(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The Trump administration has formally seized control of USAID after decades of the infamous agency operating with little oversight, often unilaterally using taxpayer dollars to undermine U.S. foreign policy.
President Donald Trump tapped Secretary of State Marco Rubio as acting director and blocked USAID bureaucrats from entering the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday.
Addressing reporters while in El Salvador, Rubio said his “frustration with USAID goes back” to his time in the Senate. “It’s a completely unresponsive agency,” he said. “It’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so.”
Trump’s decisive action followed USAID’s failed attempt to block representatives from the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing its files.
The blockade was shocking—it meant a handful of unelected bureaucrats at an executive agency were actively defying orders from the president, the head of the executive branch.
Rubio slammed USAID’s stonewalling, calling it concerning. He specifically said, “I’m very troubled by these reports that they’ve been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about: ‘What does this program do? Who gets the money? Who are our contractors?’”
Rubio added that this “level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid writ large should have.” He also reminded reporters that USAID’s multibillion-dollar budget is funded by taxpayers, not donations.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed Rubio’s concerns, exposing some of USAID’s wasteful spending.
“If you look at the waste and abuse that has run through USAID over the past several years, these are some of the insane priorities that organization has been spending money on,” Leavitt told reporters outside the White House on Monday.
She called out USAID for spending $1.5 million to “advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces;” $70,000 for a production of a “DEI musical in Ireland;” $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia; and $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru.
“I don’t know about you but as an American taxpayer, I don’t want my dollars going toward this crap, and I know the American people don’t either,” Leavitt declared.
While Rubio now serves as the de-facto head of what’s left of USAID, Trump ally Peter W. Marocco has been tapped to oversee the agency’s review and imminent budget cuts.
