The unelected billionaire who was given free rein to tear through the federal government said early Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump agrees with the ongoing push to shutter the United States Agency for International Development, the single-largest contributor of humanitarian assistance worldwide.
Elon Musk, the head of an outside advisory commission that has trampled the law as its agents work to access and take over critical government operations, said during an event broadcast on the social media platform he owns that he has checked with Trump "a few times" about whether he wants USAID shut down. According to Musk, Trump replied, "Yes."
"So we're shutting it down," said Musk, who claimed the agency is run by "radical lunatics."
Over the weekend, as Common Dreamsreported, two USAID security officials were forced out after they refused to give Musk agents access to internal systems and classified material. USAID's website has also gone dark, an ominous development for an agency that has become one of the Trump administration's top targets.
In addition to the grave political implications of Musk's maneuvers—which one observer described as a "textbook coup"—humanitarian
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, warned in a statement that "dismantling USAID would be a callous, destructive political power play that would have deadly consequences for millions of people living in dire humanitarian emergencies and extreme poverty."
"Any attempt by President Trump to dissolve or merge USAID with the State Department would be legally dubious and must be swiftly challenged in court," Maxman added.
"If this were Pakistan, Chad, or Venezuela, the headlines wouldn't hedge: A billionaire oligarch seizes control, dismantling democracy in real time."
The Trump administration has already instituted a sweeping pause on foreign aid distributions, sparking chaos and panic around the world as charitable organizations scramble to understand the consequences for their lifesaving work.
"One had to decide whether to abide by a stop-work order or deliver lunches to schoolchildren in impoverished communities, as it has for years," TIMEreported. "It decided to obey the order, wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of perishable food. Another is figuring out whether to close health clinics for pregnant mothers in Haiti, leaving them with scant alternatives for a place to give birth."
Reports indicate the Trump administration has discussed plans to "strip a slimmed-down U.S. Agency for International Development of its independence and put it under State Department control." By Saturday, according toThe New York Times, "lawmakers had received word that at least some of the USAID signs at the agency's headquarters in downtown Washington had come down, and rumors were circling that mission directors around the world were being called back to the United States."
"Two USAID employees, who work in the Washington headquarters and spoke on condition of anonymity because of an order barring employees from discussing any changes to the agency, said that they were working under an atmosphere of fear and chaos, and that half of the agency's workforce had been eliminated in the last week," the Times added.
Paul O'Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement that "governments around the world are significantly better equipped to meet their human rights obligations because of the technical and financial resources USAID provides."
"An abrupt collapse of the agency," O'Brien warned, "would put the rights of millions of people around the world at greater risk as a result."
Progressive strategist and organizer Waleed Shahid wrote over the weekend that "if this were Pakistan, Chad, or Venezuela, the headlines wouldn't hedge: A billionaire oligarch seizes control, dismantling democracy in real time."
"Musk's loyalists, armed with executive orders instead of rifles, are gutting the civil service, locking officials out of government systems, and dictating policy from a boardroom-turned-war room," Shahid continued. "Trump, a fading strongman, is the figurehead; Musk, the junta's real leader. Treasury, national security, federal agencies—one by one, falling under private rule. In any other country, experts would call it state capture, a textbook coup. Here, the press still asks if democracy is in danger, as if waiting for the moment history makes it undeniable."