SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
foreign aid
Journalists Set the Record Straight After Musk Claims ‘Not a Single' Child Died From DOGE’s USAID Cuts
"Come with me on a reporting trip," said New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. "You'll see the dying children themselves."
Jun 29, 2026
As Elon Musk continues to claim that "not a single" child has died as a result of his foreign aid cuts at the beginning of the second Trump administration, journalists—including ones who witnessed the consequences of the policy firsthand—are correcting the record.
Since being called out by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who cited a journal's projection that 4.5 million children under 5 could die by 2030 as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) sudden termination of most of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) programs—including an 88% cut to children's health aid awards—last year, the newly minted trillionaire has repeatedly asserted that the claim that he is responsible for the deaths of kids is "a total lie."
"There is not even a single dead child!" Musk wrote on his social media platform X last Monday. "If there were, it would be worldwide headline news!"
Multiple journalists have been quick to respond that, in fact, the deaths of children and other people directly attributed to the termination of USAID programs by the agency he headed have been widely documented by major news outlets.
"Independent analyses estimate that your actions to dismantle USAID and drastically reduce lifesaving foreign aid have already killed 700,000 people," wrote Atul Gawande, the former USAID global health chief and longtime New Yorker writer, who cited models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols.
In a lengthy thread posted on Thursday, Gawande cited nearly two-dozen examples in which news outlets named people who died as a direct result of cuts to health programs they relied upon, including:
- Nyagoa, the 1-year-old daughter of Nyajime Duop, who died of cholera after the International Rescue Committee's mobile health team stopped coming to her village in South Sudan after its grant was terminated, according to a December report from ProPublica. Save the Children said last year that it was forced to either shutter or scale back care at its 27 child clinics in Akobo County, in South Sudan's Jonglei state. In April 2025, amid a cholera outbreak, the group reported that five children died while walking three hours to the nearest clinic after the one near them closed, which was reported by The Associated Press.
- 5-year-old Suza Kenyaba in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who died on February 19 after shipment of an anti-malaria drug that had already been purchased was left stranded in a distribution warehouse after payments to contractors were frozen by the US government, according to The Washington Post. There were more than 600 malaria deaths in the DRC's Haut-Katanga province in the first six months of 2025, more than the total number in 2024. The Post found that 95% of USAID malaria medication shipments in the first six months of 2025 were either delayed or did not arrive at all.
- 11-year-old Paciencia in Mozambique died after the case worker handling her treatment for HIV was abruptly laid off along with most others, hospitals ran out of the US-funded antiretroviral drugs she relied upon, and she was given the wrong medication after the data clerks who managed patient information were laid off, according to the South African publication Spotlight. The National Association for Self-Sustained Development (ANDA), the US-funded group that handled this HIV treatment, found that at least 16 children died between January and June 2025 in the province of Manica, many more than they had seen before the cuts.
These are just a few of the numerous other examples cited by Gawande, who added that part of the reason verifying deaths has been challenging is that DOGE's cuts also "destroyed" USAID's data and auditing systems, which meant that figures and overall mortality effects would take another year to fully tally.
However, he said he and a team of reporters had already compiled individual reports of more than 1,200 people whose deaths can be directly attributed to the cuts.
Even after being presented with direct evidence to the contrary, Musk continued to insist on Sunday that critics of his cuts to USAID "cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the 'millions' they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!"
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose reporting on the impacts of the sudden aid cuts was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, responded that he could give Musk a list of "many, many names of people who have died because of your aid cuts."
He listed the names of just a few of the people whose cases he had witnessed firsthand, which are recounted in greater depth in his reports. As Kristoff wrote:- Yamah Freeman was a [21-year-old] woman who died in childbirth because you stopped paying for the diesel for ambulances in her part of Liberia. I talked to her parents and sister in their village.
- Gbessey Kiadu, age 1, died of malaria because of your cuts in Liberia. I talked to his mom in her village.
- Ibrahim Koroma, an infant, died of AIDS in Sierra Leone after you interrupted HIV supplies. I talked to health workers who cared for him.
- Achol Deng was an 8-year-old girl with HIV in South Sudan who died when you cut funding for the health care worker who provided her medicines. I talked to him.
"I could go on and on," Kristof continued, "In almost every village you go to in South Sudan, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone or other countries I reported in, you find people dying because of aid cuts."
He issued a "challenge" to Musk: "Come with me on a reporting trip, and we'll talk to these moms and dads, and you'll see the dying children themselves. I think if you see the kids whose lives are at stake, maybe you'll change your mind."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Undeterred by Threats, Khanna Tells Musk to 'Testify, Under Oath, About What He Did' to USAID
"Someone confident he did nothing wrong shows up and clears his name," Khanna said. "Elon Musk is doing the opposite because he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him."
Jun 23, 2026
In the face of lawsuit threats from the richest man in the world, Rep. Ro Khanna on Monday renewed his call for Elon Musk to testify before Congress and defend his dramatic cuts to foreign aid against the claim that they are killing millions of children.
Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Khanna (D-Calif.) for defamation and said he “should be in prison” after the congressman said that the trillionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had “possibly sentenced” 4.5 million children “to death” through its dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) last year at the start of the second Trump administration.
Khanna's assertion was based on the findings of a July 2025 Lancet study, which found that DOGE's cancellation of roughly 83% of the programs run by USAID—including 88% cuts to child health aid, 87% cuts to epidemic and disease surveillance, and 94% cuts to family planning assistance—could result in the deaths of 14 million people by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five.
"That number is not mine," Khanna explained in a Substack post on Monday. "It comes straight from the first comprehensive analysis of its kind into what American foreign aid actually does. Over the past two decades, The Lancet found USAID-funded programs helped prevent more than 91 million deaths, 30 million of them children."
While at the time Musk boasted that he was "feeding USAID into the wood chipper," he claimed on Tuesday that all DOGE actually did was "require... contact information of the recipients to confirm that funding was not fraudulent. No validated medical funding was stopped."
He added that "anything that appeared to be legitimate lifesaving funding continued and is now administered by the State Department."
This is broadly not true. While some funds were restored, according to an April 2025 analysis by KFF, about 80% of USAID identifiable global health awards—including ones for polio vaccination, HIV treatment, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention—were still listed as terminated after the review.
In another video posted Tuesday, Musk claimed that when organizations requested that their lifesaving aid be restored, he rebuffed them because they refused to let him personally speak with the children whom they serve. This, he claimed, was evidence of an "enormous amount of fraud and graft."
Khanna said on Monday that if Musk's actions were truly harmless as he claims, he "should sit before the House Oversight Committee," of which the congressman is a member, and "testify, under oath, about what he did."
He said Musk's belligerent response to being called to testify was damning.
"He could have shown up and made his case. He could have argued the study was wrong. Instead, he called me 'an evil liar.'" Khanna said. "When that did not work, he reached for something uglier. He announced he would sue me. He called for my arrest. He said I belong in prison."
"The richest man in human history answered a request to testify by trying to put the person who asked behind bars. Someone confident he did nothing wrong shows up and clears his name," Khanna continued. "Elon Musk is doing the opposite because he genuinely believes the law does not apply to him."
The congressman accused Musk of attempting to use his wealth, and the threat of "years of litigation, paid for by the deepest pockets on the planet," to scare him "into silence."
"It won’t," Khanna said.
"Here is my answer to Elon Musk. I have already challenged him to a televised debate on the rule of law," he said. "Come testify before the Oversight Committee and answer under oath, the way every other person who has held this kind of power has had to."
Keep ReadingShow Less
On World Refugee Day, Support Refugees, Don't Deport Them
The US dropped the bombs that forced Southeast Asian families to flee and is now deporting them back to the very land that is still littered with American bombs.
Jun 20, 2026
I was only an infant when my family slipped into a weathered wooden boat under the cover of darkness in 1978. Our journey across the mighty Mekong River was wrapped in an eerie, suffocating stillness as my parents, older brother, and I fled Laos. Whenever my mother recounts that night, she always ends with the same whispered awe: “It is a miracle you and Alex didn’t make a sound. I was terrified we wouldn’t make it.”
It would be decades before I fully grasped the terror of that treacherous crossing, the complex geopolitical forces at play, and the shared history between the US and my birth country that forced us out into the night.
I think of that river escape every year on World Refugee Day. It is a day to honor the immense courage of those forced to flee everything they know. For me, it is also a day that demands a deeply honest look at how we treat people once they arrive on our shores.
Following the violence that consumed Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in 1975, millions fled, culminating in the largest refugee resettlement in American history. We arrived first through sponsorship programs, and later through the Refugee Act of 1980, laying new roots across the US. Today, our Southeast Asian American community has grown to over 3 million, with vibrant enclaves from California to Minnesota, and my home here in Ohio.
Instead of tearing families apart here at home, the United States must commit to fully funding the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos until the job is done.
My family is one of the lucky ones. After years of hardship, Columbus welcomed us and helped us plant our roots. Today, I am full of gratitude for my parents' sacrifice, and we are proud to give back through family businesses we built and by serving on nonprofit boards like the annual Columbus Asian Festival and Legacies of War.
Not every story mirrors ours.
Many Southeast Asian refugees were resettled in severely under-resourced, over-policed neighborhoods without the support necessary to heal from the invisible, lingering wounds of war. Forced to navigate poverty and systemic barriers, some young refugees became entangled in the criminal justice system. Decades later—long after they have served their time, rehabilitated, and built families—they are being subjected to a cruel double punishment.
Since 1998, over 17,000 Southeast Asians have received deportation orders. Many have lived here for decades; the United States is their chosen home, and often the only home they have ever known. Once someone is deported, there is almost no way back, severing families permanently. These policies do not make America safer. They merely manufacture new trauma, uprooting lives all over again.
The tragic irony of these deportations is impossible to ignore. We are sending refugees back to a country still littered with the very weapons that drove their families into the dark to begin with.
Laos remains the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. From 1964 to 1973, in a covert effort to destroy traffic along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the US dropped at least 2.5 million tons of ordnance across 580,000 bombing missions. That is the equivalent of a planeload of bombs falling every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. Even today, unexploded ordnance continues to claim civilian lives, with children making up over 60% of those harmed.
True accountability requires a different path. It requires cleaning up the remnants of war that America left behind in Laos and honoring the humanity of those who survived it. For decades, US programs have addressed these lasting legacies. These efforts not only save lives and support vulnerable communities, but they also bolster years of diplomatic progress in a region of immense strategic importance. Foreign aid is not charity—it is a strategic investment for our country. US assistance in Southeast Asia consistently garners bipartisan support precisely because it yields clear, tangible benefits: enhanced safety, economic stability, and strengthened bilateral cooperation.
Instead of tearing families apart here at home, the United States must commit to fully funding the removal of unexploded ordnance in Laos until the job is done. I urge members of Congress to join the UXO and Demining Caucus and support legislation like the Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act. We must end this cycle of displacement and keep our communities whole.
The United States was forged by those seeking a better life. This enduring legacy is embodied by the Statue of Liberty, our "Mother of Exiles," who stands as a beacon of hope for people escaping persecution and war.
World Refugee Day was first celebrated 25 years ago. This year’s theme, "solidarity with refugees," calls on us to recognize that true compassion does not end at the border. It means standing by refugees as they build their lives, acknowledging the full weight of our shared past, and ensuring that no one who seeks refuge from danger is ever forced back into harm’s way.
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘Elon Musk Should Have to Pay For This’: Trump Admin Says It Needs $1 Billion to Combat Screwworm
"Trump and Musk’s DOGE 'saved' $15 million by cutting a program dedicated to preventing the spread of screwworm," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "Now, there’s an outbreak infecting our beef and the administration is spending $1 billion."
Jun 16, 2026
When Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" took its chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy last year, it created bottlenecks that may have hampered the fight against the screwworm infestation currently menacing the southwest while making it much more expensive.
The annual US Department of Agriculture (USDA) spending to combat the flesh-eating insects only amounted to about $15 million per year. But along with about $382 million aimed at combating animal-borne illnesses around the globe, it was terminated in March 2025 as part of DOGE's effort to root out what it described as government "waste."
But now, with the pests bearing down on Texas and New Mexico, and at least 12 infections already identified in the US as of Tuesday, the Trump administration is spending at least $1 billion to fight the outbreak.
Brooke Rollins last November: We have screwworm under control south of the border. Beef prices will come down by spring 2026.
(The screwworm has just been detected in Texas for the first time in 60 years) pic.twitter.com/ozXdI88jXk
— FactPost (@factpostnews) June 4, 2026
Last week, during a Senate hearing, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins attempted to shift blame for the screwworm outbreak onto the Biden administration, while portraying herself and President Donald Trump as proactive in response to reports last spring that the insects were rapidly climbing through Central America.
Rollins said she asked Trump for "$1 billion to build a significant facility" in Texas that would breed hundreds of millions of sterilized male screwworm flies, a method that had been used to keep them contained in South America for decades. "Without hesitation, a couple questions, he said, ‘go.’”
That facility is expected to release around 300 million sterile flies per week. But it is not expected to be fully operational until the end of 2027.
In addition to the $15 million cut to monitoring the spread of the bugs from Panama, the Houston Chronicle reported that DOGE paused plans for a facility in Mexico that the Biden administration had authorized in 2024 as part of a $165 million emergency package to fight screwworm.
Amid mass layoffs at the USDA, it reported that funding for the facility—which was supposed to produce between 60-100 million sterile flies per week—was not announced until May 2025.
While the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) still says fly production at the facility is expected to begin "as early as summer 2026," it is still listed as "under construction."
Kevin Shea, who served as administrator of APHIS under the Obama administration and retired from the agency in January 2025, told the Chronicle that efforts to contain the screwworm were put on hold at the start of Trump's second term.
“This administration came in so skeptical of the career people, they didn’t really want to listen,” he said. “The hold up in the money going to Mexico for the sterile fly facility was most likely caught up in the whole DOGE thing. It probably looked like some sort of foreign aid.”
Journalist Christopher Collins wrote in the Texas Observer on Tuesday that, additionally, “deep staffing cuts" to APHIS, which lost nearly 1,900 employees during Trump's first year back in office, eliminated "the first line of defense against incoming parasites," who are responsible for "inspecting the cattle awaiting import from Mexico to ensure no screwworms are hitching a ride."
Not joking but @elonmusk should have to pay for this right?
You broke it, why do we all have to pay for it? https://t.co/7SSgyuP0yr
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) June 16, 2026
As the spread of screwworm across cattle country threatens to further drive up beef prices that have already increased by over 20% since Trump returned to office, critics of the administration are seizing on it to highlight the failure of the president's so-called "efficiency" initiative, which—despite the grandeur of Musk's cost-cutting claims—ended up costing taxpayers an estimated $165 billion, according to an April 2026 report from the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called the screwworm saga a prime example of DOGE's "peak incompetence."
"Trump and Musk’s DOGE 'saved' $15 million by cutting a program dedicated to preventing the spread of screwworm," she said. "Now, there’s an outbreak infecting our beef and the administration is spending $1 billion."
Reacting to the news that the government was spending at least $1 billion to confront the screwworm crisis, Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim wrote on social media, "Not joking but Elon Musk should have to pay for this right?"
"You broke it," he said, tagging the man who recently became the world's first trillionaire. "Why do we all have to pay for it?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Oxfam Warns Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Could Help Kill More Than 9 Million People by 2030
"Governments must restore their aid budgets, and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades," said an advocate with the international charity Oxfam.
Apr 10, 2026
The global anti-poverty group Oxfam International warned this week that US President Donald Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid by more than half could kill nearly 10 million people by the end of the decade.
Responding to new data released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showing the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance, Oxfam said “wealthy governments are turning their backs on the lives of millions of women, men, and children in the Global South.”
The OECD released preliminary data on international aid that was provided last year by member countries of the organization's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), finding the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance.
OECD member countries provided $174.3 billion in aid last year, according to the new data, representing 0.26% of the countries' combined gross national income.
In 2024, the countries sent $215.1 billion, or 0.34% of their gross national income to developing countries, including across the Global South—helping to provide nutritional assistance and healthcare initiatives among other programs.
US foreign aid spending dropped by 56.9% after Trump dismantled the US Agency for International Development, cut smaller aid programs, and pushed Congress to rescind previously approved foreign assistance.
"At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization."
Overall, wealthy OECD countries provided 23.1% less in foreign aid last year than they did in 2024—a greater decline than what the Institute of Global Health in Barcelona projected in February when it released a study in The Lancet, evaluating the impact of development assistance funding declines around the world.
The institute found that aid cuts in 2025 alone, which it assumed would represent a 21% decrease in funding, would lead to 695,238 excess deaths. If cuts continued at the same rate, an estimated 9,416,417 people could die of preventable diseases like malaria and AIDS, starvation, and other impacts by 2030.
The drop in foreign aid spending would suggest even more people could be killed by the cuts over the next four years.
“We are in a time of increasing humanitarian needs; strong pressures on the poorest and most fragile countries; and facing growing global uncertainties and massive insecurity," said Carsten Staur, chair of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which compiled the data. "In this situation, the world needs more ODA, not less—to help fight extreme poverty, improve resilience, and mobilize more private resources."
Trump's cuts helped make Germany the largest provider of development assistance for the first time ever, providing $29.1 billion to countries in need. The US sent $29 billion while the United Kingdom provided $17.2 billion, Japan sent $16.2 billion, and France sent $14.5 billion. All five of the top ODA providers reduced their foreign aid spending, accounting for 95.7% of the total decline.
Eight out of the DAC's 34 member countries either maintained or increased their development aid spending, and four countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden—exceeded the United Nations' target of spending 0.7% of their gross national income on ODA.
Didier Jacobs, development finance lead for Oxfam, emphasized that while "recklessly" cutting foreign aid, "the Trump administration has been preparing to ask Congress for tens of billions in additional funding for bombs, ammunition, and other military equipment relating to its unlawful war against Iran."
"At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization. Cuts from donors including Germany, France and the UK will be felt by the world’s poorest," said Jacobs.
In addition to slashing military spending instead of crucial foreign aid, he said, "there are other ways to find tens of billions, such as by taxing the $2.84 trillions of dollars that the super-rich hide in tax havens.”
"Governments must restore their aid budgets," he said, "and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades."
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Chief Guterres Warns of ‘Imminent Financial Collapse’ as Trump Pulls Funding
As the world's largest economy, the US provided nearly a quarter of the UN's funding. That is, until earlier this month, when Trump stripped hundreds of millions of dollars from dozens of treaties.
Jan 30, 2026
Weeks after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from dozens of United Nations organizations, the UN's chief warns that the UN is at risk of an "imminent financial collapse."
"The crisis is deepening, threatening program delivery and risking financial collapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future," UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a letter to ambassadors dated January 28, according to a Friday report from Reuters.
While he did not reference the United States explicitly, Guterres called out the fact that "decisions not to honor assessed contributions that finance a significant share of the approved regular budget have now been formally announced," which almost certainly referenced Trump's pullout from at least 66 international treaties earlier this month, including 31 within the UN system.
With the stroke of a pen, Trump reneged on the US commitment to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which it has been part of for more than 30 years. He also took the US out of the UN International Law Commission, the UN Democracy Fund, UN Oceans, UN Women, and dozens of other global bodies, deeming them "contrary to the interests of the United States."
As the world's largest economy, the US was the largest source of funding for the UN, providing 22% of its regular and peacekeeping budgets as of 2025—about $820 million per year.
The largest single financial cut as a result of the US pullout was the termination of dozens of grants worth approximately $377 million for the UN Population Fund, which focuses on family planning and preventing maternal mortality and sexual violence in developing nations. The organization is estimated to have prevented 39,000 maternal deaths and 18 million unwanted pregnancies in 2024, according to an annual report.
Warning that cash could run out by July, Guterres said, “Either all member states honor their obligations to pay in full and on time–or member states must fundamentally overhaul our financial rules to prevent an imminent financial collapse."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Stunning Abdication of Basic Human Decency': Trump Ripped for Expanding Global Gag Rule
"President Trump and his anti-abortion administration would rather let people starve to death in the wake of famine and war than let anyone in the world get an abortion—or even receive information about it."
Jan 23, 2026
As US Vice President JD Vance on Friday addressed anti-abortion activists at the March for Life, public health and reproductive rights advocates decried the Trump administration's expansion of the Mexico City Policy, which critics call the global gag rule.
Since the Reagan administration, Democrats have repealed and Republicans have reimposed the policy, which bans nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortion from receiving federal funding. While President Donald Trump reinstated it as expected after returning to office last year, multiple media outlets revealed the expansion plans on Thursday.
A spokesperson confirmed to NBC News on Friday that the US Department of State will release three final rules expanding the foreign assistance prohibition to include "gender ideology," and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), or what the administration is calling "discriminatory equity ideology," in line with various other Trump policies.
"President Trump and his anti-abortion administration would rather let people starve to death in the wake of famine and war than let anyone in the world get an abortion—or even receive information about it," Rachana Desai Martin, chief US program officer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a Friday statement.
"People are already dying because of this administration's slashing of foreign assistance," she noted. "Now, they're making it harder for doctors and aid workers to provide food, water, and lifesaving medical care. This isn't about saving lives—it's a stunning abdication of basic human decency."
Guttmacher Institute director of federal policy Amy Friedrich-Karnik similarly called out not only the new "supercharged global gag rule" but also the second Trump administration's "unprecedented actions like the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and rescission of US foreign assistance for family planning services around the world."
"Guttmacher research estimates that almost 50 million women and girls have already been denied contraceptive care in low- and middle-income countries due to these draconian actions," she explained. "This new radical policy threatens to aggravate the cumulative harms of earlier administration actions, undermining decades of bipartisan investment in global health and gender equality, and stripping resources from the world's most vulnerable populations, including LGBTQ+ communities around the world."
Amnesty International's senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, Erika Guevara-Rosas, blasted the expansion as "an assault on human rights" that will be "disastrous and deadly."
"It strangles healthcare systems, censors information, and violates the rights to health, information, and free expression," she stressed. "It forces frontline providers and many struggling organizations that depend on US funding into an impossible choice: limit essential healthcare for the most vulnerable populations or shut their doors."
"Doubling down on this policy is cruel, reckless, and ideologically driven," she continued. "Expanding it to international and US-based organizations will impact the poorest and marginalized first and hardest, denying people the chance to live full, healthy, autonomous lives where they are able to access rights and services. It is further proof of this US administration's blatant disregard for international law, universal rights, and the rules-based international order."
Dr. Anu Kumar, president and CEO of Ipas, which works to increase access to abortion and contraception around the world, declared that "this radically expanded global gag rule is nothing short of a regressive, harmful policy that puts the United States even further out of step with our global counterparts."
"Bullying individual countries' governments into complying with anti-rights and extremist ideology held by the current US administration is despicable and unacceptable," Kumar asserted. "It will wreak havoc on global efforts to improve health, uphold human rights, and achieve gender equality."
The broadening of the global gag rule comes as survivors and US lawmakers continue to fight for the release of files from the federal trafficking investigation into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a former friend of Trump. Mina Barling, the International Planned Parenthood Federation's global director of external relations, said that "in an age of Epstein scandals and hocus-pocus designed to undermine science and medicine, the Trump administration has read the room."
"He knows his obsession with women's bodies is viewed cynically, so he has utilized the man-made panic funded by the fossil fuel industry to shift the focus of his policy against trans people," Barling said of the president. "The global gag rule is hate-bait designed to keep his donors happy and export more division to countries reliant on US aid, in the absence of economic justice."
"We stand in solidarity with women and trans people in all their diversity," she added. "We demand debt relief, and we support national sovereignty. We want to see a new global health architecture that is less susceptible to the whims of American politicians."
Keep ReadingShow Less
A Young Child Could Die Every 40 Seconds by 2030 Due to 'Cruel and Illegal' Trump Aid Cuts
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts."
Jan 15, 2026
President Donald Trump's shuttering of USAID last year will have a long-term negative impact on children throughout the world, according to a report released on Thursday by Oxfam.
In its analysis, Oxfam estimates that a child under the age of five could die every 40 seconds by 2030 thanks to the Trump administration's dismantling of American foreign aid programs.
Oxfam says it's basing its projections on "calculations in [the] Lancet’s impact evaluation and forecasting analysis from last July, which projected "4,537,157 child deaths by 2030."
The report also pointed to estimates from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Gates Foundation, which calculates "an additional 200,000 child deaths" for children under five last year. This lines up with data published by the Boston University School of Public Health last year estimating over 250,000 child deaths caused by the drastic slashing of foreign aid funding under the Trump administration.
Abby Maxman, president and CEO of Oxfam America, said that "we have run out of words to describe the depths of suffering" caused by Trump's destruction of "the entire global aid system."
"We are seeing years of progress unravel, and more children suffer and die preventable deaths because of these cuts," Maxman added.
The report also highlighted the specific impacts cuts have had in Sudan, the Philippines, and Syria.
Mayfourth Luneta, deputy executive director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness Foundation, an Oxfam partner in the Philippines, said that due to the Trump aid cuts, her organization had to cancel programs across eight communities that were impacted by floods and earthquakes last year.
"The Philippines was hit with the most powerful storms on Earth recorded last year," Luneta said. "Communities were devastated, families were left with nothing."
Shabnam Baloch, country director for Oxfam in South Sudan, described the impact that aid cuts have had on a country that is undergoing a horrific civil war.
"Water borne illnesses are spreading rapidly, starvation is imminent for many, and while needs are rising, lifesaving organizations are working with a fraction of the resources we had in previous years," said Baloch. "Oxfam, along with many other vital organizations, will be forced to scale down our programs without immediate intervention."
Sara Savva, deputy director-general the alliance of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East and the Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (GOPA-DERD), an Oxfam partner in Syria, said her organization had "to drastically reduce the scale and scope of our programs for Syrian families and Iraqi refugees residing in Syria" in the wake of the Trump administration's cuts.
"We were notified we will no longer receive funding from the US government, and thousands of people are left without crucial services necessary to rebuild their lives after a catastrophic civil war," Savva said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
‘Children Died Waiting’ After Trump Freeze of USAID Operations Stranded Medications
"Shame," said one Democratic senator. "This is not leadership. This is callous arrogance."
Sep 30, 2025
An investigation published Tuesday reveals how the Trump administration's cuts to foreign aid—even those that have been quickly restored under public pressure—have proven deadly for children in poverty-stricken nations.
The halting of a global supply chain program that ships crucial antimalarial and HIV medications around the world was one of President Donald Trump's first actions, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that many of the programs run by the US Agency for International Development "run counter to what we’re trying to do in our national strategy" and moved to end USAID's operations.
Portions of the Global Health Supply Chain Program resumed within days of Trump's executive order suspending foreign aid, but as The Washington Post reported in its exclusive investigation, "the suspension had lingering effects that left aid deliveries severely disrupted for months" and severely reduced public health workers' ability to distribute lifesaving medications, screening tests, and other supplies to more than 40 countries.
While more than $190 million worth of anti-HIV/AIDS and antimalarial supplies were scheduled to arrive at distribution warehouses by the end of June, nearly $76 million did not arrive, including a majority of the medications to fight malaria.
Medical supplies worth $63 million did eventually make it to warehouses, but were delayed by 41 days on average, and many sat on warehouse shelves for weeks instead of being sent to clinics and hospitals.
The newspaper told the story of five-year-old Suza Kenyaba, one victim of the delay in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who contracted malaria when the medication supply chain was in a state of chaos due to Trump's order.
"The Trump administration's claim that no one has died from cuts to USAID is devastatingly and disastrously untrue."
The medication the little girl needed was just seven miles away from the clinic where she was battling a high fever caused by the infection, but the disruption to the supply chain program left the medicine stranded in a warehouse.
"The medication that USAID sent was seven miles away due to Trump chaos and suspensions," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). "It would have saved her life. Shame. This is not leadership. This is callous arrogance."
The Post published its report a week after Rubio appeared on ABC News and told anchor George Stephanopoulos flatly that "no one has died because the United States has cut aid."
The secretary of state claimed—contrary to evidence—that the administration had simply worked to structure programs to make them more efficient.
But as the Post reported, the stop-work order issued by the administration had rippling effects across the foreign aid pipeline. Chemonics, a contractor that operates the Global Health Supply Chain Program, lost access to a government payment system, inhibiting its "ability to order suppliers to resume work.” As a result, it was forced to furlough 750 people in its US workforce as well as lay off local staff.
While Rubio rolled back some of the foreign aid cuts in late January, issuing a blanket waiver for "lifesaving humanitarian assistance," Chemonics' logistics program that delivers medications from local warehouses to clinics like the one where Kenyaba was fighting malaria was not included in the waiver.
The investigation revealed, said one observer, that Trump has the "deaths of children on his hands."
Oxfam America called on Congress to "fund lifesaving aid."
"The Trump administration's claim that no one has died from cuts to USAID is devastatingly and disastrously untrue," said the group. "Their attacks on USAID stranded lifesaving medication and children died waiting."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Supreme Court Lets Trump Withhold $4 Billion in Foreign Aid Approved by Congress
"This result further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order," said one critic.
Sep 26, 2025
The US Supreme Court on Friday gave President Donald Trump the green light to withhold billions of dollars of congressionally approved foreign aid, a major win for the White House and executive authority and, according to critics, a body blow to the bedrock constitutional principle of congressional power of the purse.
At issue in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition is $4 billion in foreign aid allocated by Congress that the Trump administration determined was wasteful, including funding for international public health such as HIV prevention programs, which have been credited with saving millions of lives.
The high court's right-wing majority found that "the asserted harms to the executive’s conduct of foreign affairs appear to outweigh the potential harm" to aid recipients, while cautioning that "this order should not be read as a final determination on the merits."
BREAKING: Supreme Court lets Trump unilaterally freeze billions in congressionally appropriated foreign aid money apparent 6-3 vote with liberals in dissent @courthousenews.bsky.social
[image or embed]
— Kelsey Reichmann (@kelseyreichmann.bsky.social) September 26, 2025 at 1:43 PM
The Trump administration sought not only validation of its claimed ability to claw back spending previously approved by Congress—which under the Constitution generally holds power of the purse—but also of "pocket recission," a highly contentious budgetary maneuver to cancel previously approved federal expenditures by exploiting legal ambiguity in the Impoundment Control Act (ICA).
Democrats and many legal experts contend that pocket recissions are illegal, and Democratic lawmakers warned even before Trump's White House return that he would try to use the tactic in order to refuse to disburse funds allocated by Congress for social programs.
Justice Elena Kagan—who dissented along with fellow liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson—asserted that the majority approved "essentially a presidential usurpation of Congress' power of the purse."
"The stakes are high: At issue is the allocation of power between the executive and Congress over the expenditure of public monies," Kagan said.
“That is just the price of living under a Constitution that gives Congress the power to make spending decisions through the enactment of appropriations laws,” she wrote. “If those laws require obligation of the money, and if Congress has not by rescission or other action relieved the executive of that duty, then the executive must comply.”
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court dealt a temporary blow to Trump's evisceration of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in a ruling that left intact a lower court's decision ordering the resumption of approximately $2 billion in foreign aid frozen by the administration.
Friday's ruling could complicate bipartisan negotiations to avert a Republican government shutdown as the September 30 deadline looms. Democratic negotiators now worry that Trump, buoyed by the high court decision, could again refuse to spend funds designated by Congress.
“Today’s ruling allows the administration to unilaterally refuse to spend $4 billion in foreign assistance funds that it is required by law to spend," said Nicolas Sansone, an attorney at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen and counsel for the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. "This result further erodes separation of powers principles that are fundamental to our constitutional order. It will also have a grave humanitarian impact.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy