Inside Elon Musk’s Killing of USAID

Saboteurs, tears, and a last-minute push to save lives.

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Around 8 p.m. on Sunday, a USAID staffer pushed forward $78 million for food and shelter to Palestinians living in Gaza. Two hours later, that staffer and contractors working in over 100 countries were locked out of their email accounts. Then just past midnight, staff received an email from Gavin Kliger, a young engineer working for Elon Musk, announcing that headquarters was closed for business. By Monday morning, the U.S. government agency that sends assistance to tens of millions of the world’s neediest people “from the American people,” as its motto states, was effectively dead.

Over the past 72 hours, a dozen sources recounted the final days of the U.S. Agency for International Development before an effort led by Musk and supported by President Donald Trump crippled the agency and put it under the control of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is now acting director. It appears to be the first of an untold number of federal agencies that the Trump administration seeks to remake without the approval of Congress. Democrats have accused the administration of breaking the law.

As the agency began to crumble under an attack from its own government, staffers worked frantically to send money keeping hospitals and soup kitchens from Gaza to Sudan running, saying that people may die as a result of the chaos. As of Monday afternoon, they were trying to send $305 million to the World Food Program. “We’re blowing through all the normal processes to get this out as quickly as possible,” says one staffer. Employees couldn’t even tell their partner organizations, with which they were communicating regularly as recently as last week, how much money was coming. “I don’t think anyone has any idea what’s going on.”

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