President Donald Trump wants the world's richest man, Elon Musk, to shrink the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency. And one of DOGE's first targets? USAID, the agency that focuses on foreign assistance. We talk to a USAID worker who is out of work this week and to WSJ’s Brian Schwartz about how powerful Musk and DOGE have become. Further Reading: -How Trump Gutted America’s $40 Billion Aid Agency in Two Weeks -Trump Hints at Curbs on Musk’s Powers After Billionaire Shakes Up Washington Further Listening: -DOGE: The Plan to Downsize the Government -Is DEI Done? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Marcy Hirsch Robinson and what is her experience?
Marcy Hirsch Robinson has worked as a humanitarian aid worker for more than 20 years. In that time, she's lived and worked in over 30 countries, like Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ukraine.
I like to say that I am a stubborn optimist. I generally believe in the good of humans, and it feels like my responsibility as a privileged American to be able to contribute to people around the world in their darkest moments.
For the last three years, Marcy's been working for USAID, the U.S. agency that distributes foreign assistance around the world. When did you get the sense that the new administration was looking to take sort of major actions against USAID?
So it became startlingly obvious on Friday, January 24th. that this was not business as usual and that this transition from one administration to the next was unlike anything that any of my colleagues who've been in government for their entire careers had seen before.
And that's because on Friday, that was when we were told about stop work orders that had been issued affecting 100% of USAID programs. It was not made clear to us what that was or exactly how that would be implemented. We were just told that immediately all work had to stop.
The following Monday, dozens of senior officials with USAID were put on leave.
Many of my colleagues had expressed to me that they were feeling very anxious because they understood that any moment they would receive a stop work order themselves.
And the next day, they did. At noon on Tuesday, January 28th, hundreds of USAID contractors were laid off.
No one had any advance notice that this was coming. Everyone was crying. They were in shock. There was an announcement made sort of floor by floor of the office telling everyone who is an institutional support contractor that they needed to turn over their laptops and their phones. And as they followed that instruction, there was no person receiving their equipment. And so...
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Chapter 2: What changes occurred at USAID under the new administration?
Elon can't do and won't do anything without our approval. And we'll give him the approval where appropriate, where not appropriate, we won't.
He has been given maximum authority as a basically a temporary employee of the US government to go into these agencies and make either through his own authorities, cuts himself or bringing back the cuts to the White House, and then they execute those said cuts at a level that I've never seen before at all.
Doge's first target was USAID. Musk called the agency evil and a criminal organization and said it was time for it to die.
As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms.
He's no fan of it. He's been absolutely upfront about it clear as day on social media. He does not think that in its current organization should not be the way it is under Trump, that it has to change. And so he's been very upfront about his view about USAID.
Since Congress created USAID, the president and Doge can't just get rid of it. So they came up with a workaround. Instead of USAID being an independent agency, the plan is to move it under the State Department.
They're just moving around the edges of that saying, USAID will be around. It'll just be under a different form as we probe what's going on here and do a fact-finding mission. And that's how Congress, the Republicans in Congress will be able to kind of shrug and go, they have the authority to do this. They haven't gone any further. So we're not going to step in.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would work with Congress regarding USAID's future. USAID is just the beginning. Doge's mandate is broad, and Musk's team has been looking at other ways to shrink the federal government. Recently, an email was sent to some federal employees with an offer to take a buyout and resign.
More than 40,000 federal workers have taken the offer so far, according to people familiar with the matter. Doge members have also been trying to get access to as much data about government spending as they can, including in one particularly controversial case with the Treasury Department.
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