WASHINGTON (AN) — The U.S. Agency for International Development's website went down in an apparent ideological overhaul as the fate of the agency under the Trump administration seemed increasingly uncertain.
On the USAID website on Saturday, messages said the "site can't be reached" and the server IP address could not be found. U.S. President Donald Trump's aides appeared to be stripping the beleagured agency of its independence and putting it under State Department control while ordering federal agencies' websites to be scrubbed.
As the lead U.S. agency for humanitarian and foreign development aid, USAID has operated independently since its founding in 1961 with some State Department guidance.
The State Department put up a single web page with just seven items about USAID’s activities, starting with a Trump administration press statement entitled, "Implementing the President’s Executive Order on Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid."
The development comes a week the Trump administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid for 90 days, sending shock waves around U.N. and other international agencies that lost billions of dollars of funding overnight.
Aid workers, lawmakers anticipate possible agency shutdown
Programs for humanitarian aid overseas ranging from help provided by the U.N. refugee agency to medical research projects and health initiatives overseas suddenly were forced to go dark.
Hundreds of USAID employees and contractors were fired or furloughed in the past week and dozens of senior leaders were sidelined. The moves are in line with Trump's belief, a plank of his Republican administration, that American foreign aid runs counter to his "America First" agenda.
But U.S. lawmakers say Trump lacks the authority to single-handedly close down the agency, which was created by a presidential executive order but firmly established as an independent agency by an act of Congress in 1998.
Congress had provided USAID, which has been operating in more than 120 countries, with funding through mid-March.
"The administration may be claiming that this pause is temporary, but its effects will not be," said U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware.
"The lasting impacts on small businesses, on contractors, on NGOs and loss of expertise, loss of their workforce, loss of their credibility, I think, will be lasting, dangerous, and harmful," he said.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management ordered department and agency heads on Friday to "take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) that inculcate or promote gender ideology."
This story is developing and it has been updated with additional details.
