Stay at home and don’t bother to come into the office. That was the message to staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Monday who were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters.
The advice came via a notice distributed to them, AP reports, after Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency down.
According to AP, USAID staffers said they “also tracked more than 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight.”
Those still in the system received emails declaring, “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.”
The shutdown came in the wake of Musk, who’s leading a civilian review of the federal government with the Republican president’s agreement, said early Monday he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade U.S. aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”
Musk, Trump and some Republican lawmakers have targeted the agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programs in some 120 countries, accusing it of losing its way.
USAID, whose website vanished Saturday without explanation, has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the Trump administration as it tackles waste within the federal government and many of its programs.
“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,” Trump said to reporters about USAID on Sunday night.
Trump placed an unprecedented 90-day freeze on foreign assistance on his first day in office Jan. 20.
