The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been immobilized in recent days as part of the Trump administration’s tumultuous effort to remake the federal government. 

The Trump administration on Monday said it is merging USAID with the State Department, a move that came amid days of turmoil at the agency and statements by tech billionaire and close presidential advisor Elon Musk that the agency was being shut down completely. 

Employees have been told to stay out of USAID’s headquarters in Washington, career staffers have been put on leave, contractors have been laid off, and international staffers across the globe have been ordered to return home. 

USAID is the U.S. government’s lead humanitarian and development agency, providing assistance to countries worldwide to help address poverty, disease, and other humanitarian crises as well as to promote democracy and other U.S. interests. 

Critics of the agency including Musk and President Donald Trump argue that it is rife with fraud and waste and that its expenditures don’t align with U.S. interests. But experts warn that the administration is moving to dismantle an agency that provides essential aid to millions across the globe and serves as a critical source of U.S. soft power, potentially opening the door for adversaries such as China and Russia to gain increased influence as Washington pulls back from the world.

Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on with the agency, why Trump and Musk want to dismantle it, and what’s at stake. 

What’s going on at USAID? 

A flurry of recent moves has sparked alarm and confusion at USAID, leaving the agency in limbo and with an uncertain future. 

It all began with Trump signing an executive order on Inauguration Day freezing all U.S. foreign assistance for 90 days pending review. Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed that with a cable detailing how that order should be carried out, freezing nearly all foreign assistance, with a few carveouts for emergency food programs and military aid to Egypt and Israel. 

As the primary agency responsible for providing such assistance, USAID soon came into the administration’s crosshairs. The USAID website went dark on Saturday, the Trump administration closed the agency’s headquarters on Monday, and staffers were told to work from home. Close to 100 career USAID staffers have been placed on leave, and hundreds have reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems. 

Two top security officials at USAID were also placed on administrative leave after attempting to prevent Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) representatives from gaining access to restricted parts of the agency. 

USAID “has long strayed from its original mission of responsibly advancing American interests abroad, and it is now abundantly clear that significant portions of USAID funding are not aligned with the core national interests of the United States,” the State Department said in a post on X on Monday. 

Going forward, Trump has tapped U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the agency’s acting administrator, the statement said. Rubio’s messaging on the agency hasn’t been as absolute as Musk’s, and he’s said that his agenda is not “about ending the programs that USAID does, per se.” 

“There are things that USAID, that we do through USAID, that we should continue to do, and we will continue to do,” the top U.S. diplomat told reporters in El Salvador.

In a letter to Congress, Rubio said that he had tapped Trump ally Peter Marocco to engage in a “review and potential reorganization of USAID’s activities.” That could entail a “suspension or elimination of programs, projects or activities; closing or suspending missions or post; closing, reorganizing, downsizing, or renaming establishments, organizations, bureaus, centers, or offices; reducing the size of the workforce at such entities and contracting out or privatizing functions or activities performed by federal employees,” he wrote. 

However, on Tuesday, a notice was posted on the USAID website stating that as of 11:59 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.” Direct hires have 30 days to return home, and contracts deemed nonessential will be terminated, the notice added. 

As of now, USAID has effectively been shuttered, in practice if not officially. 

“What we’ve seen in the last two weeks is a stoppage of almost all foreign aid and U.S. implementing organizations having to send their staff home,” said George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development. “This goes on for a few more weeks and a number of them are going to go belly up.” 

Why do Trump and Musk want to dismantle USAID? 

Critics say that the agency is wasteful and that its spending doesn’t align with U.S. interests. As head of DOGE—which is not an official government agency—Musk has been one of USAID’s sharpest opponents. He has baselessly decried USAID as a “criminal” organization and said it should “die.” 

U.S. foreign aid traditionally garners bipartisan support. Washington has been the world’s biggest foreign aid donor, even as that money represents a relatively tiny fraction of U.S. spending. Foreign assistance—which includes development support, humanitarian assistance, and security funding—accounts for just 1 percent of the entire U.S. federal budget. Around 60 percent of that money is administered by USAID.

USAID was initially established via an executive order signed by then-President John F. Kennedy in 1961 in concert with the Foreign Assistance Act of the same year. Legislation in 1998, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, established USAID as its own agency—separate from the State Department.

But the agency has been a target of conservative critics for years. Lawmakers such as GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have long characterized USAID, and foreign aid more generally, as wasteful and corrupt. “Abolish USAID and all foreign aid,” Paul said in a recent post on X. 

A 2019 review by the USAID inspector general pointed to significant issues with programs funded by the agency falling short of expectations. Along these lines, there are also proponents of U.S. foreign aid, such as Walter Kerr, the executive director of Unlock Aid, who have criticized USAID’s effectiveness and called for reform. But Kerr said the “first priority” at the moment should be “to make sure that we can get life-saving assistance flowing again.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, has gone beyond debating the merits of foreign aid or critiquing the allocation of USAID’s budget. The billionaire has made a series of unfounded and conspiratorial statements about the agency in recent days, including an unsubstantiated claim that USAID “funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people.”

Musk has also stated that USAID is a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” Similarly, Trump on Sunday said that USAID was being run by “radical lunatics.” 

The future of USAID was also a key focus of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative policy blueprint. Despite Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the initiative on the campaign trail, he has appeared to draw from the plan after taking office. 

In a Project 2025 chapter focused on the agency, former USAID Deputy Administrator Max Primorac argued that the Biden administration had “deformed the agency.” Primorac advocated for further tying U.S. foreign aid to U.S. foreign-policy aims, writing that the agency must focus on “countering China’s development challenge” and turn away from the Biden administration’s “radical climate policy.” 

“The next conservative Administration should scale back USAID’s global footprint by, at a minimum, returning to the agency’s 2019 pre–COVID-19 pandemic budget level,” the chapter wrote. “It should deradicalize USAID’s programs and structures and build on the conservative reforms instituted by the Trump Administration.” 

Primorac did not respond to Foreign Policy’s request for comment. 

What’s at stake here? 

The Trump administration’s moves against the agency have alarmed former USAID officials and experts, who warn that the president is gutting an agency that provides essential aid to millions worldwide and advances U.S. foreign-policy interests. 

If the effort to dismantle USAID continues in the way it appears to be trending, “we would be looking at the removal of a huge and important tool of American global statecraft,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former top USAID official. “This is a key way that the United States does good in the world.”

“The U.S. will lose influence and a lot of people will suffer” if USAID disappears, Konyndyk said, and the country will “look like a ridiculous, ungenerous, and unreliable global actor.” Konyndyk warned that China and Russia will seek to “capitalize on that for their own influence.”

Moscow already appears to be paying close attention. Musk’s efforts against USAID were praised by Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Monday. “Smart move by @elonmusk, trying to plug USAID’s Deep Throat. Let’s hope notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow him whole,” Medvedev said in a post on X.

“Countries are asking whether or not we’re a dependable ally,” Ingram said. “The Chinese don’t do this; the Chinese carry through with their commitments.” 

The apparent merger of USAID with the State Department also raises legal questions. Since USAID was established via an act of Congress, Democrats and legal experts say the administration is acting illegally, with Democrats accusing the White House of launching the country into a constitutional crisis. 

“Trump/Musk cannot unilaterally close USAID or transfer under State,” Sen. Andy Kim posted on X. “Any action to shut USAID down would need to go through Congress, and we will fight this.” 

Even some Republicans have spoken out in support of USAID in the midst of the Trump administration’s efforts against the agency. GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Monday told reporters that he has “felt for a long time that USAID is our way to combat the Belt and Road Initiative, which is China’s effort to really gain influence around the world, including Africa and South America in the Western Hemisphere.”

But Wicker also said he was open to seeing an audit of the agency to shed light on the “mismanagement” pointed to by Rubio. 

“Many people around the world are dependent on U.S. foreign aid, and that means if people can’t access emergency medicines or food, there will be grave consequences,” Kerr said, adding, “After we resolve this immediate humanitarian crisis we can focus on reform.” 

Konyndyk said there’s “a constructive, good-faith conversation that needs to be had about some of the ways that USAID works,” while going on to say that problems at the agency are not going to be solved by “woodchippering” it or merging it into the State Department.

 The Trump administration’s evolving effort against USAID leaves the agency with an uncertain future, but it’s likely to face both legislative and legal challenges in the days ahead.

“I don’t think enough is yet being done. But we’re starting to see the system react,” Konyndyk said. “Ultimately, this is going to end up in Congress, in the courts.”