A president who once referred to Haiti and African nations as “shithole countries” is continuing his cruel attacks on people around the world suffering from disease and starvation. 

The Trump administration has moved to shut down USAID, the federal government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance as an independent agency and integrate what remains into the Department of State under Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

 Elon Musk, head of the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, a billionaire with zero expertise in global development, has said of USAID that it is a “criminal organization. Time for it to die.”

“We’re shutting it down,” Musk said during a live chat on X,  later adding, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

Consider:

• USAID’s partner program PEPFAR, an anti-HIV/AIDS initiative launched by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2003, pays for antiretroviral medicines and leads efforts to halt the spread of the virus. It is estimated to have saved 25 million lives since its inception. USAID’s collapse could serve a death sentence for PEPFAR, Persuasion,  a nonprofit digital magazine, reported. In a survey of 275 H.I.V. treatment organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa, every single one reported needing to shut down programs or turn away patients.
• The United States contributes approximately $300 million dollars annually to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which targets diseases such as malaria and rabies in low- and middle-income countries Gavi supports the accelerated introduction of new and underutilized vaccines in 73 countries. Across the world, immunization yields up to a 48-fold return on investments, averting an estimated 2-3 million child deaths per year.
• About 500,000 metric tons of food worth $340 million is in limbo, in transit or storage,Reuters reports, as humanitarian organizations wait for U.S. State Department approval to distribute it.
• U.S.-provided cash assistance intended to help people buy food and other necessities in Sudan and Gaza has been halted, aid workers told Reuters. So has funding for volunteer-run community kitchens, an American-supported effort in Sudan to help feed people in areas inaccessible to traditional aid.
• The US system for monitoring famine globally, designed by US government agencies, including USAID and NASA, has been taken offline.
• The Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet) was established after the 1984 famine in Ethiopia, as part of a worldwide effort to prevent a repeat of its devastating impact. Trump’s action has left  policymakers in the dark about impending hunger crises “It is regarded as a gold standard in combining weather data and political analysis to predict drought and food insecurity globally,” the BBC reported.
• About 500,000 metric tons of food worth $340 million is in limbo, in transit or storage, as humanitarian organizations wait for U.S. State Department approval to distribute it, according to Reuters. Among the food aid in limbo is almost 30,000 metric tons meant to feed acutely malnourished children and adults in famine-stricken Sudan., The food includes lentils, rice and wheat, one worker said – enough to feed at least 2 million people for a month. 
• The USAID shutdown stalls progress toward economic prosperity and stability, Brookings reports. It stops support for cash transfers that reach the poorest households, halts financing for women farmers who produce food and other staples, stops lifesaving health services, and disrupts public-private partnerships to help women compete in the digital economy. 
• Some officials fear that the closure of USAID could slow the response to ongoing outbreaks of Ebola in Uganda and Marburg virus in Tanzania, according to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. USAID and the CDC collaborated in 2022 on a successful effort to limit the spread of an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.
• The President’s Malaria Initiative, a US government program that funds malaria prevention and research, is led by USAID and implemented together with the CDC. (It’s website is currently “undergoing maintenance in order to be consistent with the President’s Executive Orders”)  One company has more than one million insecticide-treated bed nets in a warehouse in Ethiopia that, along with antimalarial drugs and diagnostics, it now can’t deploy, and at time when malaria transmission spikes in many countries. “Without those services — especially now that it’s the rainy season in a lot of the world — people will die,” an employee told the journal Nature. “We’re putting kids’ lives at risk by stopping this.”

Just a bunch of people in shithole countries affected. Who cares?