The Worst Part

My nomination for the worst thing the worst president has done

Declaring the worst-of-all is daunting because there are so many aspects of Trump’s second term competing for that title — the abandonment of efforts to address climate change, the aggressive and racist immigrant purge, the random sacking of government employees, the Epstein coverup, the corruption of the Department of Justice, and the influence of anti-vaccine crackpots on public health.

I could go on, but hesitate to give air to Trump horrors that compete with my nominee: The destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

It commenced on Trump’s first day in office last January and a legal battle over his draconian executive order followed through February. By March 10, however, 83% of USAID funds to pay for medicine and food for some of the poorest people in the world had been stopped.

Some functions of USAID were rolled into the State Department but the main work of the agency — providing medical supplies for clinics to fight disease, supplying grains from American farmers to keep children from starving to death — was over.

And suddenly over.

The funding cuts were devastating to global health.

Since the early 1960s, USAID handled a major part of our country’s humanitarian and foreign development assistance, providing life-saving medicines for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections and maternal and perinatal conditions. We also sent food and clean water and provided assistance for farmers — all for less than one percent of the federal budget.

But, once in office again, Trump allowed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to take a chainsaw to USAID, and Musk did so, gleefully.

Also taking part were Marco Rubio, the new secretary of state who said USAID was “misaligned with America’s core national interests,” and Russell Vought, the zealous budget director who believes Trump should have maximum power to cut spending — even spending fully authorized by Congress. (More on Vought later in this column.)

“Total U.S. spending on lifesaving humanitarian relief dropped from over $14 billion in 2024 to just $3.7 billion in 2025,” writes Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and a former senior USAID official, in an op-ed for The Times.

The result of USAID’s sudden destruction has already been deadly.

Numerous non-governmental agencies report deaths from starvation or halted medical treatments in Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other crisis zones. The British medical journal, The Lancet, published a report last month estimating more than 9 million deaths by 2030 should the funding from the U.S. and other countries not be restored. The report went further, projecting that “ongoing reductions in funding could, under a severe defunding scenario, result in 22.6 million additional deaths across all ages by 2030, including 5.4 million among children younger than 5 years.”

The Lancet report measured previous funding levels with health outcomes and found significant reductions in deaths because of them: “[Government] funding has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality across [poor countries] over the past two decades, and the abrupt withdrawal of this support threatens to cause millions of avoidable deaths, reversing decades of progress in global health.”

So that’s my nominee for worst.

It’s not something in plain sight. The consequences of USAID’s destruction do not show up easily in social media, nor do they make much news here. Trump’s five-distractions-a-day newsfeed keeps attention off the deaths of others in foreign lands that he has caused.

But I find it impossible to ignore.

“USAID was not only a humanitarian endeavor; it was also a symbol of what America seeks to be in the world and the sort of world America seeks to build,” writes Konyndyk. “Trump’s new order, inaugurated with his assault on U.S.A.I.D., is corroding America’s influence and standing and leaving global leaders with little choice but to treat the United States as an erratic adversary rather than a stable ally.

End note: As I was preparing this column, Reuters reported that Vought is using $15 million in remaining USAID funds — money that could have kept children from starving — to cover the costs of his protection by the U.S. Marshals Service through the end of the year. I rest my case.

Suggestion: Want to tell Vought what you think of what he’s done? Use part of this President’s Day to write him a letter and send it via the U.S. Postal Service:

Russell Vought, director

Office of Management and Budget

725 17th St NW

Washington, DC 20503