0.2%
"Taher and his wife watched their baby take his final breath. Their other children began to scream." - AP News
I want to paint an ugly, brutal picture for you. Mohammed Hashim: a two-year-old boy. Dead. His limp body being held by his weeping father, mother, and siblings. The sweet, innocent boy’s face is ashen and his stomach is empty. His family had to watch as he took his last breath on this earth. Not too long before he died he was a typical toddler — playful, goofy, silly, learning about the world around him. A lot like my own son, who is also two. But one day, the food rations that kept him alive just…stopped.1
0.2%. That’s the percentage of the annual U.S. budget that was allocated to USAID (United States Agency for International Development)2. To put it in perspective: the median U.S. taxpayer pays around $14,000 in federal taxes annually. $28 of that $14,000 went to USAID. That’s about 7¢ per day3. Donald Trump and Elon Musk illegally gutted the agency, whose budget was allocated by Congress4. As a result, it’s projected that 14 million people will die by 2030 (including 4.5 million children under five) — people who otherwise were expected to have survived5. Make no mistake — you’re not getting that $28 back. Thanks to Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” that’s just going toward increased deficit spending to fund tax cuts for people in my tax bracket and above6. If you voted for this, thanks for your patronage. My net worth thanks you as you get poorer. If you voted against it, I’m truly sorry.
Even if you personally don’t give a shit about some dead toddler on the other side of the world, what you should care about is the soft power that the United States is willingly leaving for grabs on the world stage. What we’ll spend in blood and credibility is incalculable. A Lancet analysis found USAID programs helped prevent 91 million deaths worldwide from 2001-20217. People in developing countries used to think of America as a land of “opportunity”; of “freedom”; a country that gave a goddamn about the greater good in the world compared to the pathetic despots that ruled over them. Those people yearned to one day become Americans. They dreamed of making it to America and not only participating in our culture, but assimilating to it. They dreamed of their children growing up in the Greatest Country in the World™ and becoming everything they wished they had had a chance to accomplish. But that’s now a thing of the past. The pre-Donald Trump United States that we grew up in is — in all but name — gone on the world stage. $28 per year is an absolute steal for the soft power that USAID bought us globally. It not only kept us relevant, it kept us safe. It kept us popular. It helped maintain our “America #1” image8.
Two weeks after Mohammed Hashim died, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and lied: “No one has died.” This is the same Marco Rubio who, in 2016, said of Donald Trump, “He is a con artist. He runs on this idea he is fighting for the little guy, but he has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy — his entire career.” Marco Rubio is a coward. He may be playing a savvy political game; denying causality and trying to keep Donald Trump from his worst impulses, but make no mistake: he is a coward of the highest order. He and the rest of this administration’s enablers will have to live the rest of their lives carrying the weight of knowing that they condemned not only baby Mohammed Hashim, but millions of others, to death for the vanity of a small, pathetic narcissist9.
Donald Trump signed an executive order to freeze foreign aid for 90 days. It was marketed as a “review.” Contractors were told to stand down, disbursements were halted, and programs hit a hard pause. It didn’t matter if you were mid-treatment, mid-pregnancy, or mid-meal. Elon Musk’s new vanity project “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE for short; a shitty internet meme in case you weren’t aware) swaggered through agencies while senior USAID staff were being placed on leave or locked out of their own headquarters. Before long, Rubio announced that the “purge” had been completed. 83% of USAID programs were eliminated10.
This “freeze” became a common occurrence. Courts pushed back, but the White House just reached for pocket rescissions to cancel nearly $5 billion in Congressionally approved foreign aid and peacekeeping funds by running out the clock with an audacious end-run around the power of the purse that Congress is supposed to have — before cowards like Mike Johnson and John Thune abdicated their constitutional powers to a would-be authoritarian11.
Myanmar/Thailand
Food rations were severed for about 1 million people. Starving families who used to have reliable meals now survive on one meager meal per day or forage for roots to try and make it through the day. Mohammed Hashim is one of many children who has died for a billionaire’s vanity project12.
Congo/Ethiopia/Somalia
Malnutrition programs were halted. Tens of thousands of children were labeled “in mortal danger.” Health ministries were forced to lay off thousands of dedicated workers who spent their lives fighting HIV, malaria, and TB. Dozens of clinics had to close when salaries could no longer be paid.
Yemen/Syria/Afghanistan
Maternal care was cut for hundreds of thousands. Northern Syria saw clinics shuttered en masse. Hundreds of mobile health teams operating in Afghanistan were suddenly suspended. After two decades of destabilizing the Middle East, our one token of goodwill vanished13.
USAID’s mission has never been particularly “sexy.” The agency has always worked quietly in the background to prevent outbreaks, famines, and failed states. It championed an unglamorous American leadership that the downtrodden across the world could count on and look up to.
Our rage matters. It tells a most uncomfortable truth about harm. It’s easy to think of these things as abstractions, but we’re arguing over the worth of 0.2%; of $28/year; of 7¢/day. Was it worth Mohammed Hashim’s life? Was it worth the 4.5 million children under five that will die in the next five years? If you care about American hegemony on the world stage, you should feel ashamed of our country. If you consider yourself a Christian you should feel ashamed of our discarded humanity.
What’s left to say at this point? The truth is small like Mohammed Hashim’s body; unbearable like the grief his family will carry with them every day for the rest of their lives to satisfy the vanity of the weak and pathetic men who sentenced their baby to death. It’s also fixable, if we decide that the richest country in the world can afford both a conscience and 0.2%14.
As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or if you just want to chat. You can find me on the following platforms:
Substack: https://unaligned.sh
Twitter: https://x.com/just_becs
Email: rebecca@unaligned.sh
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-usaid-thailand-trump-rubio-aid-7f6919a1863ceea2ddf6708e47bb88f0
https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-development
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/interactive-data/taxday/average/2022/receipt
https://apnews.com/article/usaid-trump-foreign-aid-rubio-judge-ali-60ef55de60a36c61eb563b5982298385
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2825%2901186-9/fulltext
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2825%2901186-9/fulltext
https://www.cfr.org/article/what-usaid-and-why-it-risk
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-usaid-thailand-trump-rubio-aid-7f6919a1863ceea2ddf6708e47bb88f0
https://whyy.org/articles/usaid-trump-elon-musk-foreign-agency
https://apnews.com/article/usaid-trump-foreign-aid-rubio-judge-ali-60ef55de60a36c61eb563b5982298385
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-usaid-thailand-trump-rubio-aid-7f6919a1863ceea2ddf6708e47bb88f0
https://apnews.com/article/usaid-cuts-hunger-sickness-288b1d3f80d85ad749a6d758a778a5b2
https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/agency-for-international-development