USAID website goes offline in Trump administration's 2-week-old freeze on foreign aid worldwide

A man walks past boxes of USAID humanitarian aid at a warehouse at the Tienditas International Bridge on the outskirts of Cucuta, Colombia, Feb. 21, 2019, on the border with Venezuela. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

WASHINGTON — The website of the U.S. Agency for International Development went offline without explanation Saturday as thousands of furloughs, layoffs and program shutdowns continued in President Donald Trump’s freeze on U.S.-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 programs are wasteful. They single out programs 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 U.S. 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 as an independent agency.

President John F. Kennedy created at the height of the Cold War to counter Soviet influence. USAID today is at the center of U.S. challenges to the growing influence of China, which has a successful “Belt and Road” foreign aid program 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 the fate of their agency, 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 programs 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 programs going during the freeze. Aid groups say confusion surrounding what programs are still allowed to operate is contributing to paralysis in global aid organizations.

Rubio said Thursday, in his first public comments on the matter, that USAID’s programs were being reviewed to eliminate any that are not in the U.S. national interest, but he said nothing about eliminating it as an agency.

The shutdown of U.S.-funded programs during the 90-day review meant the U.S. was “getting a lot more cooperation” from recipients of humanitarian, development and security assistance, Rubio said.

Republicans and Democrats have fought over the agency for years, arguing whether humanitarian and development aid protects the U.S. 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 legal 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 programs. The General Accounting Office later ruled that it violated a law known as the Impoundment Control Act.