“Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew!”
That was what U.S. Agency for International Development Deputy Administrator Kenneth Jackson told me on Feb. 5, 2025. I had just briefed the Trump administration’s new political leadership on global health programs that saved millions of lives worldwide and protected Americans from the spread of deadly diseases.
USAID’s new chief of staff, Joel Borkert, was equally astonished by the global impact I had laid out. His reaction: “I had no idea you did all this! When I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.”
I wished I could have briefed them earlier. The day before, the vast majority of USAID’s 10,000+ employees — those who had not already been fired — were placed on administrative leave. Elon Musk, leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, falsely and inexplicably said USAID “was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America” and boasted on his website X (formerly Twitter), “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
As the top global health official at USAID while it was being demolished, I had a front-row seat to the chaos — I was even forced to participate in it, as I recount in my new book, “Into the Wood Chipper.”
Some of America’s best ideas were destroyed in a matter of weeks — before its political leaders even bothered to learn what the agency did. DOGE decapitated USAID’s career leadership within a week of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, placing 60 of the most senior career officials on administrative leave, a move that led to my unlikely promotion to USAID’s top global health official. Not even three weeks into Trump’s second term, all foreign aid was frozen and most of USAID’s expertise was jettisoned thanks to the indifference, incompetence and cruelty of a small group of uninformed and unqualified political operatives who ignored the warnings of experts of the mass suffering that would result.
Infectious diseases don’t stop at international borders, something the Covid-19 pandemic should have reminded everyone.
For less than 1% of the federal budget, USAID prevented 92 million deaths over the past two decades alone. And that number was climbing rapidly. Investments in new drugs, vaccines and technological innovations had us at the cusp of achieving a world free from fear of some of the deadliest diseases of the past century: malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.
It’s not crazy to think that American tax dollars should be spent in America, which has plenty of its own problems. But that was the beauty of USAID’s work. It benefited Americans.
Infectious diseases don’t stop at international borders, something the Covid-19 pandemic should have reminded everyone. Even if you’re not convinced of the value of goodwill and partnership built through decades of American generosity, USAID’s work to enable countries’ health systems to detect outbreaks before they spread made us safer at home, as improving health care is well-known to alleviate migration and conflict, saving Americans from needing to resort to much more costly interventions.
And that was just in global health. USAID made America safer in innumerable ways. Those pro-democracy groups in Iran that Trump is now calling upon to rise up and take over their government? USAID supported those organizations until the agency was dismantled last year, increasing their vulnerability to persecution by the regime.
Mark Lloyd, who ultimately became my boss, served at USAID during the first Trump administration as the agency’s religious freedom adviser, an appointment that drew criticism due to his substantial history of Islamophobic rhetoric (he once called Islam “a barbaric cult” and advocated forcing people to eat bacon before they could purchase firearms). The first time we met, in February 2025, Lloyd told me USAID’s staff had been “awful” to him.
“They tracked down my family and sent pictures of my son’s house to threaten me. And then they killed my dog!” he told me.
How could I expect him to heed warnings from people he was convinced were pet murderers?
The DOGE team quickly learned how to shut off staff access to email and other agency systems, even without the consent of the Trump administration’s political appointees, creating mass fear and confusion. When I told Borkert that the entire malaria division had lost access, destabilizing the malaria program as the rainy season approached, his frustration with DOGE’s emulation of Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop tactics boiled over.
“See, this is why, just because it might work at Twitter does not mean you can do it here!” he shouted.
USAID’s Development Experience Clearinghouse, the repository of 230,000 reports, studies and evaluations documenting our progress over the decades, was eliminated.
And in an apparent attempt to exempt all internal communications from Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover how USAID was being dismantled, DOGE workers embedded the words “Sensitive But Unclassified” automatically in every employee email — regardless of the content. (The State Department did not respond to MS NOW’s request for comment, but it said in a statement to ABC News, “This individual is not a ‘whistleblower’ but a former employee terminated for insubordination who had no role in, or visibility into, senior leadership deliberations or the Secretary’s policy process.”)
In late February 2025, nearly all USAID’s contracts were terminated, functionally ending the agency’s ability to operate. Many of the terminated contracts had been axed by mistake, and it was evident that no one had bothered to ask what the contracts did before ending them. Several were necessary to provide basic safety and operational capacity for the agency’s staff, including the phone plan contract for all USAID employees and the lease for the building where we worked. One terminated contract provided potable water to USAID staff in South Sudan, causing immediate rationing of the suddenly limited supply of drinking water. Another was for the agency’s system that managed, among other things, the termination of contracts. They terminated the most critical health contracts too, including those that provided lifesaving drugs and services to millions of people.
The Trump administration erased USAID’s knowledge base, as well. USAID’s Development Experience Clearinghouse, the repository of 230,000 reports, studies and evaluations documenting our progress over the decades, was eliminated.
In its place, the State Department launched the America First Global Health Strategy, signing bilateral aid agreements with over 20 countries, now conditioned upon the host country providing access to sensitive data and other resources. The agreement with Zambia, for example, conditions the flow of lifesaving aid, including HIV treatment for over a million people, on Zambia granting the U.S. access to critical minerals. (In February, the State Department told The Guardian, “The administration believes that American foreign assistance must demonstrably advance American national interests and use taxpayers’ dollars efficiently.”)
The reckless and abrupt destruction of USAID, as well as the lifesaving aid it delivered, remains unjustifiable. USAID was not perfect, and there are many ways to improve upon the system we had. But pulling the plug, without warning, on programs that were needed to keep people alive was simultaneously devastating and unnecessary.
Clinical trials were stopped in their tracks, interrupting novel treatment regimens for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, threatening the lives of patients and the development of new strains of TB that could evade our antibiotics of last resort. Pregnant women in need of urgent childbirth services were left stranded when emergency ambulance services halted and clinics were shuttered. Mothers were forced into the unthinkable position of choosing which of their children to feed.
To date, more than 750,000 people, including 500,000 children, have died due to USAID cuts, according to estimates. Sadly, this is just the beginning, with countless individuals falling increasingly ill as they ration drugs or buy low-quality medicines on the black market. The Lancet estimated the cuts, if not rectified, will result in 14 million unnecessary deaths over the next five years.
At a moment when many Americans sense something fundamental is breaking in our democracy, we are being forced to wrestle with the question: When is it time to speak out?
I worked at USAID for a dozen years; contributing to making the world healthy and stable under the slogan “From the American People” was my dream job. But, ultimately, I chose to expose the indifference, cruelty and lies, and I became one of the first whistleblowers of the second Trump administration.
In March 2025, I published memos documenting how the administration had ignored our warnings and prevented USAID from delivering lifesaving aid, and the millions of lives at risk as a result. I knew my decision would cost the career I loved, but I could no longer stay silent. The administration was subverting Congress, disregarding courts, putting the health and safety of Americans at risk and lying about it publicly. I chose to speak out.
I know I’m not alone. At a moment when many Americans sense something fundamental is breaking in our democracy, we are being forced to wrestle with the question: When is it time to speak out?
We did not ask for this, but luckily courage is contagious. Since becoming a whistleblower, I have heard from federal employees from an array of agencies where they say they have witnessed illegal, unethical and destructive actions. Several became whistleblowers themselves, while others continue to weigh the risks and benefits of speaking out. And it’s not just civil servants. It’s attorneys at law firms and faculty and students at universities being pressured to stifle their voices. It’s community members watching as masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents take their neighbors away. Normal people make important choices every day — and it’s on those of us with the power to speak out to do so, loud, clear and often.
This article was adapted from the author’s book, “Into the Wood Chipper,” released April 2026.
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