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USAID staffers also said more than 600 additional employees had reported being locked out of the aid agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership� the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.� The agency's website vanished Saturday without explanation.

The fast-moving developments come after thousands of USAID employees already have been laid off and programs shut down in the two weeks since President Donald Trump took office. And they show the extraordinary power of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in the Trump administration. Musk announced closing of the agency early Monday, as Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was out of the country on a trip to Central America.

At a stop in El Salvador, Rubio told reporters that USAID was an uncooperative and opaque agency that had failed to answer questions about its funding or operate in line with the Trump administration's policy agenda.

“And that sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct the sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid, writ large, should have,� said Rubio, who added that he was acting director of USAID but also had delegated that authority.

The upheaval follows Trump ordering a freeze on foreign assistance, with widespread effects around the world. The moves by the U.S., the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, have upended decades of policy that put humanitarian, development and security assistance in the center of efforts to build alliances and counter adversaries including China and Russia.

U.S. and international companies have been forced to shut down tens of thousands of programs globally, leading to furloughs, layoffs and financial crises that have left many fearing the aid community has been too damaged by the freeze to resume work even if funding resumes.

Democratic lawmakers have protested the moves, saying Trump lacks constitutional authority to shut down USAID without congressional approval and decrying Musk’s accessing sensitive government-held information through his Trump-sanctioned inspections of federal government agencies and programs.

“This is a corrupt abuse of power that is going on," Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said at a rally with agency supporters and other Democratic lawmakers in front of the USAID building. “As my colleague said, it’s not only a gift to our adversaries, but trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal.�

On Monday, two State Department employees who tried to get into the USAID offices said they were turned away by security guards. Later, uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers and security officers blocked the lobby of the USAID’s headquarters using yellow tape with the words “do not cross.�

The white USAID flag still flew on the empty plaza in front of the agency headquarters Monday morning. Staffers said employees earlier Monday had been able to reach other parts of the agency to clear personal belongings from their offices.

Musk, who's leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with Trump's agreement, said early Monday that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade U.S. aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.�

“It became apparent that it's not an apple with a worm it in,� Musk said in a live session on X Spaces early Monday. “What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.�

“We’re shutting it down,� he said.

Musk, Trump and some Republican lawmakers have targeted the U.S. aid and development agency, which oversees humanitarian, development and security programs in some 120 countries, in increasingly strident terms, accusing it of promoting liberal causes.

Since Trump took office, appointees brought in from his first term such as Peter Marocco placed more than 50 senior officials on leave for investigation without public explanation, gutting the agency’s leadership. When the agency’s personnel chief announced that the allegations against them were groundless and tried to reinstate them, he was placed on leave as well.

Over the weekend, the Trump administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, a current and a former U.S. official said.

Musk’s DOGE earlier carried out a similar operation at the Treasury Department, gaining access to sensitive information including the Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems. The Washington Post reported that a senior Treasury official had resigned over Musk’s team accessing sensitive information.

USAID, meanwhile, has been one of the federal agencies most targeted by the Trump administration in an escalating crackdown on the federal government and many of its programs.

“It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out,� Trump said to reporters about USAID on Sunday night.

The Trump administration freeze on foreign assistance has shut down much of USAID’s aid programs worldwide, including an HIV-AIDS program started by Republican President George W. Bush credited with saving more than 20 million lives in Africa and elsewhere. Aid contractors spoke of millions of dollars in medication and other goods now stuck in port that they were forbidden to deliver.

Other programs that would shut down provided education to schoolgirls in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and monitored an Ebola outbreak spreading in Uganda. A USAID-supported crisis monitoring program, which was credited for helping prevent repeats of the 1980s famine in Uganda that killed up to 1.2 million people, has gone offline.

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Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. AP reporter Farnoush Amiri contributed from Washington.