Hope Michelson
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hopecm.bsky.social
Hope Michelson
@hopecm.bsky.social
1.7K followers 1.4K following 35 posts
Development Economist. Ag econ.
Professor UIUC ACE
Co-editor, Food Policy
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Reposted by Hope Michelson
donmoyn.bsky.social
Musk said USAID was wasteful. A new review published int he Lancet estimated it saved more than 90 million lives over 20 years, and that shutting it will cause 14 million unnecessary deaths over the next five years.
Open access link to my paper on USAID
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
USAID served for decades as a vehicle for both US soft power and foreign aid. Within the first days of the Trump administration, the agency was effectively closed, its staff told to go home and its funding frozen. It is impossible to understand the demise of USAID without understanding the broader contours of American governance during the early days of the second Trump administration. The agency was the victim of online conspiracy theories and suspicion of state institutions that shape Trump's populist movement, falsely accused of criminality and corruption. Its elimination violated traditional understandings of the separation of powers, testing an expansive novel theory of presidential authority. It was underpinned not just by spending changes, but by the mass purging of government officials by a entity led by Elon Musk. The end result is both to weaken US administrative capacity and its credibility on the international stage, as well leading to thousands and potentially millions of the world's most vulnerable people to face disease, disaster, and death.
July 9, 2025 at 12:29 PM