The State Department said Friday it was officially shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development, in what could deal a final blow to the beleaguered foreign aid agency.
The move came several hours before a federal appeals court overruled a lower court’s order that blocked Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency from dismantling USAID.
In a memo distributed Friday to USAID employees and obtained by ABC News, Jeremy Lewin, the agency’s new deputy director and a former Department of Government Efficiency official, wrote that the State Department “intends to assume responsibility for many of USAID’s functions and its ongoing programming.”
The State Department “will seek to retire USAID’s independent operation” immediately and “assess” whether to rehire some unknown number of officials to “assume the responsible administration of USAID’s remaining life-saving and strategic aid programming,” the memo said.
“This transfer will significantly enhance efficiency, accountability, uniformity, and strategic impact in delivering foreign assistance programs — allowing our nation and President to speak with one voice in foreign affairs,” according to the memo.
“It will also obviate the need for USAID to continue operating as an independent establishment,” the memo said.
As part of the move, the memo said, “all non-statutory positions at USAID will be eliminated.”
Tributes are placed beneath the covered seal of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7, 2025.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
Two weeks after a court ruled that attempts to unilaterally dismantle USAID were likely unconstitutional, a panel of three judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit stayed that ruling on Friday, finding that the Trump administration is likely to prove that the DOGE’s effort to dismantle USAID did not violate the Constitution.
“While defendants’ role and actions related to USAID are not conventional, unconventional does not necessarily equal unconstitutional,” Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. wrote in a concurring opinion.
Trump administration officials, including Musk’s DOGE group, have leading a widespread effort to dismantle the agency by laying off thousands of employees, revoking funding for more than 80% of its programs, and shedding its Washington, D.C., headquarters.
The decision to completely dissolve a federal agency is expected to prompt legal scrutiny, according to experts who said such a move…
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