You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Democrats Protest Outside USAID Headquarters as Trump Seeks to Dismantle Agency

HeadlineFeb 04, 2025

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has named Trump ally and State Department official Pete Marocco as acting deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, after the Trump administration placed staff members on leave and took the agency’s website and social media accounts offline. NBC reports that under the first Trump administration, Marocco’s efforts to consolidate power and slash funding drove officials to write a dissent memo that ultimately pushed him out of office. Marocco was also reportedly among the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

On Monday a group of House and Senate Democrats rallied outside USAID’s shuttered headquarters in Washington, D.C., and were denied entry to the building. This is Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Rep. Ilhan Omar: “This is what the beginning of dictatorship looks like. When you gut the Constitution and you install yourself as the sole power, that is how dictators are made. What Trump and Elon and all of their cronies are trying to do is take away the constitutional power of Congress.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top