It's the Brian Lear Show on WNYC.

I'm producer Amina Serna filling in for Brian today.

Good morning again, everyone.

Nicholas Enrich spent two decades as a global health official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, working under four presidents, Republican and Democrat.

Then on inauguration day 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order which began to unravel the agency.

By July, the federal agency that had fought AIDS, malaria, and famine across the developing world was effectively shuttered.

Enrich watched it happen from the inside, documented it in real time, and filed a whistleblower

disclosure that made it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He has now written a tell-all book about it.

It's titled Into the Woodchipper, a whistleblower's account of how the Trump administration shredded

USAID, the title taken from Elon Musk's

own words. Nicholas Enrich, welcome to WMIC. Thank you so much for having me. And listeners, we want to

hear from you. Do you work in foreign aid or global health, or did you? Have you seen firsthand what the dismantling of USAID has

meant on the ground? USAID works with many different contractors on the ground. So if you've

worked alongside their mission, we want to hear from you as well. How did it impact your work?

Give us a call now at 212-433 WW-NYC. That's 212-433-9-6-9-2. You can also text that number.

Nicholas, your book opens up with you on a ski trip in British Columbia on inauguration Day 2025 on vacation, learning about the

executive order pausing foreign assistance while you were waiting for your shower to warm up.

So take us back to that moment for you and to that executive order.

How did it begin the unraveling of USAID?

Yeah.

I mean, to be honest, when I first read the executive order that was called something

...