Top DOGE Official Promoted to Leadership Role at USAID

Jeremy Lewin, a senior official in Elon Musk’s foreign aid slashing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has been promoted to a leadership role at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—the very federal agency he helped gut earlier this year, the Associated Press reported. Lewin, who has played an integral role in DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts at multiple federal agencies, will become the second DOGE official to gain a top job at an agency that he had previously helped to destroy. Trump’s “first buddy,” billionaire DOGE boss Elon Musk, has received considerable blowback for his chainsaw-wielding ways. However, Trump’s cronies are only getting more integrated into the federal agencies they want to cut. One of Trump’s political appointees, Pete Marocco, who is serving as deputy head of USAID, disclosed the hire in an email to staff obtained by the AP this week. The move follows Marocco’s efforts, via DOGE, to gut the agency by cutting 83% of its contracts—while shoving the remaining programs under the State Department. In his email, Morocco wrote that Lewin will serve as the State Department’s director of foreign assistance and as deputy administrator for policy and programs at USAID—as well as the agency’s chief operating officer.