The sudden decision by United States President Donald Trump to halt and review all foreign aid for 90 days could be devastating for HIV programmes in African countries. After Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, he signed numerous executive orders. One of these suspends aid to “foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organisations, international organisations, and contractors” pending review for whether it aligns with “American interests and … values”.
The order said, “no further [US] foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States”.
Foreign aid includes the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR. PEPFAR has saved millions of lives since it was launched by former president George W. Bush in 2003.
PEPFAR statistics show that at the end of 2024, it was providing life-saving antiretroviral treatment to nearly 21-million people across 55 countries, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa. PEPFAR is also delivering pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) — which stops people from contracting HIV — to about 2.5 million people. In 2024, PEPFAR provided HIV testing to about 84-million people. It funds HIV treatment and intervention in Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and many others.
He simply doesn't give a shit. In point of fact, the deaths of lots of people in sub-Saharan Africa because foreign aid has been stopped will be a good thing in the eyes of that demented old racist. And you can bet that his buddy, the World's Richest Nazi, is cheering him on for this issue.
5 comments:
I can see how many people have a problem with this action. I personally don't want to see anyone die due to preventable disease.
However I also understand that it can't be the U.S. alone who is funding these lifesaving relief efforts. In case anyone missed it, our economy is a mess, with 30 so.e trillion dollars in debt and growing. If we continue to print money without corresponding growth to back that money, are we much different than the Weimar Republic, with money becoming so worthless that it is worth more as fire kindling for heating peoples homes?
Did Trump have to do a complete shutdown of foreign aid? I doubt it, but any less drastic move would have been largely ignored by both the media and the two branches of congress, where the actual heavy lifting to fix a broken system of overspending has to be done.
I expect that this is not the worst thing we will see come from Trump's desk while he attempts to get his idea of the U.S. in place. We must not forget that this is the kind of reforms that an extremely significant majority of the people voted for. It will take some time to go d out just what is going to happen when a large portion of his agenda is attempted.
Did you mean it's a feature, not a bug?
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Doug, yes.
PP51, what is this “extremely significant majority of the people” you speak of? Do you know what the vote totals were?
Trump won by 2 million, but he didn’t get a majority of the popular vote. He doesn’t have a mandate. Contrast to Biden, who in 2020 won by 7 million, did have a majority, but show me the Republican who said “he has a majority, so we have to give him a chance”.
You can’t. This is, in a nutshell, why I have come to have no regard for “conservatives”. They only believe in fair elections when they win, in free speech when they’re talking, in freedom of religion when it’s their faith. There’s no difference between their idea of America and Putin’s idea of Russia.
I've read that in surveys people think 25% of the budget is foreign aid. It's more like 1% and most of that gets spent here in the US. It's useless to try to educate people of that fact. They know what they think they know and it'll never be knocked out of their brains.
Ignorance can be remedied, but stupid is forever.
Post a Comment