Cutting USAID, Trump Invites Needless Death

Without firing a shot Donald Trump may well earn a spot among the Top 10 leaders in history presiding over death in their respective countries and beyond.

He probably (it is to be hoped) will not match or exceed the death count of Mao Zedong (60 million), Josef Stalin (40 million), or Adolf Hitler (30 million), the 20th Century’s most prolific killers. But Trump’s heartless elimination of USAID funding in Africa and other continents suffering from medical crises exacerbated by civil wars and famine, and his proposed cutbacks to Medicaid and Obamacare eligibility for vulnerable lower income Americans, could easily land him on the list of leaders responsible for millions of unnecessary deaths.

Because he has cut treatment centers abroad that strive to minimize the spread of controllable diseases Trump may well unleash global pandemics that could rival deaths from the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Flu of the post World War I era, and Covid-19. 

Trimming fat from the federal budget is a worthy endeavor, to be done as with a surgeon’s precise use of a scalpel. But using a chain saw to reduce the budget is a grotesque use of executive power as it ignores repercussions from the surgery.  

USAID programs in some 120 countries helped fight tuberculosis, HIV, malaria, polio and other infectious diseases, as well as supplying food to stave off the ravages of famine.

Estimating deaths is not a precise calculation, but it provides an informed analysis of the potential impact of Trump’s cutbacks. For example, eliminating PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started by President George W. Bush in 2003) would result in the loss of an adult life every three minutes and a child’s every 31 minutes, according to Brooke Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University (https://www.bu.edu/articles/2025/mathematician-tracks-deaths-from-usaid-medicaid-cuts/). 

On May 28, NPR reported “modeling out of Boston University estimates that the abrupt cuts to USAID have meant nearly 300,000 people have died to date.” 

The Black Plague and Spanish Flu killed tens of millions during a time when global travel was rare. Even after Trump’s ban on visitors from some Third World countries, America is more vulnerable to epidemics brought in from abroad because USAID programs have ended most hopes of containment while domestic vaccination rates for communicable diseases, such as measles, have decreased. Highly contagious and even deadly, measles outbreaks have popped up throughout the United States. As of June 5, the Center for Disease Control reported 1,168 confirmed cases of measles this year. Three deaths resulted. 

The danger is compounded by Trump’s proposal to cut back on the federal government’s Medicaid financial support to states. The Hill news organization reported, “The Center for American Progress found that about 34,200 more people would die annually if the federal government reduced its current 90 percent match for the expansion costs and states responded by dropping their Medicaid expansions (https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5261905-medicaid-cuts-house-republican-budget-plan/).

Staying healthy, unfortunately, is not an option for far too many, at home and abroad. Nor is the ability to provide sufficient food for their families. All too often a last resort is government assistance. There is, or should be, a special place in Hell for a leader who strips away health care and life-preserving food from the needy.

According to Telegrafi, an Albanian news site, the Top 10 propellers of death in their respective country and internationally during the last 150 years are:

1. Mao Zedong (China) 60 million
2. Josef Stalin (USSR/Eastern Europe) 40 million
3. Adolf Hitler (Germany/Europe) 30 million
4. King Leopold II (Belgium/Congo) 8 million
5. Hidaki Tojo (Japan/Far East) 5 million
6. Ismail Enver Pasha (Ottoman Empire) 2 million
7. Pol Pot (Cambodia) 1.7 million
8. Kim II Sung (North Korea) 1.6 million
9. Mengistu Haile Mariam (Ethiopia) 1.5 million
10. Yakubu Gowon (Nigeria) 1 million

Interestingly, some well known tyrants didn’t make the list. Saddam Hussein (Iraq) killed 600,000; Idi Amin’s toll in Uganda is estimated at 300,000-400,000; Benito Mussolini (Italy) 250,000.

Trump will most assuredly crack the Top 10. It is only a question of how high on the list will he rank. 

U.S. Warriors From All Races, Genders & Creeds

When one thinks about American heroes, children and adults who have not matured beyond grade school intellect name the usual suspects—people like George Washington, Paul Revere, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Abraham Lincoln. 

All deserving of praise, appreciation and reverence for forging America into an unparalleled bastion of democracy and opportunity. 

But the list of heroes—true heroes who molded our country into the envy of the world—runs much deeper than the picture book caricatures conveyed in elementary school textbooks.

True American heroes changed our country by expanding the rights and opportunities of all citizens and residents, regardless of race, gender or creed. 

In Donald Trump terms, American heroes should be military “warriors.” Except Donald Trump sees everything through bigoted eyes, so he and his secretary of defense Pete Hegseth are determined to erase any public display of gay, black and Hispanic achievement on military equipment or establishments. People such as Harvey Milk, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lucy Stone, Medgar Evers and Dolores Huerta, who have been considered for honors such as the naming of U. S. Navy vessels, no longer will be recognized (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/politics/navy-ships-harvey-milk-renamed.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare).

The erasure of our collective history is an abomination. Half of our elected national legislators—the Trumpers—are acquiescing. Their silence is deafening.  Most appalling is the failure of the four black House members, one black senator, 18 Hispanic House members and one Hispanic senator to speak out in defiance of the erasure of their heritage heroes. 

Harvey Milk et al epitomized the struggle to overcome adversity, inequality, discrimination and slavery. They are the type of “warriors” we should be extolling. Trump and Hegseth, on the other hand, have exercised a workaround from the removal of Confederate officer names accomplished under President Joe Biden. Biden changed Georgia’s Fort Benning to Fort Moore. 

Trump and Hegseth reinstated the Benning name, ostensibly to honor a World War I hero, Corporal Fred G. Benning, but the intent to identify with the Confederacy was impossible to miss. Henry L. Benning supported secession and served as a Confederate brigadier general.  

Trump and Hegseth have the power to whitewash black, Hispanic and gay contributions. In response, black, Hispanic and gay Americans should stage a peaceful protest. 

How? By not going to work or school throughout the country on Friday, June 13, the day before Trump’s birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U. S. Army. 

A Choice for All Americans

Which side will you stand with?

The side of culture and compassion, equality and economic opportunity? Conservation and connectivity, altruism and acceptance, mercy and magnanimity, justice and judicial integrity? Principles and predictability, science and sharing, diversity and dialogue? Inclusion and intellect, freedom and facts, truth and tolerance?

Or, will you stand with corruption and contempt, abuse and antagonism, fealty and fanaticism? Intolerance and indifference, greed and grossness, hero worship and hate? Disruption and denial, bigotry and baseness, nastiness and name-calling, lies and lewdness, mockery and mayhem, falsehoods and fictions?

In our land of abundance children go to bed hungry, yet politicians eagerly strip them of helpful meals and early childhood education, all so millionaires and billionaires can possess more, more than they could rationally spend in a lifetime. 

In our land of intellectual excellence and scientific discovery, revenge would deny advancement of medical research. Lives are at stake, but lust for vengeance seeks to fracture our collective future.   

In our land of free elections and dynamic economy, betrayal of our history and foundational principles threatens to remake us into a closeted, bigoted, selfish and self-centered nation. 

The choice is ours: Civil or contemptible? Miserly or magnanimous? Guiding or guarded? Caring or conceited?  Egocentric or ecumenical? 

Increasingly I have been hearing people—friends and TV commentators—say there are many points on which they agree with Trump. They just wish he voiced them in a more agreeable fashion, with no, or less, abusiveness, anger, vindictiveness. I sometimes fall into that abyss, as well. 

Then I recall what they said about Mussolini, that he made the trains run on time, as if that success justified his fascist rule. Hitler put Germans back to work, too. Mao eliminated most hunger in China. 

But those are extremes. Let’s not paint Trump as their evil successor, just yet. A more realistic comparison might be to Richard Nixon. 

Lest we forget, Nixon did some good things: He created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed important environmental legislation, ended the military draft, signed the Title IX act prohibiting gender discrimination in federally funded education programs including sports, and ended the forced assimilation of Native Americans. 

Nixon, of course, had his dark side, chief among them the Watergate scandal and its various tentacles including an “enemies list” evocative of Trump’s compendium of people on whom to wreak vengeance. 

And it was Nixon who, during a post-presidency 1977 interview with David Frost, voiced what Trump has taken to heart—“When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” Sadly, almost 50 years later, the Supreme Court has rubber-stamped that extreme, imperialist position. 

The future of America as a beacon of good depends on everyday Americans, their choice of a country defined by a vindictive, absolutist Trump or by the words of the Declaration of Independence—“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”