USAID Ordered to Shred or Burn Classified Documents in Alarming Move

Staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has targeted to be shut down, were given an order Tuesday that seems to violate federal law.

The few USAID employees remaining after Trump’s mass firings were directed on Tuesday to shred and burn classified and personnel documents remaining at the office’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, Devex reports.

“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” read an email from Erica Y. Carr, the acting executive secretary of USAID, noting that this would be an “all day” event beginning Tuesday morning. USAID employees were ordered to label the burn bags with the word “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO” with permanent markers.

The shredding reportedly began at 9:30 a.m. at USAID headquarters, and was a shock to the union representing foreign service employees at USAID, the American Foreign Service Association. A spokesperson for AFSA told Devex that the union was “alarmed by reports that USAID has directed the destruction of classified and sensitive documents that may be relevant to ongoing litigation regarding the termination of USAID employees and the cessation of USAID grants.”

The spokesperson added that there are “strict requirements for the retention of official records, particularly those that may be relevant to legal proceedings” under the Federal Records Act of 1950 and its resulting regulations.

“Furthermore, the unlawful destruction of federal records could carry serious legal consequences for anyone directed to act in violation of the law,” the spokesperson added.

Kel McClanahan, a national security attorney, told ProPublica that the shreddings were illegal under the Federal Records Act. McClanahan filed an “unauthorized disposition complaint” with the National Archives and asked them to “take immediate measures to stop this destruction of vast quantities of federal records.”

The Trump administration has thoroughly gutted USAID in its near-complete effort to destroy the agency, having canceled 83 percent of its programs as of Monday. These ideologically motivated cuts will have devastating, deadly impacts throughout the world, including a rise in multiple diseases and other health disasters. And now, in their misguided goal, they are breaking more laws.

JD Vance is desperate to shore up support among House Republicans for a spending bill that will keep the government open for the next seven months—and to do so, he revealed that Donald Trump doesn’t actually intend to allow them to spend all of the money Congress allocates.

During a meeting with House Republicans Tuesday, just hours ahead of the vote on the bill, Vance warned that Republicans would take the blame if the government had to shut down, according to three people in the room who spoke to Politico.

Vance tried to make a desperate plea for unity. “We already lost one vote, we can’t lose another,” he said.

The holdout Vance is referring to is Republican Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky.

Massie pledged Sunday that he wouldn’t support the continuing resolution. “Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DOGE has found?” he wrote on X.

“We were told the CR in December would get us to March when we would fight. Here we are in March, punting again!” Massie added.

To be clear, the Department of Government Efficiency has yet to publish any actual evidence of fraud or abuse. Instead the group has claimed that they’ve canceled droves of government contracts—while a closer look reveals that many were already canceled or are worth a lot less than DOGE claims. But Massie’s conviction, even if mistaken, seems unshakeable. He was the only Republican who didn’t support a GOP budget resolution in February, which would necessitate massive cuts to social services, including the very popular Medicaid.

That bill had passed by a very slim margin of 217–215. Clearly, Vance is concerned about a repeat performance, this time with new defections. So, the vice president tried to meet concerns such as Massie’s by downplaying the actual utility of the government spending bill he hoped to rally Republicans behind.

Vance promised that Trump would “ensure allocations from Congress are not spent on things that harm the taxpayer,” according to Notus’s Reese Gorman.

Vance said Trump would do this under “Section II,” but it’s likely that he meant Article 2 of the Constitution, which the Trump administration has claimed gives the executive the power of impoundment, or a line-item veto of congressionally-appropriated spending.

But Vance’s promise is really a pipe dream: Congress legally retains power of the purse, granted by the Constitution, and the president’s purported powers are severely limited by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

If it seems a little outrageous that even with control of the House, Senate, and White House, the Republicans must openly admit that they are working to pass laws they have no intention of actually enforcing, that’s because it is. Rather than forge actual party unity behind his agenda, Trump wants the power to act unilaterally—leaving Vance to bully party members into saying “yes” to Trump doing whatever he wants when it comes to federal funding.

Health care professionals are torching Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s response to a slew of measles cases popping up across the country.

The health and human services secretary suggested Monday that a poor diet could have been behind the death of a West Texas child who contracted measles.

“It’s very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person,” Kennedy told The New York Times, adding that there is “a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen.”

Kennedy’s comment, however, belied the fact that the most vulnerable populations to die from measles are unvaccinated children.

“To be crystal clear: 1. Measles is a nasty disease,” an epidemiologist under the handle @HealthNerd posted on BlueSky. “2. You cannot treat measles with antibiotics or cod liver oil. 3. The measles vaccine is very safe and highly effective, as shown by the ELIMINATION OF THE DISEASE IN THE US FOR 25 YEARS. 4. RFK Jr. is an ignorant fool.”

So far, two individuals who contracted measles were reported to have died this year. Both of them were unvaccinated.

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie slammed Kennedy’s blasé attitude toward public health as “eugenicism.”

The highly contagious virus has no cure, so doctors say that the best way to remedy the disease is simply to get inoculated against it and never contract measles in the first place. But vaccination rates have dipped in several states due to conspiracy theories that vaccines are linked to autism.

In Gaines County—where the first victim lived—the measles vaccination rate among kindergartners is just 82 percent, reported The Atlantic. That’s far below the 95 percent threshold required to maintain herd immunity against pathogens.

And Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist himself—has so far refused to encourage the public to receive the jab.

In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy claimed that local Texas doctors were “getting very, very good results” by treating their measles patients with steroids and cod liver oil.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Only 14 Democratic representatives signed a letter calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine activist and green card holder disappeared by the Trump administration for his organizing at Columbia University.

“We are horrified by the recent illegal abduction and now indefinite detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a U.S. legal permanent resident—by Department of Homeland Security agents, and we unequivocally demand his immediate release from DHS custody,” the letter reads, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the letter continues. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing.... We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country.”

Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan, Nydia Velázquez, Delia Ramirez, lhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, Summer Lee, Ayanna Pressley, Lateefah Simon, Al Green, Gwen Moore, André Carson, Nikema Williams, and James McGovern signed the letter.

The absence of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was noted given her previous criticism of Khalil’s arrest, but her chief of staff said she was waiting on one detail from Khalil’s legal team, when signing for the letter was closed. He added that she would sign the letter if it was still open.*

In the end, only 14 congressional Democrats felt compelled enough to publicly support Khalil.

*This piece was updated to reflect Ocasio-Cortez’s stance on the letter.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has joined the attacks on Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestine Columbia University activist detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but can’t name any crimes allegedly committed by Khalil.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Johnson was directly asked what crimes Khalil committed to warrant his arrest, and gave a meandering answer calling the protest organizer a terrorist and attacking university officials for “refusing to take control” of the campus.

“If you are on a student visa and you’re an American, and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re gonna arrest your—tail, and we’re gonna send you home where you belong,” Johnson said.

There’s just one big problem with that explanation: Khalil doesn’t have a student visa, he has a green card. It’s telling that Johnson couldn’t name a law that was broken but gave a full-throated defense of ICE’s detention of Khalil and President Trump’s decision to target a legal permanent resident of the United States (with a pregnant, U.S. citizen wife) for deportation. It’s an attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution and the right to free speech.

Only a select few Democrats have come out to condemn Khalil’s detention, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some members of the House Progressive Caucus. Considering that Trump promises to conduct more arrests and further infringe on a basic American right, with the full support of his fellow Republicans, the entire Democratic Party should be sounding the alarm and pulling out all of the stops.