How Many Deaths Is Demise of USAID Causing?

 The Economist published on 30 July 2026 an article titled "How Many People Are Dying as a Result of USAID's Demise?"

Elon Musk, who is responsible for dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID), insists it has not cost any human lives.  The influential publication, Lancet, estimates that by 2030, 14 million people will die as a result of USAID's demise.

The Economist explains that the drop in US health funding has been less cataclysmic than originally predicted and that early estimates of deaths drew on trends that may no longer be valid.  While the early estimates of deaths are too high, Musk's notion of zero deaths is plainly wrong. Lives have been lost.

Status of Fired USAID Staff

 The Hill published on 22 July 2026 a commentary titled "The Dismantling of USAID and the Firing of Its Staff Was Illegal" by J. Brian Atwood and Kevin E. Burns.

The Trump administration has violated the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883, updated in 1978, by firing most USAID personnel without offering an opportunity for due process.

The Merit Systems Protection Board ruled that the president can remove career officials without due process.  Fired USAID employees are appealing this decision through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Marco Rubio Dismantles Human Rights at State Department

 Foreign Policy published on 8 July 2026 an article titled "Marco Rubio Burned Down the House to Fix a Sink" by Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International.  

Secretary of State Rubio has led an assault on human rights in American statecraft by slashing humanitarian aid, decimating human rights programs, gutting human rights offices and bureaus, disengaging from global human rights systems at the United Nations and elsewhere, and threatening international justice mechanisms.  

He has also changed the guidelines for the State Department's annual, global human rights reports by prioritizing political agendas over consistent accounting of human rights violations around the world.

USAID Dismantlement Has Resulted in Deaths

 The New York Times published on 1 July 2026 a commentary titled "U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Killed People.  That's the Truth" by Nicholas Kristof.  

Elon Musk, who at the beginning of the Trump administration ran DOGE, the organization that dismantled the US Agency for International Development, insists "there is not even a single dead child" as a result of the actions by DOGE.  

Nicholas Kristof, who has met with family members in Africa of dead children, begs to differ.  In addition, studies by university researchers and by Lancet, a British medical journal, estimate that deaths due to USAID financial cuts are in the hundreds of thousands.   

Foreign Aid: US Congress vs the Trump Administration

 Propublica published on 22 June 2026 an article titled "'A Huge Grab of Power': Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid" by Anna Maria Barry-Jester.  

Bipartisan support for foreign aid remains in the US Congress despite the Trump administration's dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development and its effort to minimize US foreign assistance now administered by the State Department, which does not have the capacity to manage it in any event.  

What We Lost When We Lost USAID

 The New York Times published on 8 February 2026 a commentary titled "What We Lost When We Lost USAID" by Jeremy Konyndyk, Refugees International.

Aside from the tangible damage done to dismantled programs that aided the world's needy, American foreign assistance policy is a reflection of who our country wants to be and of the kind of world we seek to build.  The demise of the US Agency for International Development is resulting in an America that increasingly stands isolated and friendless.  

Dismantling USAID: DOGE Must Explain Why

 Axios published on 5 February 2026 an article titled "Elon Musk, State Department Workers to Be Deposed over DOGE Dismantling USAID" by Julianna Bragg.

A federal judge ruled that Elon Musk and State Department officials must sit for depositions over their role in dismantling the US Agency for International Development.  

State Department Tries to Manage Foreign Aid without Adequate Staff

 Foreign Policy published on 16 December 2025 an article titled "The Trump Administration's Epochal Shift on Foreign Aid" by Deborah Kaliel and Phillip Palmer, both former USAID officials.

The Trump administration abolished the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and shifted its remnants into a State Department that was and still is inadequately staffed to handle the new responsibilities.  

Comment: It should have come as a surprise to no one that the State Department was ill-prepared to add responsibility for running what is left of American foreign aid programs, especially following sharp reductions in State Department staffing.  While USAID operated in missions overseas closely affiliated with the US embassy, all of the USAID offices closed at the demand of Elon Musk and DOGE.  State Department personnel, unfamiliar with USAID programs, were expected to pick up the pieces.  This was obviously not going to work, and US foreign policy is now paying a steep price for this mistake.

Will the Courts Save American Foreign Aid?

 The New York Times published on 3 November 2025 an article titled "The Monthslong Legal Battle to Save Foreign Aid" by Zach Montague.

During the past 9 months, the Trump administration dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and continues efforts to end most foreign aid.  The courts are the final obstacle to this effort as the US Congress remains AWOL.  The courts have not yet settled the core issues at stake although USAID no longer exists as an organization. 

Can China's Internet Programs Catch Up to Elon Musk's Starlink?

 Swarajya, an Indian right-wing monthly magazine, published on 23 July 2025 an article titled "Xi Jinping's Starlink Challenge Stalls as China's Satellite Constellation Projects Face Launch Bottlenecks; India's Private Sector Advances."

Elon Musk's Starlink, the pioneering satellite internet service, faces competition from China's state-led Guowang and the Shanghai-backed Qianfan.  Musk's Starlink has launched more than 7,000 satellites providing connectivity to over five million customers in more than 100 countries.

Both of the Chinese projects face delays caused by rocket shortages, sluggish deployment rates, and internal competition.  As of July 2025, Guowang had launched only about 40 satellites in a program that envisages a network of over 13,000 that will provide high-speed internet for civilian and military use.

Qianfan, also known as SpaceSail and G60 Starlink, is backed by the Shanghai municipal government and plans to have 15,000 satellites by 2030.  To date, it has launched about 90 satellites and at least 17 of them have failed to reach their intended orbits.  State-backed Guowang receives launch priority, repeatedly pushing Qianfan to the sidelines.  

These problems in China's satellite programs may be alleviated, however, as Xi Jinping has reportedly instructed the People's Liberation Army to accelerate space-based communication systems in order to build a Chinese alternative to Starlink.  

Comment:  All of this has important implications for the Global South, and especially Africa, where Starlink has been slow to take hold and Chinese competition could challenge it.    

Postmortem on Dismantling of USAID

 The Hill Published on 20 July 2025 an article titled "A Postmortem on the Dismantling of USAID" by Glenn C. Altschuler, Cornell University.  

The Trump administration cancelled 83 percent of USAID's programs and laid off 94 percent of its 4,500 employees, transferring the few remaining staff to the State Department.  The author concluded that the dismantling of USAID has already had a negative impact on the lives of tens of millions of vulnerable people in 130 countries and undermined US national interest.

What Remains of USAID?

 The New York Times published on 22 June 2025 an article titled "What Remains of U.S.A.I.D.?" by Amy Schoenfeld Walker, Malika Khurana, and Christine Zhang.

The USAID projects that survived DOGE dismantlement of the agency are the result of pleas and negotiations of a few politically important people, many of whom had little experience in foreign aid.  Some 891 programs constituting 14 percent of the previous total and $69 billion survived and will be administered by the State Department.  DOGE cancelled USAID projects worth $76 billion over several years.

There was no comprehensive review of previous programs.  The focus going forward is addressing acute disease, hunger, and other humanitarian emergencies.  The State Department does not have the staff, resources, or expertise to oversee the programs that survived DOGE cuts.  

Fourteen Days that Doomed USAID

 The New York Times published on 22 June 2025 an article titled "Missteps, Confusion and 'Viral Waste': The 14 Days that Doomed USAID" by Christopher Flavelle, Nicholas Nehamas, and Julie Tate.

This is the detailed story of the 14 days that it took Elon Musk, the DOGE team, and the Trump administration to dismantle the US Agency for International Development.  

Waste in Africa Because of Dismantlement of USAID

 The New York Times published on 21 June 2025 a commentary titled "The Waste Musk Created" by Nicolas Kristof.  

The article provides examples of waste in US government financed programs in Africa because of the dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), not the existence of USAID.

Dismantlement of USAID Has Resulted in Deaths But Numbers Are Not Known

 The New York Times published on 30 May 2025 a commentary titled "Elon Musk's Legacy Is Disease, Starvation and Death" by Michelle Goldberg.

Elon Musk's DOGE terminated more than 80 percent of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) grants and dismantled the foreign aid agency.  One estimate places the number of deaths as a result of these decisions already at 300.000.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio insists there have been no deaths.

Comment:  It is impossible to know how many deaths have occurred as a result of ending or cutting back USAID's life saving foreign aid programs.  But anyone with extensive experience in the Global South, especially Africa, knows there have been deaths and the death rate will almost certainly increase going forward so long as these cuts remain in place. 

Federal Judge Blocks Trump Administration Dismantlement of US Institute of Peace

 The Associated Press published on 19 May 2025 an article titled "Judge Bars Trump Administration from Shutting Peace Institute that Sought to End Violent Conflicts" by Gary Fields.

A US District Court judge blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with the dismantling of the US Institute of Peace in Washington.  The judge ruled that the think tank was created and funded by Congress and was taken over illegally by DOGE through "blunt force backed up by law enforcement officers from three separate local and federal agencies."  The administration has 30 days to appeal.

Comment:  This was one of the most egregious decisions by the Trump administration to dismantle a foreign affairs related organization. Although the administration may appeal the ruling, it probably faces an uphill battle in the case of USIP.   

The Negative Impact of Whacking Foreign Aid

 The Washington Post published on 2 May 2025 an article titled "After 100 Days, the Toll of Trump's Foreign Aid Cuts Has Begun to Sink In" by Sammy Westfall.

The Trump administration has axed more than 80 percent of the programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.  The administration is also in the process of slashing the U.S. African Development Foundation, U.S. Institute of Peace, Inter-American Foundation, and Millennium Challenge Corporation.  

The article looks at the impact of these cuts on South Sudan, Ethiopia, Jordan, Tanzania, Eswatini, Lesotho, Afghanistan, and Yemen.  

Comment:  The administration is getting close to ending government-funded soft power, which has traditionally been a major U.S. foreign policy tool.  Although they will not fill the financial void left by the United States, the governments of China and Russia will take very possible advantage of America's departure from these programs.   

How Dismantling U.S. Foreign Policy Institutions Appeases Russia (and China)

 The New York Times published on 26 April 2025 an article titled "How Trump Plays into Putin's Hands from Ukraine to Slashing U.S. Institutions" by Peter Baker.

While the focus of the article in on Trump's Ukraine policy and how it plays into the hands of Vladimir Putin, it also argues that plans to dismantle the following foreign policy organizations have the same effect: National Endowment for Democracy, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, US Agency for International Development, International Republican Institute, and National Democratic Institute.

Comment:  Institutions in the process of dismantlement that should be added to this list are the U.S. Institute of Peace, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and other media services under the U.S. Agency for Global Media such as the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.  

While Peter Baker's article only deals with the impact on Russia of the elimination of these pro-democracy foreign policy institutions by Elon Musk and the Trump administration, the decisions will be equally welcomed in Beijing.  

The Price of Tossing USAID into the Woodchipper

 The Hill published on 23 April 2025 a commentary titled "USAID Went into the Woodchipper, And We're All Paying a Price" by Jim Kunder, deputy administrator of USAID during the George W. Bush administration.  

Most of the allegations used to dismantle USAID have been proven false.  The furor of the past several months over the destruction of USAID has crystalized awareness that America's foreign aid soft power is critical to national security.

Elon Musk Shuts Down Millennium Challenge Corporation

 Politico published on 23 April 2025 an article titled "DOGE Is Shutting Down Foreign Aid Agency Millennium Challenge Corporation" by Ben Johansen.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is offering voluntary early retirement or deferred resignations to its 320 employees and planning to terminate grants to developing countries.  MCC, which was established by the Bush administration and is independent of the State Department, currently has over $5.4 billion in active grants to 20 lower income countries, many in Africa.  All MCC operations are expected to end within 90 days.  

Comment:  One more ill-conceived decision by the Trump administration.