The website for the US Agency for International Development, or USAid, appeared to be offline on Saturday, as the Trump administration moves to put the free-standing agency, and its current $42.8bn budget for global humanitarian operations, under state department control.
A message stating that the “server IP address could not be found” appeared when attempts were made to access the website on Saturday.
Two sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Friday that the Trump administration was moving to strip USAid of its independence as a government agency and put it under state department control.
The apparent failure of the website comes after plaques embossed with the agency’s official seal were removed on Friday, according to Reuters, a sign that the merger into the state department was in the works.
The move comes as the Trump administration has vowed to overhaul the distribution of foreign aid, saying last week it was freezing foreign aid while conducting a review to ensure that assistance worldwide is aligned with Trump’s “America First” foreign policies.
Current and former USAid officials said this week that a purge of senior staff appeared designed to silence any dissent and that bringing the agency under the state department would be a “seismic shift”.
“This moves the United States government to a place where the humanitarian voice will not be in high-level policy discussions,” the official said.
In an opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio – who would assume oversight over USAid if it were or had been placed under the state department – outlined a new US diplomatic focus on the western hemisphere.
Rubio said he would make his first trip as the nation’s most senior diplomat to El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
“These nations were neglected by past administrations that prioritized the global over the local and pursued policies that accelerated China’s economic development, often at our neighbors’ expense,” Rubio wrote.
Reuters reported that the White House was exploring legal authority that Trump could use to issue an executive order to end USAid’s independence and that he could sign such a directive as soon as Friday night or Saturday.
“Watch USAID tonight,” Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator and member of the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a post on X on Friday evening.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, citing a “rumor” that Trump planned to dissolve USAid as an independent agency, said in an X post that such a move would be “illegal and against our national interests”.
But it is unclear whether the president has the legal authority to bypass Congress and order USAid’s merger into the state department.
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If placed under the state department, USAid could become a more explicit armature of foreign policy goals than it has been as the world’s largest single donor of life-saving humanitarian operations.
USAid has in the past been able to assist countries with whom the United States has no diplomatic relations, including Iran. A source at the agency told Reuters that the non-alignment with the US diplomatic mission had helped build bridges that might not have come to be under purely political objectives.
Perhaps signaling the new administration’s plan to fold the agency under the state department, Trump has not nominated a person to run USAid.
The costs of a freeze on US foreign aid grants is already being felt. Field hospitals in Thai refugee camps, landmine clearance in war zones, and drugs to treat millions suffering from diseases such as HIV are among the programs facing defunding.
In fiscal year 2023, the United States disbursed $72bn of assistance worldwide on everything from women’s health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/Aids treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. It provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024.
Following Trump’s executive order last week, the state department issued worldwide stop-work directives, effectively freezing all foreign aid with the exception of emergency food assistance in a move that experts warned risked killing people.
Rubio earlier this week issued an additional waiver for “life-saving humanitarian assistance” while Washington undertakes the 90-day review.
