{"id":5740,"date":"2025-02-04T16:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T16:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/elon-musk-says-president-donald-trump-has-agreed-usaid-should-be-shut-down\/"},"modified":"2025-02-04T16:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T16:21:11","slug":"elon-musk-says-president-donald-trump-has-agreed-usaid-should-be-shut-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/elon-musk-says-president-donald-trump-has-agreed-usaid-should-be-shut-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says President Donald Trump has &#8216;agreed&#8217; USAID should be shut down"},"content":{"rendered":"<div xmlns:xlink=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/xlink\">\n<div>\n<p>                                <bsp-timestamp data-timestamp=\"1738567606000\" data-recent-thresholdinhours=\"1\">                    <template data-date-tpl>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year]<\/template>                    <span data-date><\/span>                <\/bsp-timestamp>            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>                                                                    <bsp-page-actions>                            <\/bsp-page-actions>                            <\/div>\n<div>\n<p>WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; The <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/usaid-website-offline-trump-foreign-funding-freeze-9d2ecdaff5c74a9f6b0d6096fa2228ff\">U.S. Agency for International Development<\/a><\/span>  is on the cusp of being shuttered, according the Trump administration&rsquo;s billionaire adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk &mdash; who has been wrestling for control of the agency in recent days. <\/p>\n<p>Early Monday, Musk held a live session on X Spaces, previously known as Twitter Spaces, and said that he spoke in detail about USAID with the president. &ldquo;He agreed we should shut it down,&rdquo; Musk said.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It became apparent that its not an apple with a worm it in,&rdquo; Musk said. &ldquo;What we have is just a ball of worms. You&rsquo;ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It&rsquo;s beyond repair.&rdquo; &ldquo;We&rsquo;re shutting it down.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>His comments come after the administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/usaid-website-offline-trump-foreign-funding-freeze-9d2ecdaff5c74a9f6b0d6096fa2228ff\">on leave<\/a><\/span>  after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk&rsquo;s government-inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official told The Associated Press on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Members of <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/doge-government-trump-executive-order-1a2fb7235b9d6f178c764cf6c78d3317\">Musk&rsquo;s Department of Government Efficiency<\/a><\/span>known as DOGE, eventually did gain access Saturday to the aid agency&rsquo;s classified information, which includes intelligence reports, the former official said.<\/p>\n<p>Musk&rsquo;s DOGE crew lacked high enough security clearance to access that information, so the two USAID security officials &mdash; John Voorhees and deputy Brian McGill &mdash; believed themselves legally obligated to deny access.<\/p>\n<p>The current and former U.S. officials had knowledge of the incident and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the information.<\/p>\n<p>Musk on Sunday responded to an X post about the news by saying, &ldquo;USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.&rdquo; He followed with additional posts on X about the aid agency. <\/p>\n<p>Kate Miller, who serves on an advisory board for DOGE, said in a separate post that no classified material was accessed &ldquo;without proper security clearances.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>It comes a day after DOGE carried out a <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treasury-5e26cc80fcb766981cea56afd57ae759\">similar operation at the Treasury Department<\/a><\/span>gaining access to sensitive information including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official had resigned over Musk&rsquo;s team accessing sensitive information.<\/p>\n<p>Musk formed DOGE in cooperation with the Trump administration with the stated goal of finding ways to <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/biden-2024-government-regulations-democrats-6badc3b424b9eff3ba51e0ec35a8d824\">fire federal workers<\/a><\/span>cut programs and slash federal regulations.<\/p>\n<p>USAID, whose website vanished Saturday without explanation, has been <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-usaid-foreign-aid-freeze-7d9c8cbcb241ec9a710feb8e883b9756\">one of the federal agencies most targeted<\/a><\/span>  by the Trump administration in an escalating <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-buyouts-to-all-federal-employees-f67f5751a0fd5ad8471806a5a1067b5e\">crackdown on the federal government<\/a><\/span>  and many of its programs.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we&rsquo;re getting them out,&rdquo; Trump said to reporters about USAID on Sunday night. <\/p>\n<p>The Trump administration and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have imposed an unprecedented <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/state-department-trump-foreign-aid-bf047e17ef64cb42a1a1b7fdf05caffa\">freeze on foreign assistance<\/a><\/span>  that has shut down much of USAID&rsquo;s humanitarian, development and security programs worldwide &mdash; compelling thousands of layoffs by aid organizations &mdash; and ordered furloughs and leaves that have <span><a data-gtm-enhancement-style=\"LinkEnhancementA\" href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/trump-usaid-leave-87704eee4897b24a79072e32e3df58a0\">gutted the agency&rsquo;s leadership and staff<\/a><\/span>  in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. is by far the world&rsquo;s largest donor of humanitarian aid, with USAID administering billions of dollars in humanitarian, development and security assistance in more than 100 countries. <\/p>\n<p>Peter Marocco, a returning political appointee from Trump&rsquo;s first term, was a leader in enforcing the shutdown. USAID staffers say they believe that agency outsiders with visitors badges asking questions of employees inside the Washington headquarters are members of Musk&rsquo;s DOGE team.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a post on Sunday that Trump was allowing Musk to access people&rsquo;s personal information and shut down government funding. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We must do everything in our power to push back and protect people from harm,&rdquo; the Massachusetts senator said, without giving details.<\/p>\n<h2>___<\/h2>\n<p>Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in New York, Matthew Lee in Panama City and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<p>___ This story has been updated to correct the surname name of one of the USAID security officials. He is John Voorhees, not John Vorhees. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/doge-musk-trump-classified-information-usaid-security-35101dee28a766e0d9705e0d47958611\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] WASHINGTON (AP) &mdash; The U.S. Agency for International Development is on the cusp of being shuttered, according the Trump administration&rsquo;s billionaire adviser and Tesla CEO Elon Musk &mdash; who has been wrestling for control of the agency in recent days. Early Monday, Musk held a live session on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}