needed to better align with the Trump administration’s goals, describing it as “a completely unresponsive agency”.

“It’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so,” he said. “So the functions of USAID, there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue. They’re going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy.”

It’s not clear how the administration plans to implement such a change.

The announcement follows comments from Musk, who is not a government official, on Monday that the administration planned to shut the agency down. Over the weekend, two top security officials were placed on leave and the agency’s website went dark.

But President Trump was less definitive about shuttering the agency, telling reporters on Sunday night that USAID was run by “a bunch of radical lunatics”.

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

What is USAID and why is Trump reportedly poised to close it?

Over the last week, Musk railed against USAID as he sought to assert control over the agency. Musk is leading the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), a team that is not an official government but that Trump has given broad leeway to slash government spending.

Musk does not have the authority to shut down a government department and the legality of such a move is in question.

On X, the social media platform that he owns, he called it “evil” and a “criminal organisation”. In a live stream on X early Monday, he told followers, “You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. … We’re shutting it down.”

Staffers who work at the agency’s Washington DC headquarters were told to stay home on Monday. Hundreds of employees were also locked out of their email, according to an internal email obtained by the BBC.

An effort could be underway to bring USAID, which was established by an act of the US Congress, more directly under the control of Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

Republican congressman Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told “Face the Nation” that USAID is “likely going to be rolled more closely under Secretary Rubio.”