PoliticsMonday 02.03.25

“This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like”: Rep. Omar condemns Trump admin. trying to shutter USAID.

Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday suggested that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk trying to gut the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) violated separation of powers, and the two were showing the “beginning of dictatorship.”

“We talked about Trump wanting to be a dictator on Day One, and here we are,” the Minnesota Democrat said at a rally for USAID workers. “What Trump, and Elon, and all of their cronies are trying to do is take away the constitutional power of Congress.”

Musk and his allies at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have upended USAID over the past few days. Over the weekend, DOGE gained access to classified USAID information, including intelligence reports, a former official told the Associated Press. Two top security chiefs at USAID had been placed on leave after they refused to turn over classified material to DOGE. The USAID website then vanished without an explanation, and Musk said Trump agreed to “shut down” the agency.

At least 600 USAID employees reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight and were blocked from entering the agency’s headquarters Monday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday claimed he now runs the agency, putting its future — and the future of employees and the foreign assistance it sends to millions of people around the world — in question.

For his part, Musk has in the past called for cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget, and reportedly said he believes the government is sending out money to agencies or people who do not deserve the money or do not exist.

Omar and several other Democrats at the rally condemned Musk and argued any executive branch attempt to withhold funding from USAID, shutter it, or block employees from working — all things that happened Monday or that Musk floated — was illegal without congressional approval since Congress created the U.S. foreign assistance organization as part of a 1961 law. They also slammed Musk and DOGE for getting access to a Treasury Department system that pays almost all of the United States’ bills. Critics fear Musk and his DOGE team getting direct access to the system — which few people have access to — means he could unilaterally cut off payments to any programs he or Trump do not approve of, even though the vast majority of federal payments, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are required under law.

“We have the power of the purse,” Omar said of Congress. “We get to decide where money is allocated, and it’s the executive’s power to make sure that that money gets to where it needs to get.”

Recount Wire

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