This podcast episode examines the heartbreaking, horrifying and entirely preventable human consequences caused by the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development, also known as U.S.A.I.D. Brooke Nichols, Boston University epidemiologist and mathematical modeller, maintains a respected tracker that estimates the human costs of the closure of U.S.A.I.D. As of November 23, the closing of the agency has caused more than 600,000 deaths, more than two-thirds of them children. That number grows each day. Established in 1961, U.S.A.I.D. had more than 60 years of bipartisan backing behind it and it accounted for less than one percent of the federal budget before the Trump administration, spearheaded by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, took action that led to the eventual shuttering of the agency. In Musk’s words, U.S.A.I.D. was fed to the wood chipper. An unelected billionaire-who could become the world’s first trillionaire-helped sign the death warrant of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg correctly writes that Musk’s legacy is and should remain Disease, Starvation and Death until he takes responsibility for the horrors his actions have unleashed.

In an article he penned for the New Yorker, Atul Gawande, an assistant adminstrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D. for the Joe Biden administration, wrote, “I spent my last days at U.S.A.I.D. in meetings with our civil- and foreign-service leaders, thanking them. Their work with partner countries had helped to contain twenty-one outbreaks of deadly disease, sustain Ukraine’s health system after Russia’s invasion, combat H.I.V., tuberculosis, and polio, and reduce maternal and child deaths worldwide.”

An independent, peer-reviewed analysis by the medical journal Lancet found that U.S.A.I.D. assistance had saved almost ninety-two million lives over the last two decades. In 2024, U.S.A.I.D was providing assistance to people in 130 countries. an Oxfam report notes that “Countries that needed lifesaving aid the most are experiencing the worst of the cuts, including Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Syria, to name only a few.”

The decision to shutter U.S.A.I.D. is a lethal example of the tragic consequences of the Trump administration’s dehumanizing cruelty, arrogant ignorance and deadly incuriosity. People need to demand that the administration change course and restore lifesaving aid for people all over the world.