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Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that he is now the acting director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Rubio told this to reporters while taking questions from the press in El Salvador. 

He said his frustration with USAID goes back to his time in Congress, describing the agency as “completely unresponsive.” It is supposed to respond to policy directives at the State Department “and it refuses to do so,” the secretary said, adding: “there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be a part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy.” 

During his confirmation hearing, Rubio recalled, he said that “every dollar that we spend and every program that we fund will be aligned with the national interests of the United States, and USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest.” 

“These are taxpayer dollars. And so I’m very troubled by these reports that they have been unwilling to cooperate with people who are asking simple questions about what does this program do, who gets the money, who are our contractors, who’s funded,” Rubio said. “And that sort of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct the sort of mature and serious review that I think foreign aid at large should have.” 

“We’re spending taxpayer money here. These are not donor dollars,” Rubio continued. “These are taxpayer dollars, and we owe the American people the assurances that every dollar that we are spending abroad is being spent on something that furthers our national interests. And so far, a lot of the people who work at USAID have simply refused to cooperate.” 

“I am the acting director,” he confirmed when asked if he is now in charge. “Our goal was to allow our foreign aid with the national interest. It has been 20 or 30 years. They have tried to reform it. That will not continue.” 

USAID staffers were instructed earlier Monday to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters after Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency. Thousands of USAID employees had already been laid off and programs shut down. 

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates. The Associated Press contributed to this report.