Members of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) unit were barred from entering a US government agency promoting economic development in Africa 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.
The incident was the latest case of resistance to attempts driven by Trump and Musk to slash the federal workforce by gutting and closing agencies and laying off federal employees.
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 accompanied by Peter Marocco, the acting director of the now-shuttered USAid. Trump is trying to install him in a similar role at USADF.
Staff cited a letter sent by the agency’s chair, Ward Brehm, who was not present at the time, to Doge the previous day making clear that it would not be allowed to enter 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 the Hill, which obtained a copy of the letter.
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.
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.
A USADF official told the Washington Post the terms of its governing statute meant that it did not have to take orders from Marocco.
“It’s explicit in the statute that the agency can only be dissolved by an act of Congress and the president can only be hired and fired by the board,” the official said.
The agency was created by Congress in 1980 to support small businesses and grassroots organisations serving marginalised communities in Africa. Between 2019 and 2023, it handed out grants worth about $141m to 1,050 community enterprises serving 6.2 million people.
