The Department of State orders the closure of USAID missions abroad and the withdrawal of its personnel

The Department of State ordered the closure of all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) overseas missions while ordering the withdrawal of all personnel by Friday in the more than 100 countries where the agency maintained a presence.

The closure of USAID missions outside the United States comes after the Washington, D.C. office was also closed on Monday.

According to CBS News, the agency's new deputy administrator, Pete Marocco, met with Department of State leaders and ordered them to remove all USAID employees from their respective countries around the world.Marocco said that if the Department of State did not do so, the U.S. Army would evacuate the personnel.

According to a Congressional Research Service report, the agency is embroiled in controversy and has over 10,000 employees, about two-thirds of whom serve overseas.

For now, most USAID workers have been furloughed; however, each agency office was ordered to leave a "core team" to help identify programs to be closed.

Both moves come just as President Donald Trump, in tune with Elon Musk, director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is taking steps to shut down the agency for good, accusing it of squandering the funds granted on issues that are banal, ideologized or outside the humanitarian aid that the agency should be looking out to provide.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed he is the agency's acting director and commented that his "frustrations with USAID goes back to my time in Congress."

"It's a completely unresponsive agency, it's supposed to respond to policy directives of the state department and it refuses to do so," Rubio said.

Elon Musk was much tougher, calling the agency "criminal" and waging a public crusade against it for how it spends taxpayer money.

Critics of the Trump administration claim that USAID is a necessary agency that provides humanitarian aid around the world, including disaster relief programs, medical and health care, and emergency food. According to the Congressional Research Service, in fiscal year 2023, the agency managed more than $40 billion in appropriations, which is less than 1 percent of the overall federal budget.

However, critics contend that the agency adopted a noxious political culture, squandering money on issues such as IED programs in Europe, contraceptive methods in foreign countries, dangerous laboratory experiments in China, abortions, LGBT activism and many other controversial financings that go outside the bounds of humanitarian aid and are prompting calls for a general audit.