Officials working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency sought access to the Treasury Department payment system to stop money from flowing to the U.S.

DOGE’s efforts to stop USAID payments undermine assurances that the department gave to federal lawmakers in a Tuesday letter that it sought only to review the integrity of the payments and had “read-only access” to the system as part of an audit process.

The US government’s primary foreign aid organization is losing the vast majority of its staff, forcing the agency’s lifesaving work to screech to a halt.

President Trump established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), appointing Elon Musk as its leader. DOGE aims to improve government efficiency and reduce waste by modernizing technology and software.

The largest U.S. government worker union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

By Jonathan Landay, Patricia Zengerle and Erin Banco WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration plans to keep fewer than 300 staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development out of the agency's worldwide total of more than 10,