The Japan Times - Trump demands US aid agency closure despite tumult

"THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!" Trump wrote in a trademark all-caps statement on his Truth Social app.

Trump, who began his second term last month, has launched a crusade led by his top donor and world's richest man Elon Musk to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government.

The most concentrated fire has been on the United States Agency for International Development, the primary organization for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world.

The Trump administration has already frozen foreign aid and ordered thousands of foreign-based staff to return to the United States, with reported impacts on the ground steadily growing.

On Thursday, a union official confirmed reports that the current USAID headcount of 10,000 employees would be reduced to around 300.

Labor unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught which includes offers of buyouts by Musk to federal workers across the entire government.

Democrats in Congress say it would be unconstitutional for Trump to shut down government agencies without the greenlight from the legislature.

Trump has also announced intentions to close the Department of Education.

- Aid workers vilified -

The United States' current budget allocates about $58 billion for international assistance.

However while Washington is the biggest aid donor in the world, the money has only amounted to between 0.7 and 1.4 percent of total US government spending in the last quarter century, according to the Pew Research Center.

USAID runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including the world's poorest regions.

It is seen as a vital source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China, where Musk has extensive business interests.

Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticized what they say is wasteful spending abroad.

Those criticisms have been supercharged since Trump's return with the administration demonizing USAID employees and claiming -- without evidence -- that the aid agency is rife with fraud.

"USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY," Trump wrote in his post. "SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE."

Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged mostly unhindered through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted or ignored.

With Democrats struggling to find their voice after Trump's shock return to power and congressional Republicans nearly uniformly loyal to the 78-year-old billionaire, the pushback has been slow in coming.

Court challenges however are slowly taking shape. An attempt by Trump to overturn the consitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge and on Thursday another federal judge paused the federal worker buyouts program, pending arguments on Monday.

Musk, the South African-born CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy with reports that he and his team were accessing Americans' highly confidential personal information through the Treasury Department.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg TV on Thursday that only two people working with Musk had access to the data. Shortly after, however, one of them resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.

On Friday, Musk flagged support for the employee by running what he said was a poll on X -- the social media site he owns -- asking whether the DOGE staffer who made "inappropriate statements" should be reinstated. According to the unverified Musk poll, support was overwhelming at 78 to 22 percent.

K.Yamaguchi--JT