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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The only debate is whether to measure the dead due to the loss of USAID in the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/opinion/rubio-usaid-africa.html
While testifying before Congress, Rubio claimed that the Trump administration’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development had not cost any lives.

“No children are dying on my watch,” he asserted. At another point in the hearing, he broadened his statement to include adults as well: “No one has died because of U.S.A.I.D.”

This is ludicrous: The only debate is whether to measure the dead in the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.

So let me help Rubio with the truth. Meet Evan Anzoo, a 5-year-old boy who was born with H.I.V. in South Sudan:

I mentioned Evan in a column in March from South Sudan. This was a child as precious as yours or mine. Evan’s life was in our hands, and for five years America kept him alive with antiretroviral medicines costing less than 12 cents a day, through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. This was a program started by President George W. Bush that has saved more than 26 million lives so far, and it turned the tide of AIDS around the world and built enormous good will toward the United States.

Then along came President Trump and his freeze on most humanitarian aid in January. How could a 5-year-old orphan possibly obtain medicine on his own? Evan weakened and soon died of an opportunistic infection.

If Rubio needs further reminder of the human toll, this little girl is Achol Deng, 8, who likewise died when she lost access to antiretrovirals because of the U.S.A.I.D. freeze.

I share these photos of Evan and Achol because it strikes me as doubly offensive not only to cause unnecessary deaths of such children but also to deny these deaths and call them lies. The denials erase these children and dodge all responsibility.

It was Elon Musk who first insisted that “no one has died.” Now Rubio has doubled down.

When I reached out to Rubio to ask about the “lies” comment and the suggestion that no one had died, he declined to be interviewed.
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We are not responsible for basic medical healthcare in foreign countries.  However, your admission that the medicine costs 0.12 cents, Sudan can afford that.

The US taxpayer cannot afford to keep shoveling money into NGOs. [/quote]

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