Limiting press access, usurping congressional authority to create agencies and allocate funds, ignoring the courts, tying disaster relief to a narrow political agenda, ending international cooperation and humanitarian assistance — this is nothing more and nothing less than an all-out assault on American democracy.
in fourteen hundred and forty-six days
this will be past
anguish and outrage
heartsickness and shame
relics to lay by
against future need
in fourteen hundred and forty-six days
we will move on
gathering shattered shards of
lives torn asunder
rising from the ash heap to
rebuild what we can
in fourteen hundred and forty-six days
we will stand side by side
taking the hand
of friend and stranger
promising truth and
practicing compassion
in fourteen hundred and forty-six days
we will turn the page
showing mercy where
none has been shown
foregoing vengeance
lest its lure ruin us
in fourteen hundred and forty-six days
we will look to the future
mourning the damage
that cannot be undone
but believing the arc
does bend toward justice
Shame! Shame! Shame!
This is what we are eliminating: “USAID’s Food for Peace (FFP) Program works for a world free of hunger and poverty, where people live in dignity, peace, and security. FFP and its partners share one mission: to reduce hunger and malnutrition and assure that people everywhere have enough food at all times for healthy, productive lives.” The cost is likely to be tens of millions of lives.
WASHINGTON — Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, according to a notice distributed to them, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
USAID staffers said they also tracked more than 600 employees who reported being locked out of the 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.”
Two government employees who tried to gain access to the USAID offices in the building on Monday morning said they were turned away by security guards, who told them the offices were open but people could not go in. Later in the morning, uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers blocked the lobby of the USAID’s headquarters using yellow tape with the words “do not cross.”
The developments come after Musk, who’s leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with the Republican president’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.”