The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will be merged into the State Department and will face significant cuts, CBS News reported on Monday.
President Trump’s pause on foreign aid has upended USAID, which serves as a soft power arm of the US government and its intelligence agencies to meddle in the affairs of countries across the world, including by funding opposition groups to foment dissent.
USAID has been targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and the Tesla CEO has suggested President Trump wants a complete “shutdown” of the agency. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said many of the functions of USAID will continue under the State Department, though he stressed the need for reform.
Speaking to reporters in El Salvador, Rubio said that he was now the acting director of USAID. “My frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress. It’s a completely unresponsive agency; it’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so,” he said.
“There are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue that are going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy,” Rubio added.
The secretary also criticized USAID employees for resisting oversight efforts from DOGE. CNN reported that two senior USAID officials were suspended after refusing to let members of DOGE access the agency’s systems and files.
On Sunday night, President Trump said USAID has been “run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision.”
