The website of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) went offline on Saturday without giving any explanation as thousands of furloughs, layoffs, and program shutdowns continued.
This comes after US President Donald Trump froze US-funded foreign aid and development across the world.
Congressional Democrats have been raising concerns saying that Trump may be headed toward ending the USAID as an independent agency and absorbing it into the State Department.
They stressed that Trump has no legal authority to eliminate a congressionally funded independent agency, adding that the work of USAID is important to national security.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut shared a post on X, saying, presidents cannot eliminate congressionally appropriated federal agencies by executive order, adding that Trump was poised to "double down on a constitutional crisis.”
“That’s what a despot — who wants to steal the taxpayers’ money to enrich his billionaire cabal — does,” Murphy said.
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Meanwhile, Elon Musk, while advising Trump, endorsed the posts on his X site, calling for dissolving USAID.
“Live by executive order, die by executive order,” Musk posted Saturday in reference to USAID.
The US president and other congressional Republicans have said that the foreign aid and development programs are wasteful.
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Notably, America is the world's largest donor of humanitarian aid by far as it spends less than one percent of its budget on foreign aid, a smaller share overall than some other countries.
USAID was created by former President John F. Kennedy during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence. Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961, and Kennedy signed that law and an executive order establishing USAID as an independent agency.
(With inputs from agencies)