Donald Trump’s destruction of the civil service is a tragedy not just for the roughly 300,000 workers who have been discarded, but for an entire nation. The purge began late Friday night, four days after Donald Trump returned to the White House. Seventeen inspectors general—internal watchdogs embedded throughout the federal government—received emails notifying them of … [Read more…]
The Gates Foundation plans to spend a record $9 billion in 2026, focusing on global health and other key areas The Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it will spend a record $9 billion in 2026, maximizing its spending in key areas such as global health. At the same time it will begin reducing the number … [Read more…]
MUTARE, ZIMBABWE — Insectary assistants collect the specimens by sucking into a straw-like pump. But they don’t mistakenly swallow any, joked senior insectary assistant Petro Kawadza during a demonstration. It’s part of the critical service a malaria research center at Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe provides to the whole nation. This collection of hundreds of … [Read more…]
What is the funding status for HIV/Aids? Raising US$11.34 billion is significant but it falls short of the US$18 billion target. The Global Fund is trying to raise US$18 billion for its work from 2027 to 2029. The Global Fund is a worldwide partnership to end the epidemic of HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria and ensure … [Read more…]
On the one-month anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, a group of his appointed aides gathered to celebrate. For four weeks, they had been working overtime to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing thousands of programs, including ones that provided food, water and medicine around the world. They’d culled USAID’s … [Read more…]
After the Trump administration cut off food from the third-largest refugee camp in the world, thousands of families faced impossible choices as their children starved. MORE
When the Trump administration slashed foreign aid, it gutted a program that had reduced malaria deaths world wide. In northern Cameroon, health workers tried to protect children in one last rainy season. MORE
In August, I traveled to Kakuma, Kenya, to try to understand what happened when the U.S. cut off food to the world’s third-largest refugee camp. Soon after President Donald Trump froze foreign aid on his first day in office, my colleague Brett Murphy and I began hearing from government experts. We learned that despite explicit … [Read more…]
FROM USAID December 15, 2025 Dear USAID Implementing Partners, As the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) continues to finish closing the agency, USAID is taking additional immediate and decisive action to safeguard taxpayer funds and enhance financial oversight across its assistance portfolio. Effective immediately, USAID suspends all payments through Letters of Credit (LOCs) for … [Read more…]
Givewell is a nonprofit organization that gives money to “save or improve the most lives per dollar.” Part of their whole thing is a rigorous research process with copious and specific datapoints. So, in the chaotic wake of USAID’s gutting, they scrambled to figure out if they could fund the kind of projects USAID used … [Read more…]