Grumpy Humanitarian

Veteran humanitarian aid worker in West, East, Horn and Central Africa. Grumpy about saviors, shills and celebrities since 1988. A Cornhusker in West Africa.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

The Cold War wasn’t just an arms race, it was a race of ideas. We invested in international development agencies & soft power tools to compete. Dismantling them as China expands its Belt and Road Initiative, and Russia expands its influence operations, is unilateral disarmament

[PassBlue @pass_blue]

Luke Lindberg, Trump nominee to run @WFP, at UNHQ looking for an "iconic" backdrop in which to be photographed
https://t.co/WDxKKKxAot

[Jeremy Konyndyk @JeremyKonyndyk]

Trump's surprise assault on @USAID a year ago was a stark warning about his approach the world.

It wasn't about aid; it was about erasing any pretense of morality in favor of naked power and corruption.

We're now seeing the fallout. My take in the NYT:
https://t.co/44Ov3ffjpu

[Jeremy Konyndyk @JeremyKonyndyk]

A year has passed since @elonmusk began the wood-chipper-ing of @USAID.

Since then, global humanitarian funding has collapsed by almost 1/3, mostly due to the Trump/Elon cuts.

Vast suffering has ensued.

🧵

[Tim Hirschel-Burns @TimH_B]

A year ago Elon Musk tweeted that he had fed USAID "into the wood chipper."

It was an act that killed people. We don't know most of their names, but we know the 27 below.

Much like with Renee Good + Alex Pretti, we should remember these lives taken by the cruel men who lead us

[ProPublica @propublica]

Secretary Marco Rubio claimed no one died as a result of cuts to USAID. That’s not what we found.

On Thurs., Jan. 22, 4 pm ET, we’ll be on Reddit taking your questions about the continued fallout of slashing aid for some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. Save the date:

[ProPublica @propublica]

“What has come with Trump, I’ve never experienced anything like it,” said one aid worker in Kenya about the administration’s sudden gutting of humanitarian aid. “It’s huge and brutal and traumatizing.”
https://t.co/xY5Lp2eJHM

[Simon Ateba @simonateba]

UNICEF Warns 200 Million Children Will Need Humanitarian Assistance After U.S. Aid Cut by Trump https://t.co/ZU5kzVmrrS

[ProPublica @propublica]

More than 1,000 charities submitted federal tax filings without language reflecting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in mission statements from their earlier filings.

Others went as far as to change their names: https://t.co/GNrXU6WZv5

[ProPublica @propublica]

“It was the most harebrained operation I’d seen in my 38 years with the U.S. government,” one career diplomat said about the second Trump administration's wholesale slashing of foreign aid. “Who knows how much damage was done.”
https://t.co/36hlNXJyFp

[McKay Coppins @mckaycoppins]

Link to @propublica's reporting: https://t.co/KANE3scmXk

[McKay Coppins @mckaycoppins]

Seems entirely possible that decades from now, people will look back on the second Trump administration and determine that the single most consequential thing he did as president was dismantle USAID in those first weeks of his term.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Trump aides celebrated with cake after dismantling USAID, thrilled that they had set in motion a process that will lead to some 88 deaths per minute for the rest of the Trump presidency: https://t.co/2XALYijJ4h An examination by @propublica of Trump's most lethal policy.

[Isaac Chotiner @IChotiner]

New Interview: https://t.co/rlRaqy0WdB

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

"They’re trying to make the loss of life invisible. They’re trying to deny the reality." The reality is a great deal of suffering for no discernible upside.

@CitizenCohn discusses the dismantling of U.S. foreign aid with @Atul_Gawande in The Breakdown:
https://t.co/hPivfuL9WG

[Geoffrey York @geoffreyyork]

Refugees on the verge of losing their food rations. Yet another example of the impact of aid cuts by the US, the UK, Germany, etc.

[Laurie Garrett @Laurie_Garrett]

On Friday, when most of America wasn't paying attention, heading out for the holidays, Trump signed an Exec Order transferring ALL control over foreign aid from State to OMB. https://t.co/fpuKaRm7br
This will destroy American overseas programs. Here's why (MORE)

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

The U.S. government is holding a massive fire sale for mosquito nets, water towers, printers, generators, textbooks, agricultural equipment, and motorbikes that once belonged to USAID, @hanamkiros reports. https://t.co/irai48iIho

[Rolf Wijnstra @RolfWijnstra]

World Humanitarian Day: no life-saving aid without humanitarian safety | Weblogs | https://t.co/9TbZzpCs0J https://t.co/tN3DNau6lC

[Grumpy Humanitarian @EricGaabo]

@ADFmagazine I made a training film documenting the efforts of the Wajir women in their peace building project. Here’s the link to that film: https://t.co/Sw0gro8EKf