Thanks to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, and the stroke of a pen by President Donald Trump, the USAID office was shuttered this week in a bombshell announcement that rocked Washington D.C.

According to the Daily Mail, the wasteful government agency apparently has a history of threatening those who attempted to defund the agency, including Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who had her own bizarre experience.

The agency reportedly "stonewalled" her when she tried to investigate its cash flow last year, setting off even more red flags.

The Iowa senator said USAID used intimidation tactics and threatened her staff when they attempted to get into the numbers.

What's going on?

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Ernst recalled her undesirable experiences with the heads of USAID.

"They said, 'No, you can't look at it. You're not going to look at these contracts. You don't need access to it, so we're not going to let you see it,'" she recalled.

The senator called the situation at the time "crazy," also recalling that USAID threatened to bring legal action against her and her team if they pursued further investigation.

They even responded back with a letter that was basically threatening us by saying, 'Well, if we allow you access to this information, it gets into the wrong hands, we can sue you,'' the Republican said.

'They were trying to scare us away from continuing to dig into this,' she added.

USAID might have started with good intentions, but over the years, many have called out its wasteful spending, and until recently, nothing has ever been done about it.

The Daily Mail noted:

Originally, USAID was established in 1961 to award U.S. taxpayer cash to countries for important education, infrastructure, health and other projects. It has been credited for helping developing countries get vital resources like medicine and food.

But as Musk's DOGE team began investigating the department's expenditures, they were aghast at what they found and decided to 'shut it down.'

In a series of X posts prior to shutting it down, Musk called the agency "rotten" and noted the levels of corruption and wasteful spending were off the charts.

Reorganizing

While USAID hasn't been completely disassembled, its current status is on hold.

Musk, and the rest of the DOGE team have worked overtime to dig in to the books to see what went wrong and exactly how bad it is.

The intention, presumably, is to relaunch the outfit but in a significantly trimmed-back fashion.

Only time will tell how much fat they manage to trim and how mad the ones with their hands in the cookie jar end up.