Tech billionaire, Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump have shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development tasked with humanitarian relief overseas after they agreed the organization was ‘beyond repair’. Musk, the head of Trumps government efficiency initiative, reviewed the government agency with Trump’s go-ahead and decided to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Washington, D.C. offices. According to Mail Online, staff were shocked when they woke up Monday morning to emails instructing them to stay out of the agency’s D.C. headquarters. USAID staffers said they tracked 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received messages to their work emails saying ‘at the direction of Agency leadership’ the headquarters building ‘will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.’ ‘It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm it in,’ Musk said of the six-decade U.S. international aid and development agency. ‘What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.’ ‘We’re shutting it down,’ he said in the audio-only appearance on X. The Tesla and SpaceX boss noted in the announcement on his social media site that he spoke with Trump about the agency and they ‘agreed we should shut it down.’ As of 2016, USAID reported that it had 10,235 employees on its payroll. The website for USAID was also shut down as of Monday morning. The official government website for USAID and any former links for the site’s webpages now shows a browser error message: ‘This site can’t be reached.’ The message comes after the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government inspection teams, a U.S. official revealed on Sunday. The post Update: Elon Musk shuts down USAID, locks out 600 staffersovernight appeared first on Linda Ikeji Blog.
