U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration’s stop-work order on USAID programming threatens to destroy the global health infrastructure America has spent decades building, according to Dr. Atul Gawande.
On his first day in office, Trump placed a 90-day pause on foreign aid spending that was then intensified last Friday, when the Department of State ordered an immediate pause on new spending, as well as a stop-work order for existing grants and contracts.
“The 90 days stop order on USAID does enormous damage to America, and it is a gift to our enemies and competitors,” said Gawande, who ran USAID’s global health programming for the last three years before leaving the organization as Trump took office.
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About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
