Joel Kammeyer

Division Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Wayne State University-Detroit Medical Center. Ellie and Liam’s Dad. Opinions my own.

[Harry Sisson @harryjsisson]

Money saved: 0

People killed: 757,314

[Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower]

Almost a year and a half since I walked out of USAID's headquarters for the last time. I spoke with @NPR about the grief — for the 15,000 people who served faithfully, for the programs that were saving lives, for the brand of American goodwill that took 60+ years to build. And about the hope that it can be rebuilt. Full interview here: https://t.co/PpDI0BcaNR

[Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower]

Huge thanks to @Newshour and @GeoffRBennett for giving the deadly dismantlement of USAID by Musk & Trump such serious and sustained treatment. Clip below, full interview here: https://t.co/Yv9X6RiP1g

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

U.S.A.I.D. Cuts Killed People. That’s the Truth. https://t.co/dB5VEOCjIb

[Tommy Vietor @TVietor08]

Elon Musk lies and claims that not one child has died because he decided to destroy USAID and feed it "into the wood chipper." @NickKristof went to South Sudan and Uganda and saw for himself. Share this to push back on Musk's gaslighting.

[Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower]

Starting in early 2025, Elon Musk and the Trump administration began terminating USAID's programs and firing its staff — with Musk himself boasting about "feeding it into the woodchipper." One year ago today, USAID was officially dissolved, its remaining programs haphazardly folded into the State Department. Amid all the lies and misinformation that have followed, some facts about what has actually been lost:

• USAID saved more than 3 million lives a year at a cost of less than $10/month per American. That is what was destroyed. On purpose.
• According to Boston University's Global Impact Counter — which tracked deaths attributable to the cuts until it stopped operations in February 2026 — an estimated 781,000 people died preventable deaths in the first year, including 518,000 children.
• Global child mortality (the number of children who die before their fifth birthday) rose in 2025 for the first time in 35+ years — by 200,000 additional deaths.
• USAID's 50-country disease surveillance network — the system that cut outbreak response times from 2 weeks to 48 hours — is gone. We are now watching an unprecedented Ebola outbreak unfold in real time — with the highest first-month caseload and death rate in modern history.
• Programs reaching 93 million women and children were cut 92%. TB programs cut 56%. Water and sanitation cut 86%. Over 2,000 health facilities permanently closed.
• 25 million fewer people received humanitarian assistance in 2025. The overall humanitarian budget was slashed 74% — from $14.1 billion to $3.7 billion.
• 363 million people face acute hunger in 2026. The famine early-warning system that would have seen it coming went dark for five months.
• $1.7 billion in democracy and governance funding (election monitoring, anti-corruption work, support for independent media and civil society) was terminated.
• 360+ independent media outlets lost funding. Hundreds of legal clinics closed.
• Far from saving money, the Trump administration itself has already said the dismantlement will cost taxpayers at least $19.2 billion in cancellation fees, severance, and penalties. That's more than half of USAID's annual budget — spent on destruction and closeout, not support for vulnerable people.
• American farmers, universities, and businesses are among the casualties too. USAID partnered with more than 3,500 U.S. companies and maintained 17 university-based research labs. Its work with U.S.-based contractors and the private sector generated hundreds of thousands of American jobs and multiplied the return on every dollar spent. Those markets and partnerships are gone.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Elon Musk says that no one died because of his demolition of USAID, and that "Kristof is lying through his teeth." So here I invite him to join me on a visit to Africa to see for himself: https://t.co/TVEoFX8gzj

[Ty Beal @TyBealPhD]

Marco Rubio and Elon Musk claim that no one died from shutting down USAID. Yet the best estimates are between 8–20 million by 2030. We can debate the exact number—but it's clearly in the millions.

When confronted by actual names by @NickKristof, who has gone to the villages and talked to the families, Musk's only response was to call him "an utter piece of shit and a liar." Elon Musk is not just out of touch with reality. He is causing real, devastating harm to the world's poorest people.

[Paul Niland @PaulNiland]

As @elonmusk put his people in USAID they had access to all the data.

If the story about funds being misused for regime change operations was true he could simply present evidence. He doesn't. Because he can't. Because it's a lie.

Death toll from his actions: 750,000 to date.

[Laura Robinson @LauraRbnsn]

I have no idea why Musk seems to believe that if you cut an aid program, private donors can just recreate it quickly using local infrastructure.
This is why unelected drug addicts don't make policy decisions.

[Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 @CathyYoung63]

The idiots bleating "Did you donate?" apparently think an abrupt termination of USAID programs (so abrupt that some workers were stranded abroad!) can be immediately replaced with individual donations. The cutoff didn't just take away the money, it destroyed aid networks.

[Leah Libresco Sargeant @LeahLibresco]

Why couldn’t billionaires just backfill USAID?

It wasn’t only the money. Everyone working *with* USAID was told to stand down, not dispense food in warehouses, etc.

Standing up a new, parallel org can’t be done with zero notice.

[Jesse Singal @jessesingal]

Musk got on stage with a CHAINSAW. He bragged about feeding USAID into a woodchipper! You can't then claim to be "deeply troubled" when people express anger about the stuff Musk openly bragged about doing!!!!!

feel like I'm taking crazy pills here

[Mukhtar @I_amMukhtar]

Elon challenged everyone to name someone who was killed by his DOGE cuts to USAID. Nicholas Kristof, who did the study, accepted the challenge.

Instead of explaining why Kristof was incorrect, he responded with personal abuse.

He is clearly rattled.

[Joni Askola @joni_askola]

Don't fall for Elon Musk's gaslighting.

There is a massive, life-or-death difference between well-planned budget cuts and a sudden, reckless halt to promised medical aid.

Musk is actively lying about the fatal consequences of his USAID cuts. The US is not obligated to fund healthcare for the entire planet, but if a nation decides to pull back its global aid, it must be done responsibly. Ripping away funding mid-treatment means you are directly responsible for the preventable deaths that follow.

Instead of owning up to the fallout, Musk is flooding X with dishonest spin. He first challenged critics to name even one person whose death he caused. When people actually did, he immediately moved the goalposts, claiming that any spending cut inevitably causes deaths.

He is a dishonest charlatan trying to hide the fact that his chaotic decisions got thousands of vulnerable children and adults killed. That will be his lasting legacy

[The Bulwark @BulwarkOnline]

If a program saves lives, and if severe cuts to it abruptly withdraw lifesaving programs and services, then of course those cuts can be said to have killed people.

Lauren Dobson-Hughes on the death toll of gutting USAID: https://t.co/ieKhd1eArA

[Kareem Rifai 🌐 @KareemRifai]

Incredible stuff happening here: Elon has run out of right-wing excuses for his crusade against USAID, so now he's resorting to the leftist talking point that USAID was supposedly a regime change tool.

[Conor Friedersdorf @conor64]

What most people believe is not that America is required to provide foreign aid, but rather, that a majority of its people favor life-saving aid and oppose waste; that DOGE purported to target dumb waste; and that in reality it cut a lot of life-saving aid through frivolity and incompetence.

[Dean Baker @DeanBaker13]

There is nothing complicated here. We had a program in place that was saving millions of lives. Musk ended the program, and now millions will die. That might be too complicated for Elon Musk and his groupies to understand, but normal people can figure it out.

[James Surowiecki @JamesSurowiecki]

No - once you decide to become responsible for helping sick people get drugs they need to stay alive (which was an excellent decision), you accept that if you stop that assistance, people will die. Musk - and his ridiculous supporters, like Rufo - want to avoid that fact.