The end of USAID
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2025
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s show, we’ll discuss some headlines that might’ve slipped under the radar this week. First, most staff at the U.S. Agency for International Deveopment officially marked their final day with the agency. What might the dismantling of USAID mean for U.S. influence abroad? Plus, school districts are scrambling as federal education dollars are on hold. Then, we’ll smile about Andy Weir’s latest sci-fi novel being adapted for the big screen and the WNBA expanding into more cities!
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Bush, Obama and Bono Commend USAID Staff Members on Their Last Day” from The New York Times
- “The US says 'little to show‘ for six-decade aid agency. Supporters point to millions of lives saved” from The Associated Press
- “USAID cuts could lead to 14 million deaths over the next five years, researchers say” from NBC News
- “Education Department freezes cash for school districts, teacher training, migrant students” from POLITICO
- “Watch the first trailer for ‘Project Hail Mary’” from Popular Science
- “WNBA adds three more franchises as league’s popularity continues to grow” from The Washington Post
- “‘Friendship’ Review: Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd Hit Maximum Cringe” from The New York Times
If you have a question, give us a call: 508-U-B-SMART or email [email protected]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, if you're listening to this, I will assume you're at least interested in money, |
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| 0:31.5 | When you sign up for a Greenlight account at greenlight.com slash million. |
| 0:42.3 | Musiccom slash million. Hey everyone. |
| 0:43.5 | I'm Rima Jerez. |
| 0:44.5 | Welcome back to Make Me Smart |
| 0:46.1 | where we may today make sense. |
| 0:48.5 | And I'm Kimberly Adams. |
| 0:49.8 | Thanks everyone for joining us. |
| 0:51.2 | It's Wednesday, July the 2nd. |
| 0:54.4 | Yes, today we are going to get into some news and then smiles. Kimberly, you want to go first? What caught your attention today? |
| 1:02.2 | Yeah, this is actually a story from a couple, I guess it was yesterday, a couple days ago, Monday. I can't remember, but I've been paying so much attention to the reconciliation |
| 1:11.5 | package. Obviously, the Senate passed at the House is working on it now, that there's a lot of |
| 1:16.8 | other news in Washington that kind of just slipped under the radar, like the fact that USAID, |
| 1:24.4 | you know, our foreign aid, what used to be our foreign aid department, is officially gone. It's |
| 1:29.9 | officially gone. It's big news. Obviously, yeah, there were big cuts to this program when Doge first |
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