Yes, the Cuts to USAID Have Killed

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/yes-the-cuts-to-usaid-have-killed

IN A RECENT VIDEO, Elon Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, defended his decision last year to feed the United States Agency for International Development “into the wood chipper.” When someone on his social-media platform claimed that not a single child had died because of his destroying USAID, he reposted their argument with a single word of commentary: “Exactly.” Musk said that during his “DOGE” rampage he’d never been able to talk to any real children who could prove to him they were suffering and receiving help from the agency, because it was so full of “fraud and graft.”

But Musk is wrong. Many people, including many children, have died as a direct result of the cuts he and his DOGE team made to USAID. And the number of deaths no longer being prevented by the agency will only grow.

To back up, USAID was established in 1961 to end extreme global poverty, promote democracy, and advance U.S. interests. In the five years prior to the second Trump administration, U.S. spending on foreign aid—a figure that includes but is not limited to the work of USAID—ranged from $35.6 billion to $61.2 billion per year, or less than 1 percent of the federal budget. It also typically accounted for over a quarter of total development assistance given by all countries put together. In some twenty developing countries, U.S. aid “equaled more than 10 percent of domestic health expenditure,” according to an analysis from the Center for Global Development; in one case, Afghanistan, American aid equaled three times the domestic health expenditure. In 2024, 50 to 60 percent of Côte D’Ivoire’s AIDS response was funded by the United States. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, that figure was 89 percent.

And if we define success as saving lives, USAID was working. Not by itself, but alongside parallel investments by Global South governments, advocacy by people, and economic growth. One study estimates that USAID saved around 92 million lives over the last two decades, including 30.4 million children under 5. Since 1990, the world has more than halved the number of children dying before the age of 5, from 13 million a year to 4.9 million. Between 2000 and 2023, we cut maternal deaths by 40 percent. USAID is an important part of that story.

These positive indicators are changing direction for the first time in thirty years. Around 200,000 more children are believed to have died in 2025 than in 2024. Over 1,300 health and family planning clinics have closed globally due to USAID cuts. Thousands of medical professionals were laid off. Studies show an increase in child marriages, violence against women and girls, and civil disorder, including riots and armed battles. Lancet modeling indicates USAID cuts may cause 14 million deaths, including those of 4.5 million children under age 5, by 2030.

*snip*

[Solly Mack]

1. As far as I'm concerned, it is murder.

Intentional.

A crime against humanity.

Musk and the whole of DOGE should be charged. As well as Trump and Rubio.

It won't happen, of course.

The "good guys" (you know, how America sees itself) won't do it.

You know, because of not wanting to make political policy "politicized" by calling it criminal, because, you know, it's "policy" and not a crime and everyone knows that policy is always developed in good faith.

Even when "policy" is actually criminal.

Everything Hitler did was legal in Germany - all of his policies were legal. All legal.

Same with Mussolini, Pinochet, Stalin, Franco, Ceausescu, Amin, bin Salman and the list goes on and on and on.

The abuses and atrocities brought by white supremacy against the First Peoples in America - legal.

Slavery was legal.

Jim Crow was legal.

Black codes were legal.

Operation "Wet Back" was legal.

Forcing Japanese -Americans into concentration camps detention camps and stealing their property - was legal.

But, hey, I'm not bitter.

Happy Birthday, America!

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Elon Musk demands 'single' DOGE death example -- then goes silent when given the body count

Musk and DOGE killed millions of people. Musk was threatening defamation lawsuits but may have shut up

Elon Musk demands 'single' DOGE death example — then goes silent when given the body count #RawStory

— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2026-06-29T13:12:16.000Z

https://www.rawstory.com/elon-musk-2677124080/

As reporting increasingly suggests that the U.S. federal aid cuts spearheaded by trillionaire Elon Musk last year have led to preventable deaths abroad – and potentially millions by 2030 – the Tesla CEO issued his critics a challenge to “cite a single name of someone who died,” but grew notably silent after being given countless examples.

“They cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died,” Musk wrote Sunday on his social media platform X. “Not a single name!”

Musk’s online post was immediately hit with thousands of replies, many of them citing the names of individuals as young as three years old whose deaths had been attributed to a disruption in U.S. foreign aid. Among the most notable responses came from New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof, who’s extensively reported on the impact from U.S. foreign aid cuts spearheaded by Musk.

“Elon, I can give you many, many names of people who have died because of your aid cuts,” Kristof wrote, listing several individuals who died over the past year due to U.S. foreign aid cuts – people whose families or caretakers he had personally spoken with.

Despite Musk publishing countless social media posts since Kristof’s response, he ultimately did not respond, and instead authored posts related to other topics such as immigration, including a post published Monday morning advocating to “deal with traitors first, then the invaders.”

“Odd. No response from Elon Musk,” noted political commentator Tom Santos in a social media post to their nearly 40,000 followers. “Actually, not odd at all. Elon tends not to engage when actual facts are introduced to the bull--- he spews.”

[GiqueCee]

3. Musk gave us the key...

... to his diseased "philosophy": his hatred and condemnation of EMPATHY. That alone is a red flag with sirens and flashing lights screaming, SOCIOPATH! Or, in his instance, we should use the label,"FULL-BLOWN PSYCHOPATH"!
He wanted to use DOGE to hurt people and get away with it by masking it as a police action against waste and fraud, which was wall-to-wall, knee-deep, pull-up-your-pants-it's-too-late-to-save-your-shoes BULLSHIT! NO administration in American history has been more wasteful and fraudulent than the Trump regimes, both I and II, and Musk helped make it happen. He should spend the rest of his life in the deepest, darkest pit of an ICE detention center, and his fortune forfeited to help repair all the harm he has done. But, this is a government OF the rich, BY the rich, and FOR the rich, so I harbor no illusions that justice will ever be done.

[Ilsa]

4. I believe there is a hell for some people.

Or are Musk and others too evil to be welcomed by "Satan?"

[Ray Bruns]

5. I don't remember when he visited children asking them. Just more bullshit.

“Musk said that during his ‘DOGE’ rampage he’d never been able to talk to any real children who could prove to him they were suffering and receiving help from the agency, because it was so full of ‘fraud and graft’.”