Grumpy Humanitarian

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

Luke Lindberg, Trump nominee to run @WFP, at UNHQ looking for an "iconic" backdrop in which to be photographed passblue.com/2026/04/09/tru…

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: nytimes.com/2026/02/08/opi…

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. 🧵

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

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:

“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.” propublica.org/article/kenya-…

UNICEF Warns 200 Million Children Will Need Humanitarian Assistance After U.S. Aid Cut by Trump dailyletter.tv/posts/unicef-w…

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: propub.li/3MOEVJW

“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.” propublica.org/article/usaid-…

Link to @propublica's reporting: propublica.org/article/usaid-…

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.

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: propublica.org/article/usaid-… An examination by @propublica of Trump's most lethal policy.

New Interview: newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/h…

"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: thebulwark.com/p/this-may-be-…

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.

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. whitehouse.gov/presidential-a… This will destroy American overseas programs. Here's why (MORE)

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. theatlantic.com/health/archive…

World Humanitarian Day: no life-saving aid without humanitarian safety | Weblogs | Government.nl government.nl/latest/weblogs…

@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: youtu.be/Y1dzs16Heh0?si…

Kenya’s model for local-level peacebuilding holds valuable lessons for other countries seeking to build sustainable security architectures.