This explains a lot. USAID went from an underfunded, understaffed agency with Republicans begging for funding, to this evil agency needing to be "fed to the woodchipper."
What prompted that change?
Funny story...
USAID Was Investigating Starlink’s Contracts in Ukraine
Since coming into power, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has barraged USAID, the international aid agency that dispenses food and supplies to nations all over the world. It is likely that the agency will soon be shuttered and could be subsumed into the U.S. State Department. Now, new reporting shows USAID was actually investigating equipment from one of Musk’s companies at the time that he attacked the agency.
The Lever
reported Tuesday that USAID’s inspector general was in the process of investigating its own public-private partnership between Musk’s Starlink and the Ukrainian government at the time that the billionaire’s DOGE crippled the agency. Publicly available information about that probe is still online. An
announcement from last May reads: “The USAID Office of Inspector General, Inspections and Evaluations Division, is initiating an inspection of USAID’s oversight of Starlink satellite terminals provided to the Government of Ukraine. Our objectives are to determine how (1) the Government of Ukraine used the USAID-provided Starlink terminals, and (2) USAID monitored the Government of Ukraine’s use of USAID-provided Starlink terminals.”
Musk has called the agency “evil” and a “criminal organization,” though the fact that USAID was investigating the Starlink activities may suggest ulterior motivations for the billionaire’s vitriol. It’s unclear what the Starlink probe’s status is right now.
Musk’s “criminal” remarks are funny since it increasingly looks like Musk’s DOGE activities represent breaches of federal law and, therefore, may be construed as rampant criminal behavior. On Tuesday, the Washington Post
noted that officials at half a dozen federal agencies had raised concerns over whether what Musk was doing was illegal. Those agencies included the “Treasury Department, the Education Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the White House budget office, among others,” the newspaper reported.
