Trump Destroyed USAID. Now People Are Dying.
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 218 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More To The Story: When Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, went looking for government agencies to axe last year, one of its first targets was the US Agency for International Development. Established during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence, USAID spent billions of dollars on food aid, public health, and emergency relief for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. In return, the US hoped to gain allies and goodwill. Call it a decades-long exercise in soft power. But since President Donald Trump returned to office, soft power is out. And so is USAID, which has been slashed and reorganized. The Trump administration is trying to close the agency altogether by September. This has led to some horrific consequences for the people who relied on USAID to survive. On this week’s More To The Story, ProPublica’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy join host Al Letson to talk about their on-the-ground reporting from Africa and how the Trump administration’s aid cuts are leading to devastating, even deadly, consequences.
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
Read: Russell Vought Raided USAID Budgets He Helped Gut to Pay for His Own Security (Mother Jones)
Listen: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping Our Country (More To The Story)
Read: Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. (ProPublica)
Listen: Paper Trail (ProPublica)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone, especially in South Sudan, wanted to know if the U.S. really had cut off aid. |
| 0:06.8 | It was easier for them to believe that, like, the aid organizations were lying to them than to think that the United States would do this. |
| 0:13.5 | And people just kept saying to us repeatedly, like, the U.S. doesn't have to take care of us. |
| 0:18.2 | They know that their government should do it, but their government wasn't doing it. On this week's more to the story, ProPublica journalist Brett Murphy and |
| 0:25.7 | Anna Maria Barry Jester. We talk about their on-the-ground reporting from South Sudan and Kenya, |
| 0:31.4 | chronicling how President Trump's dismantling of USAID has led to devastating, even deadly outcomes there. |
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