Trump Created DOGE and Backed Its Dismantling of USAID. About 6,780 Aid Awards Were Terminated

On February 19, 2025, a month after he created the Department of Government Efficiency, President Trump said that "over the past month, we have effectively eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development."¹² He had already said that DOGE was acting "at my insistence" and that Elon Musk, the man he tasked with overseeing it, "answers to me."¹

The charge is that Trump used presidential authority to dismantle institutions Congress established, by stripping away their people, their programs and their capacity to serve the public.¹³⁴⁵ By March 2026, about 6,780 of 7,510 USAID aid awards active on or after January 2025 had been terminated, according to the Government Accountability Office's analysis of State Department data.⁵ Roughly 500 metric tons of emergency food aid expired and were destroyed, the State Department later confirmed, the Associated Press reported.⁶ DOGE also took part in the forcible takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace and in the effort to disable the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.³⁴

The President's Instrument

DOGE was Trump's creation.² On January 20, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14158, which renamed the existing United States Digital Service and created a temporary DOGE organization within it.² Musk said on February 3 that he had discussed USAID with Trump a few times and "he agreed that we should shut it down."¹ On February 25, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said "the President tasked Elon Musk to oversee the DOGE effort."¹

On February 11, Trump signed a workforce order that put DOGE inside career hiring: agencies had to consult DOGE team leads and could not fill a vacancy a team lead opposed unless the agency head decided otherwise.⁷ The order also directed preparations for large reductions in force and generally limited hiring to one employee for every four who left, with exemptions including public safety, immigration enforcement and law enforcement; final hiring decisions stayed with agency heads.⁷

From Closing Offices to Ending Aid

The elimination Trump claimed came in stages.¹⁵ USAID was first created by executive order in 1961; Congress established it as an independent agency by statute in 1998.¹ In February 2025, its headquarters closed and its website went offline.¹ On February 23, the agency announced that almost all direct-hire staff would go on administrative leave, with limited exceptions, and that it was issuing reduction-in-force notices affecting approximately 2,000 personnel stationed in the United States.¹

On March 18, Judge Theodore Chuang found that Musk and DOGE had likely violated the Appointments Clause and separation of powers through their role in dismantling USAID, and issued a preliminary injunction.¹ The Fourth Circuit stayed it on March 28.⁸

On July 1, 2025, USAID stopped administering its assistance awards, and the State Department took responsibility for the ones that remained.⁵ GAO's September 30, 2026 report counted about 6,780 terminated awards and 730 remaining as of March 2026: about 90 percent terminated.⁵ That figure counts awards, not money lost.⁵ The surviving 10 percent of awards held about 40 percent of the funding committed to these awards from 2015 through March 2026.⁵

GAO reported 241 federal civilian employees at USAID in April 2026. Its January 2025 figure of about 13,600 staff included additional categories, including contractors and Foreign Service Nationals, so the two counts are not directly comparable.⁵

By June 2026, most remaining USAID staff were closing out awards rather than administering ongoing assistance, a former agency official told GAO.⁵

On May 12, 2026, House appropriators challenged the administration's plan to reserve $19 billion for closing terminated aid awards, including $2 billion in global-health funds and $1.2 billion in development aid.⁹ On September 24, Republican Appropriations Chair Susan Collins urged officials to spend about $1.3 billion in remaining health funds on lifesaving programs, warning of conflicting reports that they might instead fund future closeout costs.¹⁰

A July amfAR-led study surveyed 166 PEPFAR-funded organizations in 46 countries between November 2025 and April 2026; respondents reported 1,714 HIV service-site closures after funding cuts.¹¹ Among surveyed organizations with terminated or delayed awards that had previously provided mother-to-child HIV prevention, 31 of 49 (63.3 percent) reported reducing or stopping it despite the waiver protecting those services.¹¹ At publication, amfAR's research director said overall treatment numbers appeared stable.¹²

On July 17, NPR reported three children's deaths that parents and health workers linked to lost USAID-supported care: Abdullahi Ibrahim, Purity Wamboi and Ibrahim Garba.¹³ State pointed to 32 bilateral health agreements in response, without addressing the three cases.¹³

In August, Refugees International identified at least 161 high-confidence preventable deaths associated with disrupted healthcare after U.S. aid cuts in Afghanistan, including 80 maternal deaths, from 555 healthcare-worker survey responses.¹⁴ This was a documented minimum, not a nationwide mortality estimate.¹⁴

Food Expired While Officials Delayed

On February 10, 2025, USAID's inspector general warned that staffing cuts and the assistance pause had left safeguards for $8.2 billion in obligated but undisbursed humanitarian assistance largely nonoperational.¹⁵ The agency already had weaknesses in screening partners and preventing diversion; the inspector general said the new restrictions further impaired its ability to monitor aid.¹⁵ Staff reported more than $489 million in food assistance at risk of spoilage, storage costs and diversion, a warning about exposure rather than a count of food already lost.¹⁵

Reuters reported on July 16 that USAID staff had spent weeks seeking permission to release emergency food stocks before they expired, citing internal memos and sources familiar with the effort.¹⁶ Requests to Jeremy Lewin, a DOGE official who became a senior USAID official, went unanswered, Reuters reported, and staff were restricted from communicating directly with aid organizations.¹⁶ A June agreement saved 622 metric tons.¹⁶ Another 496 metric tons, worth $793,000, had expired and were marked for destruction, at an estimated additional disposal cost of $100,000, Reuters reported.¹⁶ Using World Food Programme figures, Reuters estimated that the supplies marked for destruction could have fed about 27,000 people for a month.¹⁶ The following day, the Associated Press reported State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce's confirmation that roughly 500 metric tons had been destroyed.⁶

The State Department said the food was unsafe after expiration, represented less than one percent of annual U.S. food-aid shipments, and came from excess contingency stocks purchased under the Biden administration.⁶¹⁶ Bruce also said previous administrations had destroyed expired food, the Associated Press reported.⁶ Those points explain the disposal decision after expiration; Reuters' account documents the preceding delays that staff tried to prevent.¹⁶

Taking the Institute of Peace by Force

Congress chartered the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1984 as an independent nonprofit institution dedicated to preventing and resolving violent conflict.³ On February 19, 2025, Trump ordered the institute reduced to the minimum functions required by law.³ On March 14, a White House official notified its presidentially appointed board members that Trump was terminating them immediately; the notices identified no statutory ground for removal.³

Three remaining board members installed Kenneth Jackson as president.³ On March 17, DOGE personnel entered the headquarters with assistance from three law-enforcement agencies.³ Judge Beryl Howell's opinion also recounts an FBI visit to an employee's home and threats of criminal investigation against institute employees and its outside lawyer if they interfered with DOGE's access to the building and computer systems.³ The new management transferred the institute's real property to the General Services Administration for no payment, terminated nearly all employees and effectively ended its activities.³ The institute had employed more than 400 people.³ At a May hearing, government counsel told the court that only five employees remained.³

On May 19, Howell granted summary judgment against the administration, ruling that the board removals and the takeover were unlawful and that the replacement leadership's actions were void.³ The President's efforts to take over the institute, she wrote, "contrary to statute established by Congress and by acts of force and threat using local and federal law enforcement officers, represented a gross usurpation of power."³ The D.C. Circuit stayed her injunction on June 27.¹⁷

Disabling the Consumer Regulator

Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 to protect consumers in financial markets.⁴ Trump fired its director, Rohit Chopra, on January 31, 2025.⁴ DOGE personnel entered the bureau's headquarters on February 6.⁴ On February 7, Trump installed Russell Vought as acting director, and DOGE representatives gained access to all nonclassified CFPB systems.⁴ Judge Amy Berman Jackson's March 28 opinion records Trump describing the bureau on February 10 as "a very important thing to get rid of."⁴

Vought ordered employees to stop work, closed the headquarters and began terminating employees and contracts.⁴ Jackson found that the administration had moved to disable the bureau entirely and that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their constitutional and statutory claims.⁴ She also found that omissions made Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez's first declaration highly misleading, if not intentionally false, and that the defense's account conflicted with the agency's own records.⁴ Her March 28 preliminary injunction required the bureau to reinstate probationary and term employees terminated since February 10 and barred further reductions in force; it expressly bound DOGE personnel acting in concert with the defendants.¹⁸

The work stoppage reached people already relying on the bureau.⁴ Eva Steege, an 83-year-old Lutheran pastor in hospice, sought help obtaining public-service student-loan forgiveness and a refund of $15,000 in overpayments.⁴ Bureau employees told her in January that she qualified, but her February 10 meeting was canceled after the stop-work order, and the student-loan ombudsman was fired.⁴ Steege died on March 15 before her loan problem was resolved, Jackson's opinion recounts.⁴

Banking Dive reported in May 2026 that CFPB ordered roughly 450 employees outside Washington to relocate to a headquarters with space for about 550 of its 1,100 workers.¹⁹ In August, NPR reported employees' accounts of too few desks and weeks of unreliable Wi-Fi during the July move; data scientist Steve Wheeler said on July 30 that the Wi-Fi finally seemed to be working.²⁰

Threats, Targets and Overstated Savings

The order creating DOGE stated its purpose: to modernize federal technology and software to improve government efficiency and productivity.² Musk initially set a $2 trillion savings target, then lowered it to $1 trillion; DOGE was claiming $214 billion in savings by November 2025, PBS reported, a total PBS said it had not verified.²¹ Even DOGE's claimed total fell short of both targets.²¹

By July 7, 2026, DOGE claimed $215 billion in overall savings, GAO reported.²² Its August audit found that a claimed $1.7 billion saving on a Defense Health Agency IT contract produced no savings: the contract was neither terminated nor reduced.²² GAO could not verify the calculation method for 96 percent of reported grant savings.²²

DOGE's temporary organization ended on July 4, 2026, GAO reported; Trump's order preserved its other authorities.²²² In November 2025, PBS quoted OPM director Scott Kupor saying DOGE might lack centralized leadership while its principles remained alive; reporter Lisa Desjardins interpreted this as work dispersed among agencies.²²¹

On February 22, 2025, the Office of Personnel Management emailed employees requesting five bullet points about their work.²³¹ Musk said the demand was consistent with Trump's instructions and that failure to respond would be treated as a resignation.²⁴ He later threatened termination after a second chance that he said was subject to the President's discretion.²⁵ OPM then told agencies that responses were voluntary.¹

Chuang's opinion recounted efforts to reverse firings of essential personnel fighting bird flu at the Agriculture Department and safeguarding nuclear weapons at the National Nuclear Security Administration.¹ It also recorded Musk's admission at a Cabinet meeting that DOGE had mistakenly canceled USAID funding for Ebola prevention.¹

Cuts Without Decision Standards

Trump's foreign-aid review had the stated goals of assessing efficiency and consistency with U.S. foreign policy.⁵ USAID told GAO that award terminations followed a review involving regional bureaus and final decisions by agency leadership.⁵ It could not provide the requested evidence of that review or the guidance used, even after GAO followed up through August 2026.⁵ GAO found that State had not developed, documented or internally communicated standards for foreign-assistance decisions.⁵ State also failed to give GAO complete agency-wide workforce data during eleven months of requests.⁵ GAO warned that inconsistent, ad hoc decisions could waste resources and increase the risk of legal disputes; State agreed with its recommendations.⁵ GAO was examining claimed cost savings separately, so its award-termination report did not establish DOGE's net financial result.⁵

There was a more favorable result at the consumer bureau.²⁶ In a July 8, 2026 declaration, its chief financial officer said savings, efficiencies and natural attrition had brought costs low enough to maintain current staffing and statutory functions under a $466.8 million fiscal-year funding cap.²⁶ He conditioned that assessment on future spending increases not outpacing the employment cost index.²⁶ That sworn assessment supports the administration's efficiency claim at the bureau; it does not erase the interrupted assistance described in Jackson's opinion.²⁶⁴

Executive Control Was a Winning Defense

Musk defended closing USAID by alleging that it supported politically partisan and anti-American causes.¹ The administration's strongest defense was that the President controls executive functions, including foreign affairs, and that Musk advised authorized officials rather than independently wielding their powers.⁸¹⁷ Appeals courts found that defense likely to succeed.⁸¹⁷

Chuang himself found it more likely than not that authorized USAID officials had taken or ratified the personnel and contract actions, so those actions did not support his Appointments Clause injunction.¹⁸ He found no comparable approval for closing headquarters and taking down the website.¹

On March 28, 2025, a Fourth Circuit majority stayed Chuang's injunction, finding the government likely to succeed on appeal.⁸ It concluded that the evidence did not sufficiently establish Musk's independent exercise of government authority and emphasized that the plaintiffs had not sued USAID or the executive officials who legally controlled its operations.⁸ This was a substantive win for the government's advisory-role defense.⁸

On June 27, 2025, a D.C. Circuit panel stayed Howell's Institute of Peace injunction.¹⁷ The panel concluded that the government was likely to establish that the institute exercised executive foreign-affairs functions and that statutory restrictions on the President's power to remove its board members violated Article II.¹⁷ The full court declined to reconsider that stay on July 24.²⁷ The administration thus regained control despite the district court's judgment against its takeover.¹⁷ Mealey's reported that on September 30, 2026, a divided D.C. Circuit panel granted the institute's emergency motion to halt plans to carve Trump's name into its headquarters facade.²⁸

On June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court gave Trump a further victory in Trump v. Slaughter, striking down the Federal Trade Commission's statutory protection against removal without cause and reinforcing presidential control over officials exercising executive power.²⁹ The Court also overruled Humphrey's Executor to the extent it protected agencies exercising executive power from presidential removal.²⁹ History helps the defense too: Andrew Johnson was acquitted after an impeachment over removing a cabinet officer under the Tenure of Office Act, and the Supreme Court later found that act invalid insofar as it restricted executive removals.³⁰³¹

The USAID and Institute of Peace stays left the final decisions in those cases to further litigation.⁸¹⁷ Impeachment is a separate constitutional process from criminal prosecution, where presidential immunity protects specified official conduct.³²³³ The decisions that strengthen the President's claim to legal control do not undo the termination of aid awards or restore the institute's displaced employees and programs.⁸¹⁷⁵³

What the Later Orders Allowed

In the USAID case, Musk did not have to answer questions under oath, at least not yet: in a March 2026 decision amended on March 5, the Fourth Circuit blocked immediate depositions of Musk, Peter Marocco and Jeremy Lewin until the plaintiffs pursued less intrusive discovery, and left later requests open.³⁴

At the consumer bureau, the D.C. Circuit's April 11, 2025 partial stay allowed the bureau to cut staff after individualized assessments that their jobs were unnecessary to statutory duties.³⁵ On April 28, it restored the injunction's ban on reductions in force.³⁶ In June 2026, the appeals court sent a revised staffing plan to Jackson for review.³⁷ On July 10, Jackson paused that review pending a Senate-confirmed director's review; the parties agreed that the existing injunction would remain in effect and the bureau would continue following it.²⁶³⁸

The Charge Is Abuse of Public Power

The conduct reached beyond these three institutions.³⁹⁴⁰ Musk publicly announced that DOGE was "rapidly shutting down" federal payments he called illegal.³⁹ At six agencies, OPM directed the firing of probationary employees, a district court found; on March 13, 2025, that court ordered the agencies to offer reinstatement to thousands of them.⁴⁰ The Supreme Court stayed that preliminary injunction on April 8, finding the nonprofit plaintiffs' standing allegations insufficient; it did not address the other plaintiffs' claims.⁴¹

The Constitution makes impeachment a means of holding a President accountable for high crimes and misdemeanors, and Hamilton described its subject as "the abuse or violation of some public trust."³³⁴²

Trump created DOGE, publicly placed Musk in charge and claimed his administration had effectively eliminated USAID.²¹ The costs can be counted: about 6,780 aid awards terminated, roughly 500 metric tons of emergency food destroyed, a peace institute of more than 400 employees left with five, and an 83-year-old borrower who died with her loan problem unresolved.⁵⁶³⁴ That is the abuse of public power charged here: using presidential authority to dismantle public institutions and their services, with consequences the efficiency label does not answer.¹³⁴⁵