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u.s. department of state
Trump Moves to Kill PEPFAR, Potentially Dooming Millions to Death From AIDS
"There will be an additional 6 million newly infected persons in the world," said the United Nations' top AIDS prevention official recently. "That has started already."
Jul 25, 2025
The U.S. program credited with saving an estimated 26 million lives and preventing millions of new HIV infections has not sufficiently provided a direct benefit to the United States, suggests Trump State Department planning documents for the George W. Bush-era initiative.
Congress rejected cuts to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) last week, even as Republicans pushed through nearly $8 billion in foreign aid cuts; the program has long had robust bipartisan support as it has enabled 5.5 million babies to be born without HIV to HIV-positive mothers, provided support to 7 million orphans, and driven a decline in new HIV infections in young women in every geographic area that implements its prevention program.
But as The New York Times reported Thursday, a draft plan at the State Department details proposals for "transitioning" low-income countries away from PEPFAR, with the Trump administration imposing what it calls "bilateral relationships" with the aim of ostensibly prioritizing public health in the United States.
Countries in the Global South would be asked to focus efforts on "the detection of outbreaks that could threaten the United States and the creation of new markets for American drugs and technologies," reported the Times.
The administration appears to be approaching PEPFAR with the logic, said journalist Ben Krauss, that the program "needs to be remade to exclusively serve American interests."
"Saving 25 million lives over the past two decades and pulling off one of the greatest humanitarian feats of the century was already serving American interests," said Krauss. "This is just evil."
The State Department documents also say the Trump administration believes "that the transition of PEPFAR can become the premier example of the U.S. commitment to prioritizing trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, and investment over assistance."
PEPFAR-funded programs in low-income countries have already struggled to stay afloat this year following President Donald Trump's foreign aid funding freeze soon after he took office in January. A stop-work order forced some programs to halt services like the provision of antiretroviral therapy and to lay off thousands of staffers.
A waiver issued in February allowed PEPFAR to continue certain programs, but the administration's cuts to and elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has implemented PEPFAR since its inception in 2003, has also impacted the initiative.
Under the plan outlined in the documents—which a spokesperson denied were "reflective of the State Department's policy on PEPFAR"—countries would be required to spend far more of their own funds on fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Countries that are close to controlling the epidemic, such as Vietnam and Botswana, would see an end to PEPFAR within two years, while countries that still have high rates of infection and receive significant amounts of U.S. funding, including Kenya and Zimbabwe, would have up to four years.
"There will be some countries that can manage where the PEPFAR investment is not as heavy or as large a proportion of their total effort," Robert Black, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Times. "But some of the African countries with enormous HIV problems and national financial problems, debt, and other development issues—I cannot see that they are going to be able to pick up all or even a large proportion of the costs in that kind of time frame."
Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS prevention agency, said earlier this month that the threats Trump has already made to AIDS relief programs across the globe have begun a "deadly funding crisis."
"Personally I am devastated," she said of the U.S. funding cuts at a U.N. summit in Seville, Spain. "Appalled. Shaken and disgusted. I don't have the English words to use."
Byanyima emphasized that HIV/AIDS prevention funding through PEPFAR and similar programs represents "a drop of money that is nothing in one of these rich G7 countries."
PEPFAR is funded through discretionary spending in the federal budget and accounts for less than .08% of U.S. spending.
"To create such crisis, such pain, and such anger on the ground," said Byanyima. "This cut, that's dedicated people losing jobs, loyal support gone, research ended, vulnerable people abandoned. And it is deaths. What went away immediately was prevention services, so we are very worried about the new infections and about deaths... There will be an additional 6 million newly infected persons in the world. That has started already."
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Trump State Dept Announces Withdrawal From UNESCO Over Palestine Inclusion
Like: Palestinian officials responded by urging the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
Jul 22, 2025
The Trump administration's unrelenting backing of Israel was on display Tuesday as the U.S. State Department withdrew support for the United Nations agency tasked with promoting education and cultural understanding—but the organization's leader pledged that it would continue its work while welcoming "all the nations of the world."
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce cited the decision by the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to accept the state of Palestine as a member state as part of the reason for the Trump administration's withdrawal.
The inclusion of Palestine is "contrary to U.S. policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization," Bruce claimed without citing examples.
Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the agency, said the U.S. withdrawal—which President Donald Trump also imposed during his first term, and which will eliminate about 8% of UNESCO's international funding—was "regrettable," but that the organization would continue operating without a reduction in staff, having prepared for the president's exit.
"In spite of President Donald Trump's first withdrawal in 2017, UNESCO stepped up its efforts to take action wherever its mission could contribute to peace and demonstrated the pivotal nature of its mandate," said Azoulay, noting that UNESCO adopted a "global standard-setting instrument on the ethics of artificial intelligence," developed major programs for education in conflict settings, took action to defend biodiversity, and oversaw the reconstruction of Mosul, Iraq—all without the participation of the United States.
Azoulay added that the reasons for the U.S. withdrawal, which will go into effect in December 2026, "contradict the reality of UNESCO's efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism."
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel."
The Trump administration, along with many establishment Democratic and Republican lawmakers, has explicitly equated expressions of support for Palestinians and criticism of Israel with antisemitism. UNESCO has denounced the Israeli government and military for their destruction of schools and cultural sites and their killing of journalists in Gaza.
Azoulay emphasized that UNESCO is "the only United Nations agency responsible" for promoting Holocaust education and for the global fight against antisemitism, "and its work has been unanimously acclaimed by major specialized organizations such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., the World Jewish Congress and its American Section, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)."
"UNESCO will continue to carry out these missions," she said, "despite inevitably reduced resources."
The agency is also well known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 20 of which are in the United States.
U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the withdrawal from UNESCO "another assault by the Trump administration on international cooperation and U.S. global leadership."
Along with promoting education about the Holocaust, Meeks said, UNESCO "directly benefits the U.S. economy through its Creative Cities and World Heritage programs, through which the United States has recently secured two new World Heritage inscriptions in Ohio and Pennsylvania—promoting to the world the beauty, culture, and heritage of American cities."
Before Trump withdrew from UNESCO for the first time in 2017, the Obama administration cut funding to the organization after it admitted Palestine as a member state in 2011.
The state of Palestine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed "deep regret" over the Trump administration's decision on Tuesday.
"Palestine firmly rejects the justifications provided by the United States for its withdrawal, considering them an unacceptable politicization of UNESCO's work and a failed attempt to deflect attention from the violations committed by Israel, the illegal occupying power, against heritage, culture, and archaeological sites in Palestine, as well as in other areas such as education, science, media, and the environment," said officials.
The ministry also advised the U.S. not to "bind its own international standing to the crimes and violations committed by Israel."
"Otherwise," it said, "it would find itself compelled to withdraw from the entire multilateral international system, in order to shield Israel from accountability, thus encouraging it to continue perpetrating its crimes as a rogue state operating outside the framework of international legality."
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50+ Dems Slam Rubio Plan to Burn 500 Metric Tons of Emergency Food Aid
"This action is not only morally indefensible, but also wasteful, strategically shortsighted, and completely counter to the entirety of your work while in the Senate."
Jul 18, 2025
More than 50 congressional Democrats on Friday condemned U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's decision to withhold and destroy nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food aid for Afghanistan and Pakistan—a move that came a month after the Trump administration's State Department abolished all overseas positions at the United States Agency for International Development.
The USAID emergency food aid—which has been stored in a warehouse in Dubai for months and will expire before the end of July—is enough to feed around 1.5 million children for a week. The aid consists of high energy biscuits that are used primarily to satisfy the immediate nutritional needs of children enduring food crises. It is now set to be incinerated.
"This action is not only morally indefensible, but also wasteful, strategically shortsighted, and completely counter to the entirety of your work while in the Senate," the Democratic lawmakers wrote in a letter to Rubio.
"Given the alarming rates of food insecurity and famine in regions like Gaza and Sudan, the decision to burn lifesaving aid produced by American farmers and paid for by American tax dollars amounts to a tragic abdication of our global humanitarian responsibilities and hurts our own global interests," the letter asserts.
Secretary Rubio is planning to withhold 500 metric tons of vital food aid that could feed 1.5 million starving children… and then incinerate the food once it expires. UNACCEPTABLE!
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— Rep. Mark Pocan (@pocan.house.gov) July 18, 2025 at 12:55 PM
"We are also alarmed by reports indicating that internal USAID memos requesting urgent approval to move the biscuits went unanswered for months," the lawmakers said. "If accurate, this speaks to a systemic breakdown in communication and leadership that has paralyzed America's food aid delivery systems."
"The United States has long led the world in humanitarian assistance, not only as a matter of compassion but also as a cornerstone of global stability and diplomacy," the letter concludes. "Destroying aid that could save lives undermines that legacy and damages our standing in the international community. We urge you to immediately prioritize the distribution of all remaining and viable food assistance stockpiles. American leadership demands nothing less."
Rubio's decision comes a month after the secretary of state ordered the abolition of all overseas USAID positions amid the Trump administration's downsizing and elimination of the agency, one of many targeted by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by multibillionaire Elon Musk.
As Common Dreams reported in May, 66,000 tons of food—including grains, high-energy biscuits, and vegetable oil—were already mouldering in USAID warehouses.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce attempted to justify Rubio's decision during a Thursday press conference.
"If something is expired, we will destroy it. It's a matter of whether or not it's safe to distribute," she said, adding that 500 metric tons amounts to "less than 1%" of all annual U.S. food aid.
"We, as an example, distribute roughly 1 million metric tons of food aid every year, which is reflective of the American people's generosity," Bruce said.
While many observers expressed surprise over the impending destruction of so much food aid, some contended that it tracks with the Trump administration's wider attitudes toward poor people.
"Republicans don't care if American children starve," said podcast host Lana Quest, "so why would they care about famine in other countries?"Keep ReadingShow Less
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