President Trump’s decision to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has ignited a firestorm of criticism from none other than former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
According to the Guardian, the move, which folds USAID into the State Department under a new “America First” banner, has been slammed as a catastrophic misstep, with a Lancet study projecting over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 due to slashed funding.
Let’s rewind to the beginning: USAID, established six decades ago under President John F. Kennedy, has long been a cornerstone of American humanitarian aid, enjoying bipartisan support until recently.
Fast forward to this year, when the Trump administration began its aggressive dismantling, with 83% of USAID programs axed as announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March.
By February, grant recipients were ordered to halt work immediately, and staff received termination notices via mass emails—a move that’s faced legal challenges for its sheer abruptness.
The final nail came on Monday with USAID’s last day, marked by a video farewell conference attended by thousands, including overseas staff and dignitaries like former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
During the conference, a humanitarian worker shared a heartfelt story of USAID’s impact on her childhood in a Liberian refugee camp, underscoring what’s at stake with this closure.
Former Presidents Obama and Bush didn’t hold back either, with Obama calling it “a colossal mistake” and a “travesty,” arguing the agency’s work saves lives and shapes generations.
Bush chimed in, referencing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) which saved 25 million lives, asking, “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live?” Well, isn’t that the million-dollar question for a nation-first agenda?
Now, let’s talk numbers: a multinational group of researchers in the Lancet warned that funding cuts could lead to over 14 million additional deaths by 2030, a third of them children.
They didn’t mince words, stating, “Unless the abrupt funding cuts... are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur.” If that’s not a wake-up call, what is?
Over two decades, USAID’s investments in health, nutrition, and education have prevented 91 million deaths in struggling nations—numbers that make you wonder why we’d toss such a legacy for untested restructuring.
On the other side, President Trump has defended the shutdown, claiming the agency was “run by radical left lunatics” and plagued by fraud—a sentiment echoed by Elon Musk who branded it a “criminal organisation.”
While conservatives may cheer a push against bloated bureaucracies and progressive agendas, the abruptness of this closure and its human cost raise serious questions even for those skeptical of globalist aid programs.
With USAID being the world’s top donor for humanitarian efforts—accounting for 43% of government contributions in 2023—and programs like Pepfar now in limbo, the ripple effects could haunt us, especially as other donors might scale back too, per the Lancet authors. Isn’t it worth pausing to ensure “America First” doesn’t mean “Humanity Last”?
