Don't forget about the rest of the world

Trump's foreign aid policies are literally killing people

Part of Trump’s strategy is, as Steve Bannon put it, to “flood the zone with sh*t”. It’s virtually impossible to keep track of all of the illegal, immortal and unconstitutional actions being undertaken by Trump and his Administration - and that’s by design. If one can’t keep up with it all then it simply starts to become the norm. And when it becomes the norm then people start to lose their outrage. And when outrage is lost then everything becomes acceptable. And when everything is acceptable then you’ve lost any semblance of community or a working, viable society. It’s anarchy.

With that in mind, it remains important to continuously remind people that Trump is not just negatively impacting the lives of people in our country but he’s also negatively impacting the lives of people throughout the world.

Trump’s policies kill people

After pausing all foreign aid assistance by executive order on Inauguration Day, the administration has permanently cancelled 83 percent of USAID’s global contracts - a decision that public health experts warned would lead to preventable deaths and accelerate disease spread.

And that is exactly what’s happening. If this foreign aid is not restored before the end of 2025, more than 176,000 additional adults and children around the world could die from HIV, according to excess death estimates from a new digital tracking initiative. This tracker also indicates that at least 62,000 additional people could die from tuberculosis (TB)—roughly one death every 7.7 minutes—if foreign aid does not resume by the end of the year. The tracker now estimates that 103 additionally people will die every hour and over 300,000 people have already died because of Trump’s foreign aid cuts.

In a disgusting twist of the truth, Secretary of State Narco Rubio stated in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that "no one has died because of USAID [cuts]" and in another congressional hearing, he said, "no children are dying on my watch." That is a lie and one can ask one mother w

Just ask Mariam Mohammed

Mohammed lives in the town of Bama in the northeastern corner of Nigeria that has, in the past, been terrorized by Boko Haram, the militant Islamist group. Her son, Babagana, had sickle cell disease and she recently rushed him to a local clinic. When she got there, the security guard told her the clinic was closed. The clinic was funded by USAID and was the busiest medical facility in the area, seeing up to 400 patients a day. But, just over a week before Babagana arrived, the Trump administration sent the clinic a stop-work order — part of a massive pause in foreign assistance as U.S. officials reviewed contracts and programs to determine whether they should continue.

Babagana died as a result of the clinic’s closing. He was 7 years old.

The bottom line

This is simple and straightforward. Trump’s policies are killing people throughout the world. Full stop.