#foreign aid

Peter Donde was a 10-year-old infected with H.I.V. from his mother during childbirth. But American aid kept Peter strong even as his parents died from AIDS. A program started by President George W. Bush called PEPFAR saved 26 million lives from AIDS, and one was Peter’s.

Under PEPFAR, an outreach health worker ensured that Peter and other AIDS orphans got their medicines. Then in January, Trump and Musk effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, perhaps illegally, and that PEPFAR outreach program ended. Orphans were on their own.

Without the help of the community health worker, Peter was unable to get his medicines, so he became sick and died in late February, according to Moses Okeny Labani, a health outreach worker who helped manage care for Peter and 144 other vulnerable children.

And now the media’s afraid of Elon and Vivek cutting all this spending. Why? They’ll lose kickbacks.

Why is the US finding any country other than the US?

Foreign Aid = Money Laundering 101

Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. (The sources I spoke with for this story requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.)

Sometime near the end of the Biden administration, USAID spent about $800,000 on the high-energy biscuits, one current and one former employee at the agency told me. The biscuits, which cram in the nutritional needs of a child under 5, are a stopgap measure, often used in scenarios where people have lost their homes in a natural disaster or fled a war faster than aid groups could set up a kitchen to receive them. They were stored in a Dubai warehouse and intended to go to the children this year.

"Apples and oranges" doesn't do justice to describing this comparison.

The Trump Argentina bailout is a $20 billion IMF package. It’s unclear how that benefits the US public at all.

US military aid to Israel is around $3.3 billion a year, and nearly all of it must be spent on American defense contractors. That's less foreign aid than it is a domestic industry subsidy with a blue-and-white flag on the invoice. Israel benefits, no question - but so does the US economy.

So what are we really comparing here?

One lump sum that vanishes into an unstable foreign economy and a recurring contract that pumps cash into Lockheed, Raytheon, and American jobs.

So that's not comparing apples and oranges.

That's like comparing a black hole and a boomerang.

Abid Rahman at THR:

California Governor Gavin Newsom compared Israel to an “apartheid state” and questioned future U.S. military support for the country. Speaking on stage at an event to promote his new memoir, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, Newsom, who is widely expected to enter the 2028 presidential race, was asked by Pod Save America host Jon Favreau about the U.S.-Israel relationship and whether it should be reconsidered. “It breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down the path where I don’t think you have a choice about that consideration,” Newsom said about the U.S. potentially rethinking its support for Israel. Newsom’s comments come in light of the devastation in Gaza and the ongoing war with Iran. But also as the Democratic base’s views of Israel have shifted markedly to being negative, so much so that even minor links to the country have become an electoral liability for Dems in primary races.

Even longtime pro-Israel California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has seen the tide turn.

Newsom rightly calls Israel an “apartheid state” and urges a rethink of the US’s blank check military support to Israel.

See Also:

The Guardian: Gavin Newsom likens Israel to ‘an apartheid state’ and decries war on Iran