Can the President Get Rid of USAID by Executive Order?

CNN -  The main office of the US Agency for International Development in Washington was unexpectedly closed Monday and workers were emailed shortly after midnight that they should not come in, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.  “At the direction of Agency leadership, the USAID headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C. will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025. Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remotely tomorrow, with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership,” said the email, of which CNN has obtained a copy.

NBC News -   Elon Musk said that he and President Donald Trump were in the process of shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development, escalating their war on the federal bureaucracy and defying the constitutional power of Congress to determine how money is spent. Musk, the head of Trump’s government efficiency initiative, announced the shutdown in the middle of the night in an audio-only appearance on his social media site X. We’re shutting it down,” he said. At another point, he said "we’re in the process” of “shutting down USAID.” 

Musk did not say what legal authority he believed the White House has to shut down a federal agency without congressional approval, or how quickly the administration planned to act. He said the idea had “the full support of the president” and that he had spoken with Trump on the matter several times. 

“With regard to the USAID stuff, I went over [it] with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” he said. “I actually checked with him a few times [and] said, ‘Are you sure?’” he said. He said that Trump responded, “Yes.”  Trump said yesterday that Musk “is doing a good job,” and criticized USAID as “run by a bunch of radical lunatics,” though Trump did not go so far as to say he planned to shut down the agency, with or without congressional agreement...  

Just Security -   President Donald Trump may be preparing to issue an Executive Order (E.O.) purporting to dissolve the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and fold some or all of its functions into the State Department, according to reporting that emerged on Friday, Jan. 31. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), among others, immediately objected that the president does not have the authority to dismantle USAID without an act of Congress. As of Sat., Feb. 1, the USAID website appeared to have gone dark....

Such an action, however, likely would go far beyond the executive branch’s actual legal authority. The bottom line: while some functions delegated from the president to the secretary of state, and in turn to the administrator of USAID, could likely be pulled back by executive action alone, wholesale dissolution of the agency or formal transfer of functions provided by Congress would require legislation. More