DEVELOPING: Secretary of State Marco Rubio Takes Over as Acting Director of USAID as Democrat Senator Threatens to Stall Trump Nominees Over Agency Shakeup

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took over as Acting Director of USAID after the agency’s staffers were told to leave the headquarters.

Rubio arrived in El Salvador on Monday morning to meet with President Nayib Bukele.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrives El Salvador International Airport — welcomed by Foreign Minister Alexandra Hill Tinoco — will meet El Salvador president Nayib Bukele pic.twitter.com/mz7vJER3ry

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) February 3, 2025

Upon his arrival, Rubio told reporters that he had taken over as Acting Director of the USAID after more than 600 of the agency’s staffers were locked out of the computer systems.

Tension started building up over the weekend after the Trump Admin put two top leaders at the US Agency for International Development on leave because they refused to give Elon Musk’s DOGE classified documents.

Musk’s DOGE got the classified materials on Saturday after the two officials initially withheld the materials.

The two officials, John Vorhees and Deputy Brian McGill claimed the DOGE employees did not have the security clearance to obtain the classified materials.

However, no classified material was accessed without the proper security clearances.

Rubio said the USAID is supposed to respond to the State Department’s policies and it was refusing to do so.

“It’s supposed to respond to the State Department’s policies. It refuses to do so. A lot of functions of USAID will continue, but it has to be aligned with our foreign policy,” Rubio told reporters.

“I am acting director of USAID. I’ve delegated that authority to someone but I stay in touch with him. And again, our goal was to go in and align our foreign aid to our national interests. But if you go to mission after mission and embassy after embassy around the world you will often find that in many cases USAID is involved with programs that run counter to what we are trying to do in our national strategy with that country or that region. That cannot continue.”

Rubio continued, “USAID is not an independent, non-governmental entity. It is an entity that spends taxpayer dollars and it needs to spend it, as the statute says, in alignment with the policy directives that they get from the Secretary of State, the National Security Council and the President and it has been 20 or 30 years where people have tried to reform it.”

WATCH:

“I’m the acting director of USAID.”

— Secretary of State Marco Rubio pic.twitter.com/F1RR9TY9PL

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) February 3, 2025

Meanwhile, a Democrat Senator is threatening to stall all of Trump’s nominees in retaliation for cleaning out at the USAID.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Democrat Senator Brian Schatz (HI) said he will stall all of Trump’s nominees until USAID is back up and running.

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