[the problems with global access to essential medicines by President Trump’s decisions are enormous. For example, here are Bernie Sanders calculations of the predicted impact on global health…
The only way to fight Trump’s drastic decisions is through the courts. Below one report on this fight. Courtesy of “covid-19-access” listserv. WB]
NEWS: Sanders Statement: USAID Cuts Will Lead to Millions of Preventable Deaths
WASHINGTON, March 4 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today released the following statement about the impact that cuts to USAID from the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE will have on vulnerable people around the world.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will lead to millions of preventable deaths. The decision of the richest person in the world to destroy an agency that delivers life-saving aid to the poorest people on the planet is unconscionable.
According to internal USAID memos****, the cuts to foreign aid will mean, every single year:
- Two to three million additional deaths from lack of vaccinations;
- 166,000 more deaths from malaria;
- 28,000 new cases of highly-infectious diseases, including Ebola and Marburg virus; and
- 200,000 more children paralyzed from polio.
Separately, independent researchers estimate that the illegal freeze on global AIDS funding has already taken nearly 19,000 lives, and that the toll will increase as the funding freeze continues.
These actions are not just immoral, they are unconstitutional.
Congress created USAID as an independent agency – it cannot be unilaterally eliminated by the president based on the whim of an unelected billionaire. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power of the purse.
Make no mistake: These cuts will not only lead to millions of unnecessary deaths throughout the world, they are an attack on our democracy and the checks and balances our Founding Fathers established more than 230 years ago. Further, it will weaken our national security and our standing in the global community. When we abandon desperate people in some of the poorest countries in the world, we can be sure that geo-political adversaries will fill the void.
Contact: press@sanders.senate.gov
The New York Times, Judge Orders U.S.A.I.D. and State Dept. to Pay Funds ‘Unlawfully’ Withheld
… The order on Monday prohibited the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. from implementing much of a Jan. 24 memorandum outlining plans to reorient and shrink U.S. foreign aid. It further required them to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars still owed to a constellation of groups for work completed before Feb. 13, as Judge Ali had ordered last month. The order dealt with a broad freeze on foreign aid funding that Mr. Trump put into effect the day he took office. It stopped short of the much more significant step of invalidating the Trump administration’s decision to cancel thousands of contracts through what it described as an expedited line-by-line review, after the lawsuit was already underway. Judge Ali found that the court was restrained to addressing the specific harms laid out in the lawsuit, not “supervision of discrete or ongoing executive decisions.” Earlier on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media that a review of U.S.A.I.D.’s contracts, which he thanked Elon Musk’s team for undertaking, would result in 83 percent of the agency’s contracts being cut. He added that the roughly 1,000 contracts the agency had decided to keep would be administered by the State Department. … During a hearing on Thursday, Judge Ali had given the agencies until Monday at 6 p.m. to process old invoices and pay the groups suing for work completed before Feb. 13. The order on Monday also required the government to file a report by the end of the week outlining how it would pay others that previously received federal funding before the review.
More: Devex, Judge orders Trump to pay USAID partners, rejects ‘unbounded’ power
[Courtesy of “covid-19-access” listserv.]