Gambiaj.com – (WASHINGTON, DC) – Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday that he is acting administrator the US Agency for International Development, confirming the de-facto takeover of the humanitarian agency by the State Department.

The news came hours after Elon Musk, the world’s richest man charged with overhauling the federal government, said President Donald Trump had signed off on shutting the agency down.

Rubio said that the “functions of USAID” must align with US foreign policy and that it is “a completely unresponsive agency.”

Rubio said he is serving as acting administrator of USAID, but said he has “delegated the authority” to someone else with whom he is in touch. The acting USAID administrator had previously been Jason Gray – CNN has asked the State Department if this is the person Rubio referenced.

“It’s supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department, and it refuses to do so,” he claimed.

Asked about the arguments that USAID’s vital work is vital to national security and promoting US interests, Rubio said, “there are things that USAID, that we do through USAID, that we should continue to do, and we will continue to do.

“But everything they do has to be in alignment with the national interest and the foreign policy of the United States,” the top US diplomat said in El Salvador.

“This is not about ending the programs that USAID does, per se,” he said. “There are things that it does that are good and there are things that it does that we have strong questions about.”

The longtime international aid agency has found itself in the crosshairs of Trump and Musk’s effort to reform the federal government. Trump and his allies have said the agency, created by Congress as an independent body, is overtly partisan. Democrats have rejected that assertion and say Trump does not have the authority to dismantle the agency.

In Washington, USAID’s headquarters was closed for the day, with employees told in an email to remain at home.

Logos and photos of its aid work have been stripped from building walls. And its website and social media accounts have gone dark, replaced with a reduced version of its webpage on the State Department’s website.

“It is the apocalypse at USAID,” one USAID official said.

Lawmakers and aid workers had been bracing for Trump to shut down the agency entirely and place it under the umbrella of the State Department, a step that appeared imminent Monday morning following Musk’s comments during a talk on X, the social media platform that he owns.

“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in a X Spaces conversation early Monday.

Source: CNN