The Trump administration is putting a stick of dynamite under the deep state, and Democrats are apoplectic.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump put nearly all District of Columbia-based employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development on leave. According to Politico, this amounts to about 1,400 people in addition to 600 employees who were put on leave starting Sunday.

This comes after the Trump administration put a 90-day freeze on all foreign assistance.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and entrepreneur Elon Musk—who runs the newly created Department of Government Efficiency—have spent the last few days excoriating USAID for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on useless or downright pernicious projects around the globe.

Rubio explained what the problem with USAID is in an interview with Fox News on Monday.

“They have evolved into an agency that they believes that they’re not even a U.S. government agency, that they are … a global charity, that they take the taxpayer money and they spend it as a global charity, irrespective of whether it is in the national interest or not,” Rubio said.

pic.twitter.com/SV79e3pYTk

He noted that embassies around the world complain that USAID is not only uncooperative but that it undermines the governments the U.S. wants to work with. Rubio said that the agency operates as if its master is the “globe” and not the U.S., which is a departure from the intent of the original statute that created it.

Rubio, who is putting the operation of USAID under his authority, said the goal has been to reform the agency, but right now, there is “rank insubordination.” The attitude of the employees, Rubio said, is that they work for themselves, not the American people or their elected officials.

This is why the administration had to take dramatic steps to temporarily freeze the agency, Rubio explained. It’s a significant blow that’s stunned Democrats who aren’t used to Republicans challenging the Left’s unaccountable administrative machine........

© The Daily Signal