President Donald Trump’s radical plan to upend the federal government quickly took shape as his second presidential term began in January 2025 — with the aid of unelected billionaire Elon Musk. During his first week back in office, Trump signed a flurry of executive actions targeting the federal workforce, freezing U.S. foreign aid, and granting a Musk sweeping mandate to wreak havoc at government agencies as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
One agency in particular was at the forefront of Trump’s and Musk’s attacks on the civil service. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — which provides life-saving humanitarian aid services around the world, including food assistance and health care — was effectively shut down, with Musk having called the agency a “criminal organization” and saying it was “time for it to die.”
The USAID website went offline without explanation, igniting fears that public records could be deleted or misplaced, and nearly all of the agency’s employees were placed on leave and barred from returning to the USAID office even after a federal judge temporarily blocked the action. Trump’s and Musk’s hasty and wholesale gutting of the federal civil service reveals the administration’s disdain for constitutional checks on executive power, as well as its apathy for the immense harm to thousands of workers and foreign aid recipients worldwide.
American Oversight immediately launched an investigation into Trump’s dismantling of USAID, filing a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for documents that could shed light on the deconstruction and the role that Musk played in decision-making. Our requests seek communications — including emails, texts, or messages exchanged on platforms like Slack and Signal — between USAID officials and the White House, Congress, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in early February was announced as acting director of USAID, as well as any official designated to USAID’s “DOGE team.” Our requests intentionally seek communications exchanged via messaging systems with auto-delete features, like Signal, following reports that DOGE employees were using such platforms for official business.
American Oversight also sent letters to Rubio, USAID, the State Department — which the administration said would absorb parts of USAID — and the National Archives and Records Administration, reminding each of the responsibility to properly retain records under FOIA and the Federal Records Act. The letters demanded the agencies take action to recover any records that had been deleted and to prevent further destruction.
The Trump administration’s hostile takeover of USAID and the abrupt termination of foreign aid programs “not only fuel suffering and weaken U.S. leadership around the world but also reveal the depths of the administration’s disregard for human lives,” American Oversight’s interim Executive Director Chioma Chukwu said. Foreign aid typically accounts for only about 1% of the federal budget. The decimation of the 63-year-old agency by the world’s richest person has raised alarm not only about Elon Musk’s level of influence and potential conflicts of interest, but also about the possibility of legal violations and the lack of oversight over Musk’s actions.
American Oversight will update this page with findings from its investigation of Trump’s reckless and illegal executive power grab and the devastating harm his administration’s actions inflict on the American people and those who rely on U.S. aid.
