ICYMI: The Consequences Of Slashing USAID Funding

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🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

The acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, Nicholas Enrich, was placed on administrative leave in early March.

Before his departure, he had made a series of chilling predictions in memos concerning the consequences of the Trump administration's gutting of the agency.

These include some 18 million additional cases of malaria and 166,000 resulting deaths. One million children who will remain malnourished. And 200,000 additional children paralyzed by polio.

And he placed the blame squarely at the feet of USAID leadership, the State Department, and DOGE.

We discuss what the world will look like without American aid to help address global problems.

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0:30.0	where we bring you some of the week's most important conversations you might have missed.
0:33.9	Today we're discussing what many around the world are waiting for an answer to.
0:36.3	What's happening with U.S. foreign aid? In January, President Trump issued an executive
0:39.0	order to pause and assess U.S. foreign aid for 90 days. Then in February, Tesla's CEO and White
0:44.6	House advisor Elon Musk led an effort to put nearly all of the 4,700 full-time employees at the U.S.
0:51.8	Agency for International Development or U.S Development or USAID unpaid administrative leave.
0:57.1	The White House also announced that the administration would permanently cut a third of those positions,
1:01.2	effectively shuddering the agency. Last week, a federal judge issued an order calling the dismantling
1:06.7	of the agency likely unconstitutional, but stopped short of reversing the firings. As the future of
1:12.8	USAID remains tangled in a series of legal battles, many nations around the world have already begun
1:18.4	to fill the effects of U.S. disinvestment. Who's been most affected by the cuts to U.S. foreign aid,
1:24.3	and how might these changes affect the future of global health. After the break,
1:28.6	Apurva Mandivili joins us to discuss what we know so far. She's a reporter covering global
1:33.6	health and infectious diseases for the New York Times. Stay with us. We've got a lot to get into.
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