Law, Power, and Justice

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/opinion/trump-usaid-cuts.html

The Trump administration has claimed that no one has died because of its cuts to humanitarian aid, and it is now trying to cancel an additional $4.9 billion in aid that Congress already approved. Yet what I find here in desperate villages in southwestern Uganda is that not only are aid cuts killing children every day, but that the death toll is accelerating.

Stockpiles of food and medicine are running out here. Village health workers who used to provide inexpensive preventive care have been laid off. Public health initiatives like deworming and vitamin A distribution have collapsed. Immunizations are being missed. Contraception is harder to get. Ordinary people are growing weaker, hungrier and more fragile. So as months pass, the crisis is not easing but growing increasingly lethal — and because children are particularly vulnerable, they are often the first to starve and the first to die.

the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development will cost taxpayers $6.4 billion over two years. The memo, the subject of earlier reporting by Bloomberg Government, said the money is necessary to manage “litigation, claims, residual payments and closeout activities.”

Indeed, one tangible consequence of Trump’s presidency is child-size graves being dug around the world. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed that the aid cuts haven’t killed anyone, he should look up from his talking points and learn the truth.

The mortality rate for newborn babies has doubled this year in both the refugee settlements in Uganda I visited, Nakivale and Rwamwanja, according to Medical Teams International, which is trying to provide medical care despite the cuts. The upshot is that about three additional newborns are dying each week in Nakivale alone — and that is just one of 13 refugee settlements in Uganda facing similar problems.

One reason for the crisis here: The United States slashed humanitarian aid to refugees in Uganda, from more than $200 million in 2024 to $38 millionso far in 2025, according to U.N. figures, even as the number of refugees has surged. More is said to be on the way, and that will help. But aid cuts have meant that 20,000 medical workers have lost their jobs in Uganda in the last few months. Globally, some 86 percent of U.S.A.I.D. contracts have been canceled, according to the Center for Global Development.

That amounts to 88 children dying each hour of Trump’s second term because of his aid policy.