Musk has called the agency “evil” and a “criminal organization,” though the fact that USAID was investigating his company may suggest ulterior motivations for the billionaire’s vitriol. It’s unclear what the Starlink probe’s status is right now.

Killing USAID by contrast is, as experts have noted, a gift to Russia and China. It's a gift to Russia because the current largest line item the USAID budget goes to Ukraine, which has been as devastated by the Russian invasion as many of those European countries were by the Nazis in 1945.

It’s beyond repair,” the billionaire adviser to the President said of the agency that administers billions of dollars in global humanitarian, development, and security assistance.