One of the smallest government agencies stood strong this week, blocking a team of Elon Musk’s DOGE goons from entering their office and firing them.
Staffers at U.S. African Development Foundation, which has a budget of just $40 million or so, for over an hour Wednesday fended off a team of young men demanding entry, The Washington Post reported.
The group, which was joined by Pete Marocco, the State Department official tasked with slashing foreign aid, threatened to return the following day with U.S. marshals, unnamed USADF employees told the Post.
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A snippet of the tense standoff was caught on video and posted to X by a ProPublica reporter with permission of the USADF staff involved. It shows two backpack-wearing young men facing off with older men in suits.
The DOGE youngsters showed up around noon on Wednesday, while the agency’s approximately 30 employees were working in the office, according to the Post.
A security officer called the office to let them know that two “very young men” were asking to be let in. The pair offered the explanation that they were USADF staff who did not have key cards.
The staff in the office told security not to let them up, as the description matched with DOGE staffers who had already shown up at the agency to make an introduction.
USADF officials told the Post that they were aware that DOGE was aiming to dismantle their agency and felt it was their final chance from blocking Musk’s goons from accessing their system. A USADF official with firsthand knowledge of the purpose of the meeting confirmed that it was to fire the employees.
USADF’s chief, Ward Brehm, was not in the office on Wednesday. But employees were aware of a letter he had sent to DOGE making the team aware that he was not allowing ad-hoc meetings without his attendance.
“In my absence, I have specifically instructed the staff of USADF to adhere to our rules and procedure of not allowing any meetings of this type without my presence,” he wrote.
With the young men threatening to call the U.S. marshals, the security team let them into the building. However, when they reached USADF’s floor, nobody would let them into the office.
The baby-faced DOGE staffers proceeded to wander the halls—while USADF’s employees kept working at their desks—until they finally left around an hour after arriving at the building.
As they departed, though, they threatened to return on Thursday with U.S. marshals. Around midday on Thursday, the same ProPublica reporter who a shared a video of the confrontation, Brett Murphy, posted that DOGE and Marocco had returned.
So far, it’s not clear whether the redoubled effort was successful.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Musk has railed against foreign aid and pushed to end many programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
USADF is much smaller, with just around 50 employees. Since being established by an legislation in 1980, it has sought to invest in and otherwise support activities that benefit underserved African communities.
Unlike other of the foreign aid organizations targeted by Musk, the agency is operated by a board of directors, who oversee its CEO and president—a role currently filled by Brehm.
A White House spokesperson told the Post, “Entitled bureaucrats like Ward Brehm are only demonstrating why independent agencies must be held accountable to officials elected by the American people.”
An USADF official told the Post that they don’t have to take orders from Marocco because it’s “explicit in the statute that the agency can only be dissolved by an act of Congress.”
