USAID Workers Told To Stay Home In Early-Morning Email As Musk ‘Spent Weekend Feeding It Into The Wood Chipper’

It’s happening fast after Sunday statements of Elon Musk confirming President Trump “agreed” to shut USAID down… USAID’s headquarters in Washington D.C. has been closed for the day on Monday, with employees receiving an early morning email telling them to remain at home.

Musk says the agency has effectively been shut down. The email, which is now widely circulating on social media postings, was sent from Gavin Kliger via an official usaid.gov. address. He is one among the twenty-somethings assisting Musk in implementing Trump’s order to slash foreign aid and stop waste.

“Logos and photos of its aid work have been stripped from building walls,” CNN writes of the HQ’s sudden closure. This after all web and and social media accounts went dark over the weekend, now with a simplified version of its webpage on the State Department’s website.

“None of this could be done without the full support of the president,” Musk said in a Sunday X Spaces event. “I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed with that we should shut it down. I want to be clear. I actually checked with him a few times. I said, “Are you sure?’ ‘Yes.’ So we’re shutting it down.”

Thousands of staff have told media outlets that they have lost access to their email accounts, which have been deactivated.

A USAID worker has subsequently said: “We have been officially informed that the US Department of State now has access to all of our internal documents and our entire suite of files, documents, everything — all of our systems.” Top officials were fired over the weekend.

Musk says “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper”…

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Could gone to some great parties.

Did that instead. https://t.co/0V35nacICW

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025

Access to USAID’s Google drive and other sensitive data has reportedly been transferred straight under the State Department. It appears any future foreign aid programs will simply be run out of the State Department, with more executive branch oversight.

One big question that remains is how much noise Congressional leaders will make. Will Congress attempt intervention, also as there are reports that Musk and DOGE have access to the US Treasury’s payment system?