‘Little agency that could’ cheered for act of resistance against Trump and Musk
‘Little agency that could’ cheered for act of resistance against Trump and Musk
Workers at US African Development Foundation refused to let Doge operatives enter, though they later gained access
Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a small, independent federal agency promoting economic development in Africa on Wednesday after a tense standoff with federal staff they had been sent to fire.
Workers at the US African Development Foundation (USADF), which Donald Trump has ordered to be closed, refused to allow Doge operatives to enter after they arrived at its Washington headquarters on Wednesday afternoon. But the Doge team returned on Thursday, accompanied by agents with the US Marshals Service and Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered US Agency for International Development, according to a government official familiar with the situation. This time, they were able to gain access to the building, the official said, and no staff was present.
Later on Thursday afternoon, the agency’s president, Ward Brehm, filed a lawsuit accusing Doge, Marocco and the White House of “ignor[ing] statutory requirements” and “pretend[ing] that leadership of the agency does not exist” in an attempt to “kill” the USADF. According to the complaint, Brehm says the Doge team attempted to access the agency using “false pretenses” and “bullying tactics”.
“If Doge achieves its goal of shutting down the USADF, we will feel the ripple effects across the African continent and in the United States,” Brehm said in a statement on Thursday.
Scores of legal challenges have been lodged against the sweeping project to upend the government bureaucracy, producing a spate of court rulings declaring the halting of aid illegal and ordering the reinstatement of fired federal workers.
In Wednesday’s episode, workers instructed a security guard at USADF’s headquarters to deny the Doge team access when they arrived with Marocco. Trump is trying to install him in a similar role at USADF.
Staff cited a letter sent by Brehm, who was not present at the time, to a Doge subordinate the previous day making clear that his team would not be allowed to access the agency’s offices in his absence.
“In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence,” he wrote, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by the Guardian.
Brehm also declined to cooperate with Marocco unless he was officially appointed to the agency’s board.
“I will look forward to working with Mr Marocco after such time that he is nominated for a seat on the board and his nomination is confirmed by the Senate,” Brehm wrote.
“Until these legal requirements are met, Mr Marocco does not hold any position or office with USADF, and he may not speak or act on the foundation’s behalf.”
About 30 workers were in the building when Marocco arrived with a Doge team – described as young men wearing backpacks – intent on carrying out firings based on an executive order issued by Trump on 19 February, the Washington Post reported.
The standoff, led by one of the smallest government agencies, with only about 50 employees, has been cheered by government officials as a mighty act of resistance against Trump and Musk’s war on the federal bureaucracy.
“This is the little agency that could,” the official said.
Trump’s order declared USADF and three other agencies – the Presidio Trust, the Inter-American Foundation (IAF) and the United States Institute of Peace – as “unnecessary” and subject to elimination.
Wednesday’s standoff followed a similar exchange at the IAF’s headquarters earlier this week.
The workers’ defiant stand comes after Democrats publicly condemned the attempted dismantling of the agency as illegal.
“Any attempt to unilaterally dismantle the USADF through executive action violates the law and exceeds the constitutional limits of executive authority,” Democratic members of the House of Representatives’ foreign affairs committee wrote in a 24 February letter to Trump.
Democrats have argued that Doge lacks the authority to eliminate an independent entity created by Congress, and that attempts to install Marocco as the acting chair of USADF and IAF are unlawful.
The official familiar with the situation said that unlike other federal agencies such as USAid, USADF is a “congressionally chartered corporation” operated by a board of directors whose members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
“It’s expressed in the statute that you can’t dissolve ADF except by an act of Congress,” the official said. “The president [of ADF] doesn’t take orders from anyone except for the board. The president [of ADF] isn’t even authorized to take orders from the president of the United States.”
The agency, created by Congress in 1980 to support small businesses and grassroots organisations serving marginalised communities in Africa, has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support. Between 2019 and 2023, it handed out grants worth about $141m to 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people.
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