Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert on Wednesday applauded the Trump administration’s decision to shutter the federal agency that distributes billions of dollars in foreign aid, while Democratic members of Colorado’s congressional delegation called the move “illegal” and warned that eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development endangers national security.

President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday ordered USAID workers across the globe to return from the field to the U.S. in the latest in a series of fast-moving developments affecting the agency, which was established by President John F. Kennedy and put into law by Congress in the late 1990s.

USAID has been among the top federal programs targeted by Elon Musk’s team for spending the Trump administration describes as wasteful and out of alignment with the president’s agenda.

“The more you hear the Democrats screeching about the USAID program, the more you realize that was the crux of their corrupt money-laundering schemes around the world,” said Boebert, the state’s senior elected Republican, in a post on X. “About time we cut it off.”

A day earlier, Boebert said that dismantling USAID was “a step in the right direction” and called for the Trump administration to “dismantle the Department of Education next.” Boebert added a suggestion to follow up by passing a bill she’s sponsored to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Also on Tuesday, Colorado’s U.S. senators, Democrats Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, joined more than three dozen of their partisan colleagues calling on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to provide answers about the agency’s fate.

The Trump administration folded USAID into the State Department over the weekend and named Rubio its acting director, a move the Democratic senators blasted as “illegal and unprecedented.”

“USAID saves lives and is critical to U.S. national security,” Bennet tweeted on Wednesday, along with a link to the senators’ letter.

In the letter to Rubio, the Democrats said they were “deeply concerned by reports of not only growing chaos and dysfunction at the Department of State, but the Administration’s brazen and illegal attempts to destroy the U.S. Agency for International Development.”

The senators contended that abruptly pausing the agency’s operations and recalling its staffers was “causing immediate harm to U.S. national security, placing U.S. citizens at risk, disrupting life-saving work and breaking the U.S. government’s contractual obligations to private sector partners.”

The Associated Press reported that Rubio said Wednesday during a diplomatic visit to Guatemala that the administration plans to evaluate the country’s spending on foreign aid.

“This is not about ending foreign aid,” Rubio said. “It is about structuring it in a way that furthers the national interest of the United States.”

Speaking at a rally in Washington on Wednesday attended by hundreds of USAID supporters, U.S. Rep. Jason Crow, an Aurora Democrat, criticized a move he described in a post on X as “illegal” and “a huge gift to China & Russia.”

“We know that the investment we make in foreign aid is not charity,” said Crow at the rally, according to a video posted to social media.

“We know that extremism and danger breeds off of starvation and hopelessness and fear, and that the investments that we make in the work that you all put in — putting your lives on the line, your families on the line, dedicating your lives to this work — prevent conflict, spread democracy and prevent our young men and women from having to go and fight more needless wars,” Crow said.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Denver Democrat, called events engulfing USAID “shocking” in a statement on Sunday.

Referring to the Trump administration, she said: “They are attacking programs that save millions of lives around the world, including monitoring and stopping deadly disease outbreaks. Elon Musk’s actions are illegal because there is no congressional authority to gut this agency, and my Republican colleagues must stop ceding their responsibilities to an unelected billionaire.”

Gutting USAID, she said, amounts to “abdicating leadership on the global stage, allowing our adversaries to fill the void and weaken our country.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank, a Colorado Springs Republican, issued a written statement on Tuesday broadly supportive of Trump’s approach.

“President Trump has made his priorities clear — to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse within the federal government,” Crank said. “I trust that this Administration is working for the benefit of the American people.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Grand Junction Republican, took a nuanced view of the USAID controversy on Wednesday in an interview with Colorado Politics.

“Let’s see what the facts are, but I will tell you that significant systemic changes to USAID, I think, would require the consent of Congress,” Hurd said. He added that while Trump has the authority to issue executive orders affecting the agency, “This is an institution that was created by Congress, and I think long-term, systemic change would require some action by Congress.”

Hurd said he understands arguments made by USAID supporters that foreign aid has the potential to boost the the U.S.’s standing in the world but also agrees that the agency deserves scrutiny.

“In the abstract, it’s important that we exercise hard power and also smart, strategic soft power as well,” Hurd said.

“Whether or not USAID is the best way to do that, I think, is an open question, and I have some concerns about the way in which those dollars are being spent. In some of the reports, I’ve heard about funding that our government, that our taxpayer dollars, where that money is going to, so I think it’s certainly something that we should be looking at, these programs.”

Hickenlooper also invoked the legislative branch’s role Tuesday in a statement, saying he was alarmed that the Trump administration appeared to be “threatening to shut down entire agencies without transparency or congressional approval.”

“Our founders put checks and balances in place for a reason,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re all for making government more efficient, but violating our laws is not the way to do it. We’ll fight these attempts in the courts, on the Senate floor, and anywhere else we can to defend Colorado and the Constitution.

Added Hickenlooper: “Enough with the chaos and headline chasing. We should be working to solve problems, not create more.”

According to a White House report titled, “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” USAID has provided millions of dollars in aid to DEI initiatives in countries like Serbia, Ireland, Columbia, and Guatemala.

Among them, the White House report said, were the following: 

• $1.5 million for DEI in Serbia’s workplaces 

• $70,000 for production of a DEI musical in Ireland

• $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia

• $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru

• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala