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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics.

And today on the show, we want to bring you some reporting from our friends at the NPR podcast, Consider this. They looked at how changes to U.S. foreign aid policies have affected people both domestically and internationally. Here's one of Summers.

On the night of his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order that froze almost all international assistance for 90 days.

Shortly after that, the State Department has issued an expansion on President Trump's executive action Monday to freeze foreign assistance for 90 days.

In a memo, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered a pause on foreign aid spending and a stop work order for any

existing humanitarian and development projects. What followed was the termination of billions

of dollars in aid, which funded everything from infrastructure building to vaccination programs

to getting supplies into sensitive conflict zones. Experts like Abby Maxman, President

of Oxfam America, warned at the time that this move could have a destabilizing effect in countries

where that AIDS critical. It's having seismic impacts for the entire global aid system.

And really, frankly, it's a cruel decision that has life or death consequences for

millions of people around the world. One small U.S. foreign aid program working to eliminate so-called

neglected tropical diseases was shut down this year. Those diseases affect more than a billion

people worldwide and can be debilitating.

Mamadu, Kui Bali, coordinate several disease elimination programs for the Mali Ministry of Health.

It was like a thunderbolt. This lack of financing has stopped our activities.

He says the country has used its own money to fill the financial void, but it just isn't enough. These are diseases that make someone completely invalid. They have a very heavy

impact on the development of the country. There could be a return of these diseases if we're not

careful. Over in southwest Uganda, locals note that

refugees are spending less on food. That's because the U.S. has not renewed its contributions

to the U.N.'s World Food Program that helped them buy groceries. Economist Dean Carlin works on

...