Elon Musk Is Permanently Deleting Government Agencies
The following commentary was written by a USAID employee, who has requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
Working for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — the conduit for American soft power across the globe — demanded I prepare for frightening things that thankfully most Americans don’t need to worry about. Defensive driving techniques to escape from a terrorist attack. How to spot where landmines might be in the field. Emergency first aid in the event of a shooting or other attack, including in extremely remote geographies. How to identify possible victims of human trafficking.
One thing they never taught us? What to do if you find yourself on the leading edge of a corrupt billionaire’s coup in America.
Since Jan. 20, President Trump — or, more accurately, Elon Musk, the religious zealots, and far-right activists behind Project 2025 — have been enacting a hostile takeover at the heart of the American experiment and dismantling the bureaucratic machinery that is the last bulwark against fascism in the United States. While the focus predictably has been on Trump’s never-ending cascade of absurdist claims and the unprecedented overreach of an aborted freeze on all federal spending, USAID has been ground zero for a different set of parasites riding the MAGA wave.
Since Trump’s slim victory in the 2024 election, these hangers-on have been telegraphing that USAID would be the test site for how to destroy the U.S. government. They’re led by Musk, the richest man in the world; Stephen Miller, a White House adviser who architected the Muslim travel ban and child separation policies at the border; and Peter Marocco, who during the first Trump administration bounced around the Departments of Defense, State, Commerce, and USAID before reportedly turning up at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
It started right out of the gates on Jan. 20, with an executive order freezing all foreign aid that shocked even the most seasoned diplomats. For public purposes, the series of moves now wears the face of freshly minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with support from Musk acolytes who are spreading across the government like roaches, including at the already-captured Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Musk’s allies and other unelected members of the administration’s transition team quickly began and continue to demand lists. Lists of projects and employees working on vaguely defined DEI-related activities. Lists of civil service employees in their vulnerable probationary years. Lists of employees working on statutorily mandated programs that could be targeted for conversion to Trump’s beloved Schedule F, a new classification of federal employees created by executive order that strips them of their labor protections.
In the first week, an agency-wide gag order barred USAID employees from talking to anyone outside of the Agency, including foreign governments wondering if programs will continue, critical private-sector partners co-funding agency activities, and even other federal agencies.
The second week kicked off with the removal of USAID’s senior career executive leadership, with nearly 60 civil servants put on administrative leave without cause and with no promise of due process, in what we all quickly started to call the “Monday Afternoon Massacre.” They got 30 minutes of notice.
Contractors representing more than 25 percent of the Agency’s workforce were furloughed or, in the case of many of those working for USAID’s Bureaus of Global Health and Humanitarian Assistance, outright fired. This means the White House and Marco Rubio’s promises to restore life-saving aid through a waiver system is ultimately an impossible lie: There’s no one left to actually deliver the aid.
This was followed by the administration’s embarrassing and now-infamous “Fork in the Road” email, a naked attempt to purge frightened civil servants with the empty promise of a deferred resignation and a pinky swear that they wouldn’t just fire us anyway. The email was strikingly similar to one that Musk once sent to Twitter employees, and suggested we “sign” the template resignation letter by replying simply with the word “Resign” — to the illegal and reportedly unvetted email server that federal employees allege was connected directly to classified OPM systems by Musk’s allies.
By the end of week two, the cuts got deeper: Any career civil servants with the word “gender” in their job titles or position descriptions were put on administrative leave — even those championing work started under Ivanka Trump’s pet project, the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative. USAID’s flag and logo were removed from offices in the D.C. area as rumors began swirling of an imminent — and illegal — absorption into the Department of State. They even took down the memorial wall at our headquarters honoring the USAID personnel who have died in service to our country. The USAID system for collecting the results of America’s investments, the Development Information Solution, was unceremoniously “terminated.” On Saturday, Feb. 1, the USAID website and its vast wealth of taxpayer-funded research and reports was taken offline.
None of us know if we have jobs to return to today — a USAID press email address notified all personnel overnight that our headquarters is closed and “[f]urther guidance will be forthcoming.” The actual sender was identified as Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee Gavin Kliger. Early today, Musk said on X that he was shutting the agency down, with Trump’s support.
If we try to log in to our computers or enter our offices and are rejected, does that mean we are on administrative leave? Or are we outright fired?
Staff have been encouraged to take out professional liability insurance policies given the growing likelihood former USAID contractors with outstanding invoices sue. This is a terrible deal for the government and taxpayers too: Those invoices are all quickly gathering interest thanks to laws that compel agencies to issue payments promptly. In other words, the myriad things Congress funded USAID to do, and which have been done, all just got more expensive for no reason.
Federal employees swear an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. We are not partisan, regardless of our personal political views. We do not — and should not — swear oaths of loyalty to President Trump, Shadow President Musk, their enablers, or the feckless legislators who have decided to stand by while the radical Project 2025 obliterates Congress’ rightful authority and lines up their constituents for slaughter.
USAID is a small agency, representing just 0.7 percent of the federal budget last year, yet for more than 60 years it has been punching above its weight. My colleagues and our predecessors were instrumental to eradicating smallpox, have been at the forefront of treating and preventing the spread of HIV, and shipped millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines to developing countries. We’ve revolutionized water, sanitation, energy, and communications infrastructure in more than 80 countries. We’ve built democratic institutions and ensured free and fair elections on every populated continent. We’ve been on the ground providing food, clean water, shelter, and hope after every major disaster, disease outbreak, and war since 1961. We’ve helped teach hundreds of millions of children to read.
When we’re gone, who will fill the void? ISIS? The cartels? China? When we’re gone, where will an emboldened Trump and Musk strike next? The Department of Energy and its engineers stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology, the Department of Education and the more than $119 billion it doles out every year to keep public schools afloat, the Environmental Protection Agency and its clean air and water regulations that have saved millions of American lives?
And given the value Musk is providing to foreign powers — including countries like China, where he has vast fortunes on the line — will anyone capable of assessing the damage and self-enrichment currently unfolding in real time even be left?
USAID is the guinea pig. After us, there will be more. Many more. And then, eventually, there will be none. Elon Musk and the DOGE, a made-up meme of an organization with no congressional mandate to exist, has started to replace more than 2 million experienced experts who have dedicated their careers to helping everyday Americans with untrained, inefficient, and incompetent tech bros.
And in those same two weeks, they have also managed to force their way into the government’s most sensitive and highly classified systems — the dangers of which may take decades to realize.
The richest man in the world and his allies have used his influence with the president of the United States to seize control of government procurement data (including intellectual property of many of his competitors); gain access to the names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and performance records of millions of Americans that he specifically denounces — including USAID employees Musk describes as being part of a “criminal organization”; and, with this cabal’s parallel efforts at Treasury, grab the reins of the very mechanisms that deliver every cent of the trillions the government spends, including on Social Security, Medicare, and SNAP payments.
Musk is treating the U.S. government like another company that he can bring to its knees while stealing its best ideas and lining his already comically overflowing pockets — but this time, it’s with taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars.
President Trump’s loose leash on Musk, meanwhile, is demonstrating that he is willing to sit in the Oval Office while smarter men use his banner and power to drive this country to ruin.
When will congressional leaders stop cowering in fear of billionaire overlords and remember their dereliction of duty leaves over 330 million people more vulnerable by the day?
USAID makes America stronger, safer, and more prosperous, and we make the world a better place. No matter what they say about us or how they treat us, we will always be among the best this country has to offer, and it will always be the greatest honor of my life to serve the American people.
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