Ilhan Omar claims Trump is a 'dictator' for pausing foreign aid through USAID, claims agency saved her life

Elected Democrats in Congress have been made upset by President Donald Trump's move to place foreign aid agency USAID under the auspices of the State Department and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's management.

Speaking to constituents, Minnesota's Rep. Ilhan Omar said that Trump had "installed himself as the sole power" and that this makes him a dictator. She said they're "trying to take away the Constitutional power of Congress" and that Trump is violating the balance of power. "It is us taxpayers that are being ripped off," she said, by having employees laid off and paid off into early retirement.

"Do you want the executive making the only decisions in this country or do you want the elected representatives that you sent to Washington making those policies? I am exceptionally upset about USAID."

Omar, who lived in a refugee camp in Somalia, gave her personal take on the programs. "I lived in a refugee camp for four years," she said, "as a child surviving civil war. It is the essential programs that USAID provided that kept my family and I fed and safe. It is the resources that so many people around the world rely on. And it is our soft power.

"Often times," she continued, "people interact with our country through the military. That does not create love for us and it certainly does not keep us safe. When the world interacts with Americans through programs that provide essential need they get to see the heart and compassion of the American people."

On Monday, 60 top staffers at the agency were told to go on administrative leave, with pay, over concerns that actions being undertaken by those bureaucrats were "designed to circumvent the president’s executive orders and the mandate from the American people," said Acting USAID's Jason Gray.

Omar's congressional colleague Jamie Raskin also balked at the change to the foreign aid infrastructure. The Maryland rep, with Omar standing behind him, took aim at Elon Musk, whose DOGE office dug into the funds being spent by the agency and found excessive waste, recommending it be trimmed from the budget.

"Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID," Raskin said, "the United States Congress did for the American people. And just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's gonna stop him? We are, we're gonna stop him. Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury, but you don't control the money of the American people, the United States Congress does that under Article 1 of the Constitution.

"And just like the president, who is elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don't have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk," Raskin said. "And that's gonna become real clear."

Rep. Brian Mast spoke to CBS' Margaret Brennan over the weekend and detailed some of the waste that he hoped to see cut from State Department spending.

Rubio, who served as a senator before his appointment to the State Department, spoke with reporters during a trip to El Salvador, saying "My frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress. It's a completely unresponsive agency, it's supposed to respond to policy directives of the State Department and it refuses to do so. Every dollar we spend and every program we fund will be aligned with the national interest of the United States. USAID has a history of sort of ignoring that and deciding that they're somehow a global charity separate from the national interests. These are taxpayer dollars."