AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The future of USAID — that’s the U.S. Agency for International Development — is uncertain, after Elon Musk said President Trump has agreed to shut it down. After a dramatic spat with the USAID senior officials and workers played out over the weekend, early this morning Musk went on X, the social media platform he owns, and claimed the agency is, quote, “beyond repair.”

ELON MUSK: And USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, there’s — you’ve just got to, basically, get rid of the whole thing.

AMY GOODMAN: USAID’s website has been down since Saturday. Workers have been instructed not to come to work at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. It’s closed today. Hundreds of workers have been reportedly locked out of USAID’s computer systems overnight, with dozens more put on leave. This includes the two top USAID security officials, who were placed on administrative leave on Saturday night after they blocked members of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing USAID’s classified systems, including personnel files and information about contracts — for example, with Musk’s rivals. Since then, four members of DOGE have reportedly been granted access to the agency’s systems, now that the security officials are out of the way.

Meanwhile, last week, Reuters reported hundreds of USAID contractors were put on unpaid leave — some were being terminated — after Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on U.S. foreign aid.

On Sunday, Elon Musk posted a series of comments on X attacking USAID. He wrote, quote, ”USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” He also said, quote, ”USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” and, quote, “Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including Covid-19, that killed millions of people?” unquote.

President Trump weighed in Sunday night.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out. USAID, run by radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out. And then we’ll make a decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Doctors Without Borders has warned the dismantling of USAID, the U.S. humanitarian aid system, quote, “will cause an unmitigated humanitarian disaster affecting millions of the world’s most vulnerable people,” unquote.

Congressional Democrats also raised alarm over Musk’s move to access classified material at USAID. New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media, quote, “This is a five alarm fire. The people elected Donald Trump to be President — not Elon Musk. Having an unelected billionaire, with his own foreign debts and motives, raiding US classified information is a grave threat to national security. This should not be a partisan issue,” AOC wrote.

USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

For more, we go to Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. He previously worked in several senior positions at USAID. He was most recently USAID’s lead official for COVID-19 in the Biden administration.

Thanks so much for being with us, Jeremy. Respond to what has taken place, as late as just in the last few hours, when the workers at the headquarters of USAID were told to stay home, the office closed.

JEREMY KONYNDYK: So, over the weekend, we have seen a concerted campaign of disinformation about what USAID is, about what USAID does, a total — “mischaracterization” really doesn’t cover it. It is outright disinformation. You heard it from Elon Musk in the clips that you played earlier. You know, it bears no relation whatsoever to the reality of what USAID’s work has been for 60-plus years.

USAID does development and relief programs around the world. It has helped to save 25 million lives from HIV. It has responded to famines and earthquakes. That was the work that I did, in part, while I was there during the Obama years. It has promoted democracy.

You know, what we are seeing instead are these attacks against it as a sort of corrupt and illegal organization by people who know nothing about it. They are manufacturing these things out of whole cloth. And, you know, you have to ask: Well, why are they doing this? And why are they targeting USAID? Because the stakes here are not just that we lose what USAID has done for American values and interests and has done for the world. What we are losing here is the integrity, really, of the federal government. If they can do this to an independent federal agency that is mandated by Congress, they can really do it anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain the battle that took place this weekend that led the two top security folks at USAID to be put on leave on Saturday night, and also the kind of information that, now that they are removed, Elon Musk has. What kind of security clearance does he have? What kind of conflict of interest investigation has been done of him, background checks, to get classified access? And is it true that he’s getting information about contracts of his rivals?

JEREMY KONYNDYK: So, I have not seen any reporting that suggests that Elon Musk has a valid security clearance, particularly to access the systems that it seems like they were trying to access, which were tapped into the highest-level national security networks that the U.S. government has.

USAID is a national security agency. You know, it conducts foreign policy work. And as such, in its, what are called SCIFs — those are the rooms where special compartmentalized information can be stored. It has a couple of SCIFs, as all the national security organizations do. And most staff at USAID rarely go in there and never need to consume that information. When I was working on COVID, I barely went in that room. But it exists. It’s there for some of the programs that need it.

And Elon, through that, if he has access to that, if his minions on this DOGE group of twentysomethings have access to that, that is some of the most sensitive national security information that the U.S. government possesses. None of them, as far as I have heard, have a valid clearance for that. And I think what you saw or reported of the two security staff is that they tried — as they are legally required to do, they tried to block people without a valid clearance from breaching classified information. And for that, they were pushed out of the agency. And reportedly, the Trump-appointed chief of staff, who had just arrived, also resigned over this. So, I mean, that should be a huge, huge, huge alarm bell.

You know, in terms of specific contract information, I’m not sure what rivals he might be looking for. I don’t get the sense he’s looking for a competitive edge here or something. I think he is just looking to destroy this agency, because if they can destroy this agency without any consultation with Congress, without any public disclosure of what they’re doing, without even an executive order giving them fig leaf from the president to do this, if a private citizen can just go in and destroy a federal agency, then we are in a dire, dire place as a government and as a country.

AMY GOODMAN: Africa CDC Director-General Dr. Jean Kaseya explained the scale of the aid Africa receives from the U.S. and the possible effects of the pause. He was speaking on CNN last week.

DR. JEAN KASEYA: In 2024, we got $8 billion of support from the U.S. to African continent, and 73% went to the health sector. It means today the U.S. is the main partner that we have bilaterally and also multilaterally to a number of organs and organizations. What we see as a trend today in Africa, it’s not just the pause from the U.S. government, but it’s also the reduction from assistance from other Western countries. And that one is a major threat to not only Africa, but to the world. And as Africa CDC is projecting with this trend to have around 2 to 4 million additional deaths annually, and that one will also increase the likelihood occurrency of pandemics.

AMY GOODMAN: The former head of global health at USAID, Dr. Atul Gawande, also posted on social media Saturday, quote, “I oversaw global health programs at @USAID. They reached 100s of millions of people, added 6 extra years to the lifespan of children in partner countries, and were eradicating health threats worldwide. What insanity and cruelty to break that,” he said.

And then you have one of the last hospitals in central Gaza being closed down this weekend because they lost their USAID funding, this at a time when the U.S. government, Trump, has approved 2,000-pound bombs being sent to Israel. When it comes to helping the folks of Palestine, the Palestinians in Gaza, their aid is being cut even further, Jeremy Konyndyk.

JEREMY KONYNDYK: Yes, and I think it’s really important to understand that a lot of what USAID does saves lives every single day. I ran the humanitarian team there for several years. We would respond to famines. We would respond to earthquakes, tsunamis. We led the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. You know, these are lifesaving activities. Twenty million people are on AIDS drugs in Africa right now and around the world through USAID and U.S. government support. All of that is at risk.

So, the stakes here really are that global health threats that could threaten the United States go unchecked. We pull back the tools that we have. The stakes are that hundreds of thousands of people could die of starvation in Sudan as we pull back the humanitarian assistance amidst the famine there. The ceasefire in Gaza, which is premised in part on greater access to humanitarian aid, could be put at risk by pulling back humanitarian assistance there. And the ability of the U.S. to support human rights and support democracy around the world, which is a really core part, as well, of what USAID does — and it’s why it’s targeted by countries like Russia, who are, frankly, celebrating this openly this weekend — that is really important, and that will be lost, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Konyndyk, I want to thank you so much for being with us, president of Refugees International, formally held several senior positions at USAID, most recently USAID’s lead official for COVID-19 in the Biden administration.

Next up, “Elon Musk is staging a coup” at the State Department as he and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency get access to classified details by taking over the Treasury Department. We’ll talk with the Democratic strategist who wrote a piece with “Elon Musk is staging a coup” as its headline. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Pink Pony Club” by Chappell Roan. In accepting the 2025 Grammy for best new artist, this is what Roan said.

CHAPPELL ROAN: I told myself, if I ever won a Grammy and I got to stand up here in front of the most powerful people in music, I would demand that labels and the industry profiting millions of dollars off of artists would offer a livable wage and healthcare, especially to developing artists. … Labels, we got you, but do you got us?

AMY GOODMAN: That was Chappell Roan accepting the 2025 Grammy for best new artist Sunday night.