The U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement, or USAID, is pictured Saturday in Washington.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
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Carolyn Kaster/AP
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he’s now the appearing director the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement, following the Trump administration’s sudden freeze on federal international spending.
Talking to reporters in El Salvador on Monday, Rubio accused the company of not cooperating with requests for info on the way it spent taxpayer {dollars}.
Earlier on Monday, Elon Musk introduced that his Division of Authorities Effectivity was within the strategy of “shutting down USAID.”
USAID workers woke as much as an e mail telling them the headquarters in Washington, D.C., could be closed for the day and that they need to do business from home.
Some Democratic members of Congress are talking out towards the Trump administration’s efforts to halt most of USAID’s work.
“This is an entity that was created through federal statute, codified through federal statute, and something that cannot be changed, cannot be removed except through actions of Congress,” Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey mentioned, as demonstrators gathered outdoors USAID headquarters.
Based in 1961, the company manages billions of {dollars} in federal humanitarian help around the globe. However its work was been thrown into upheaval within the final week, because the Trump administration halted almost all its applications.
Whereas Rubio mentioned he’s formally the appearing director of USAID, he mentioned he has “delegated that authority to someone, but I stay in touch with him,” with out naming the particular person he’s delegating to.
He mentioned there are issues that USAID does “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.”
It is a creating story that can probably be up to date.
NPR’s Fatma Tanis, Hansi Lo Wang and Shannon Bond contributed reporting.
