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Elon Musk's Legacy Is Cruelty and Death
Of all the actions Musk and President Trump set in motion, nothing will hurt more people around the world than their dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Jun 07, 2025
Elon Musk is leaving the White House — and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. But of all the actions Musk and President Trump set in motion, nothing will hurt more people around the world than their dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
By making disease-stemming drugs, clean water, and food available to millions, USAID has probably saved more lives worldwide than any entity in history.
Since 2000, USAID’s programs have prevented the deaths of 58 million people from tuberculosis, 25 million from HIV/AIDS, and over 11 million from malaria. It’s given 70 million people access to safe drinking water and, working in concert with global vaccine initiatives, helped to nearly eradicate polio.
As the main funder of global health interventions, USAID served as a bulwark against diseases that don’t halt at national borders. Its programs identified emerging epidemics and minimized the spread of drug-resistant diseases that threaten Americans as well.
Although it’s commonly assumed to be much higher, foreign aid is just 1 percent of federal spending, so cutting it won’t begin to balance the budget. So instead Trump and Musk attacked USAID by slandering it, calling it a “criminal agency” (Musk) that’s “run by a bunch of radical lunatics” (Trump).
This, of course, was a lie. USAID was known for having rigorous oversight, with 275 investigators and auditors in its watchdog office.
Most USAID funding in low-income countries targets disease prevention, economic growth, and disaster relief. But DOGE and Trump made staggering false claims, like Trump’s that USAID was sending “$50 million to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”
As a result, USAID was the first casualty in the Trump administration’s struggle to make the federal government subservient not to the Constitution but to one man. And Musk — the world’s richest man, whose income last year exceeded USAID’s entire budget — and his fellow billionaire President Trump withdrew medicines and food from millions of the world’s most vulnerable people. Afterward, Musk gleefully announced that they’d fed “USAID into the wood chipper.”
I’ve followed USAID since seeing its economic and agricultural programs in the African Sahel in the 1980s, and I’ve spent 40 years heading nonprofits working to provide clean drinking water internationally.
No organization I’ve led has received USAID funding, but over the years I’ve known scores of USAID staff who were hard working and conscientious about spending U.S. tax dollars. Trump owes an apology to USAID’s employees, now indiscriminately fired or coerced into early retirement.
Every federal agency can stand being streamlined. But what happened to USAID wasn’t reform — it was destruction. “They didn’t know what they were doing or care to find out, but I came to realize that cruelty is their purpose,” one senator told me in April. “Cruelty is how they think they demonstrate power.”
It’s fair to say American voters didn’t ask for this. USAID went unmentioned during the 2024 presidential campaign — and bipartisan majorities continue to say they oppose gutting the agency.
American entities which partnered with USAID — including corporations, faith-based organizations, foundations, universities, and civic groups like Rotary International — will continue to raise their own private funds. But by themselves they can’t replace USAID’s leadership abroad.
Now that Trump and Musk have eviscerated the agency, millions will suffer. The Center for Global Development estimates that U.S. foreign assistance has been saving 3 million lives annually. The journal Nature calculates that the loss of U.S. global health funding alone could result in 25 million additional deaths over the next 15 years.
For Americans — including Trump voters — feeling queasy over what’s been carried out in their name, it’s not too late to convey to Congress your support for life-saving foreign assistance.
Regardless of how they voted, Americans should be proud of how their foreign aid has reduced worldwide poverty, sickness, hunger, and thirst — all for 1 percent of the federal budget. The future cost to the United States, if it abandons its leadership in global health and development, will prove incalculable.
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'Another Aid Massacre': Israeli Military Kills Dozens More Near Privatized Gaza Food Site
"It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food," said the United Nations secretary-general.
Jun 03, 2025
Israeli forces on Tuesday gunned down dozens of people, including children, close to a privatized aid distribution site in southern Gaza, marking the third consecutive day that Israel's military has opened fire on Palestinians seeking food amid an increasingly dire humanitarian emergency.
A doctor at nearby Nasser Hospital, which is barely functioning and unequipped to handle an influx of patients, toldThe New York Times that the facility received 19 of those killed in Tuesday's massacre. Most of the victims, according to Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, were children between the ages of 10 and 13, "many with gunshot wounds to the head or chest."
The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported that "the incident shocked local residents and activists, who describe it as 'another aid massacre' targeting defenseless civilians."
"It is one of the deadliest incidents since the beginning of aid allocation in the southern Gaza Strip," the newspaper observed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that its soldiers opened fire near the aid site operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but claimed "shots were directed near individual suspects who advanced toward the troops." The Times reported that an IDF spokesperson "declined to explain the nature of the perceived threat."
Testimony from witnesses, health officials, and humanitarian workers on the ground contradicted the IDF's account of limited firing at "individual suspects."
According toThe Associated Press, "Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people."
AP went on to cite several Palestinians who witnessed Tuesday's massacre:
Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the shooting started around 4 am in the city's Flag Roundabout area, around one kilometer (1,000 yards) away from the aid distribution hub. He said he saw several people killed or wounded.
Neima al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, gave a similar account.
"There were many martyrs and wounded," she said, saying the shooting by Israeli forces was "indiscriminate."
She said she managed to reach the hub but returned empty-handed. "There was no aid there," she said. "After the martyrs and wounded, I won't return," she said. "Either way we will die."
Rasha al-Nahal, another witness, said "there was gunfire from all directions." She said she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road. She said she also found no aid when she arrived at the distribution hub, and that Israeli forces "fired at us as we were returning."
At least 27 people were killed by Israeli forces Tuesday morning, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The deadly incident occurred after IDF troops killed more than 30 people and wounded dozens of others near the privatized aid distribution site on Sunday and Monday.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Monday that "it is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food."
"I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable," Guterres said. "Israel has clear obligations under international humanitarian law to agree to and facilitate humanitarian aid. The unimpeded entry of assistance at scale to meet the enormous needs in Gaza must be restored immediately. The U.N. must be allowed to work in safety and security under conditions of full respect of humanitarian principles."
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Critics Say RFK's MAHA Report Offers 'Half-Baked Finger-Pointing' Instead of Real Policy Solutions
"To be meaningful, the findings of the report must translate into concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America's farmers and consumers."
May 23, 2025
Hours after Republicans in the U.S. House passed a budget reconciliation package Thursday that would slash hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare and federal food assistance programs for low-income Americans, the nation's top health agency released a highly anticipated report on chronic diseases in children—one that had nothing to say about the impacts those cuts will have on millions of children and instead offered a litany of complaints about families' lifestyles, vaccines, and "overmedicalization," with few solutions.
Led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the so-called "Make America Healthy Again" Commission released The MAHA Report, urging the federal government to "act decisively" to reverse "the childhood chronic disease crisis by confronting its root causes—not just its symptoms."
But longtime campaigners in the food safety realm said that while the report's partial focus on the wide use of pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals—many of which are banned in Europe—is a positive step, the document gave little indication that Kennedy and other Trump administration officials plan to listen to scientists who warn that these chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, and immune function.
As Civil Eatsreported in April, dozens of GOP lawmakers wrote to Kennedy and other commission members including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, warning that a push to limit pesticides in food was being pushed by "activist groups promoting misguided and sometimes malicious policies masquerading as health solutions."
"Protecting children's health and building a healthy food system must trump pesticide corporations' profits," said George Kimbrell, legal director of Center for Food Safety, in a Thursday statement. "Policy and governance must be based on sound science and reject fearmongering and lobbying influence alleging that these toxins are needed for a healthy food system or agricultural economy."
The report also includes numerous mentions of health guidelines and standards in Europe, but Zeldin was clear in a call with reporters as the document was released that ensuring the health of American children "cannot happen through a European mandate system that stifles growth."
The commission suggested that U.S. farmers will continue to use 300 millions of pounds of glyphosate and 70 million pounds of atrazine per year—herbicides that, respectively, have been the subject of thousands of lawsuits filed by cancer patients and contaminate the drinking water of 40 million Americans.
While the World Health Organization has classified glyphosate as a probable carcinogen and numerous countries have banned the weed-killer, the MAHA Commission said "human studies are limited" regarding glyphosate and similar products. The report allowed that "a selection of research studies... have noted a range of possible health effects."
Even that language was enough to anger agricultural groups and the Republican politicians who are allied with them, with the American Soybean Association accusing the commission of "glaring misinformation and anti-farmer findings" on Friday.
Kimbrell said the report "falls woefully short of providing any next steps in how the government is going to stop this health epidemic from continuing."
"To be meaningful, the findings of the report must translate into concrete actions that truly advance a healthier, more sustainable food system for America's farmers and consumers," he said.
The report also makes no mention of factory farming and its link to antibiotic resistance via corporate farmers' widespread antibiotic use; the leading causes of death for children in the U.S., gun violence and car accidents; and dental cavities, which is one of the most common chronic health problems in children.
Kennedy has spearheaded an effort to remove fluoride from public drinking water, saying in the report that exposure to high levels of fluoride is linked to low IQ in children. Widespread community water fluoridation has been linked to a sharp decrease in tooth decay among children, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hailing the practice, now used in 60% of the country, as a major public health achievement.
Medical organizations have said concerns about fluoridation raised by Kennedy and others are unfounded.
During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy dismissed the idea that healthcare should be a human right—falsely claiming Americans prefer the for-profit health insurance industry to government-run systems that have been shown to be far less costly and have better outcomes. The report also makes no mention of the harms of tying healthcare to profit, even as it compared U.S. life expectancy and healthcare costs unfavorably to those in other wealthy nations.
In a video posted to social media, dietician Jessica Knurick emphasized that Kennedy is right to point out the nation's "chronic disease problem."
"But he gets the causes and the solutions completely wrong," she said. "His causes are not evidence-based and they play into the idea of scientific and regulatory corruption to erode trust in science. And his solutions distract from evidence-based solutions that could actually help while actively undermining public health."
With the MAHA Report focusing heavily on sedentary lifestyles and low-income people's reliance on ultraprocessed, inexpensive food, Food and Water Watch (FWW) senior policy analyst Rebecca Wolf said the document amounts to "half-baked finger-pointing that blames the sick."
"Improving public health in America cannot happen without reigning in corporate control. It is a grave mistake to exclude Big Ag from culpability," said Wolf. "Any administration serious about public health must strictly regulate the corporations putting our food and water supplies at risk."
Policy solutions that went ignored in the report, said Wolf, include:
- Closing the "Generally Recognized as Safe" loophole that allows corporations to self-certify the safety of food additives without Food and Drug Administration approval;
- Canceling plans to roll back existing regulations for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS;
- Fully funding and staffing food safety agencies, which have been slashed by the Trump administration; and
- Stopping state legislatures from passing laws called "Cancer Gag Act legislation" by opponents, which would limit pesticide manufacturer liability in health-related lawsuits.
"The report is right to highlight the health impacts of ultraprocessed foods, microplastics, PFAS, and pesticides," said FWW, "but falls short of directing real policy recommendations capable of reigning in corporate polluters."
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