The website of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has gone dark, amid rumours that America’s leading office for foreign assistance is being folded into the State Department. This comes as President <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2024/11/13/trump-confirms-marco-rubio-is-his-pick-for-secretary-of-state/" target="_blank">Donald Trump’s</a> upheaval of <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2025/01/24/state-department-freezing-almost-all-foreign-aid-reports-say/" target="_blank">US foreign assistance</a> reverberates across Washington and the world. The Trump administration placed two high-level leaders of the agency on leave, AP reported, for refusing to turn over classified material to members of the Department of Government Efficiency, led by billionaire Elon Musk. When <i>The National</i> tried to gain access to the site on Sunday, we were directed to a blank screen and a clear message: “This site can’t be reached.” The independent agency, which has a budget of more than $50 billion, is responsible for more than half of US foreign assistance. Its blue and red font is ubiquitous in developing nations around the world. President John F Kennedy created the agency in 1961 with the signing of an executive order, which followed an act by Congress stipulating the reorganisation of foreign assistance programmes. Some in Washington question the legality of absorbing the agency, although it remains unclear if that is what is actually happening. “I mean, there's a legal and a practical matter,” said Dave Harden, who served as the mission director of USAID in Gaza and the occupied West Bank from 2013 to 2016. “Taking down the website and merging it in a slimmed down fashion to the State Department, and having it kind of embedded under, like a relatively minor bureau, almost in the State Department is symbolic of, really, an unconstitutional, illegal attempt to remove a statutorily independent federal agency that has been around since 1961.” Mr Trump has made efficiency and responsible spending a cornerstone of his administration. On January 20, he signed an executive order calling for a 90-day pause of all foreign assistance, while a review could be undertaken to determine if spending aligned with his “America First” agenda. US Secretary of State <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2025/01/21/marco-rubio-secretary-of-state/" target="_blank">Marco Rubio</a> followed that up by freezing new funding for nearly all foreign assistance, in a move that sowed confusion and concern among humanitarian aid workers. He later had to grant a waiver for “life-saving humanitarian assistance”, which the State Department described as “core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance”. Mr Rubio’s moves appear at odds with a speech he gave on the Senate floor in 2017, in which he extolled the importance of US foreign aid. “I want to begin by saying today, foreign aid as part of our overall budget is less than 1 per cent of the total amount the US government spends,” he said at the time. Mr Rubio outlined both the economic and national security rational for bolstering foreign aid. “People can't be consumers if they're starving, they can't be consumers if they're dying of HIV-Aids, they can't be consumers if they're dying of malaria, they can't be consumers if they live in an unstable country,” he said. “So, there is an economic rationale for our investment around the world. We are helping people to emerge from poverty and ultimately become members of a global consumer class who buys American goods and services.” Mr Harden fears Mr Trump’s revamping of foreign assistance will ultimately hurt, not help Americans. “This is a structural change in philosophy to America and its place in the world, whether it's the diminishment of soft power, whether it's a collaborative approach to complex problems like, let's say, climate change, or whether it's just a zero-sum trade war with our closest neighbours, allies and trading partners, right? "It's just an ethos that will end badly for the United States and for the American people,” he told <i>The National.</i> The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.