USAID Representative Voice

BY AUSTAN MOGHARABI

Abraham Lincoln once implored our nation not to allow a “government of the people, by the people, for the people … to perish from this Earth.” We rightly focus on “of the people”—Lincoln’s defense of democracy.

But we are governed “by the people.” This means we cannot distance ourselves from our government’s actions by saying “they” did something.

When our government acts, it acts on our behalf. We bear a special responsibility as citizens to raise our voices when actions taken in our name are morally repugnant or strategically catastrophic.

In the past year, we have seen our government dismantle the very architecture of U.S. international leadership that has saved tens of millions of lives.

January 2026 marked one year since the beginning of the end for USAID. By April, the fate of the agency was decided—not through deliberative policy review, but through rushed cost-cutting exercises (“feeding USAID to the woodchipper,” to quote Elon Musk) that ignored decades of evidence. The consequences of shuttering USAID after more than 60 years are as infuriating as they are devastating to witness.

This catastrophe should unite Democrats and Republicans. Some of the greatest proponents of international assistance have been conservatives, including religious groups who believe deeply in helping those in need. USAID didn’t represent one party—it represented the goodwill of average Americans and our nation’s foreign policy priorities.

Between 2001 and 2021, USAID-funded programs helped prevent more than 91 million deaths globally, including more than 30 million children under age 5.

The impact was dramatic: a 65 percent reduction in HIV/AIDS mortality (25.5 million deaths prevented), a 51 percent reduction in malaria deaths (8 million prevented), and substantial decreases in deaths from tuberculosis, malnutrition, and maternal complications. These weren’t mere statistics—they were children who survived to adulthood, mothers who lived to raise their families.

The Trump administration’s termination of 83 percent of USAID programs has reversed these gains with brutal efficiency. Forecasting models project more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including more than 700,000 additional child deaths annually.

Lifesaving medications expired in warehouses mere miles from dying children. A 7-year-old died less than four miles from the facility where his treatment was stored but access was blocked. In Nigeria, pediatric malnutrition surged 208 percent in the first half of 2025, and 652 children died from malnutrition in six months.

In Somalia, annual U.S. funding plummeted from $450 million to $128 million. There, the World Food Program now reaches just 350,000 of 1.1 million people in need. HIV/AIDS treatment through PEPFAR, a program that saved 25 million lives, faces severe cutbacks.

In Tanzania and Uganda, patients ration antiretroviral medications. Women seek unwanted abortions, fearing they will transmit HIV to their children without preventive medication. The President’s Malaria Initiative, which saved 11.7 million lives since 2000, has been gutted, threatening up to 17.9 million additional malaria cases annually.

These cuts harm Americans, too. Farmers who supplied food aid, manufacturers who produced therapeutic nutrition products, and countless contractors and nonprofits have seen their income vanish.

Beyond the humanitarian crisis lies strategic failure: We are dismantling the international order our nation built after World War II faster than our adversaries could have hoped.

USAID wasn’t charity—it was infrastructure for American influence and a bulwark against instability.

When programs ended in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region, ISIS launched an offensive, beheading dozens and displacing thousands. In West Africa, USAID investment maintained influence in countries with deep-water ports, preventing the basing of strategic adversaries. These self-inflicted wounds are surfacing across fragile states where USAID once provided U.S. influence and stability.

China and Russia watch this abdication with satisfaction. As we withdraw, they advance—not with better humanitarian programs, but with authoritarian development models. We’re ceding ground to adversaries who will reshape the global order in their image.

These deaths, this suffering, this strategic retreat—they happened in our name, with our tax dollars, under our flag.

The consequences of silence are measured in millions of lives—and in the slow collapse of an international order that, for all its flaws, represented humanity’s best effort to spare future generations from the horrors of the past.

To remain silent is to forfeit our responsibility as citizens in a democracy.