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Making America Sick Again: Trump’s War on Global Health Is Coming Home [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-14
In a world more connected than ever, disease doesn’t recognize borders. But apparently, Trump does.
This month, his administration quietly gutted funding for both the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—two of the country’s most essential public health institutions. The result? A globe less prepared for pandemics, and a country already beginning to feel the consequences.
Let’s be clear: these weren’t budget trims. They were decapitations.
USAID, which has long acted as a global firewall against the spread of disease, hunger, and displacement, saw over 90% of its foreign aid contracts canceled—roughly $54 billion in humanitarian support erased. These cuts won’t just affect people overseas. They will affect you. And your neighbors. And your kids.
Why? Because USAID isn’t just charity—it’s prevention. It’s the early detection of the next Ebola. It’s support for fragile hospitals that stop diseases before they spread across oceans. It’s the quiet work of stopping suffering before it reaches our shores.
And while that lifeline is being severed abroad, the Trump administration is gutting our defenses here at home.
Entire CDC divisions—those focused on things like dental health, occupational safety, and injury prevention—have been wiped out. Epidemiologists and public health officials who spent their careers tracking outbreaks have been fired or reassigned. A decade of public health infrastructure is being torched, one pink slip at a time.
The consequences are already here. In West Texas, a measles outbreak has infected more than 540 people, killing two children. Vaccine hesitancy is rising. Federal support is shrinking. And states are being left to fend for themselves—again.
Even 9/11 heroes aren’t safe. The World Trade Center Health Program, which offers medical care to first responders and survivors, is now on life support thanks to these cuts.
And for what? So Trump can boast about slashing “waste” in government? So he can throw red meat to the crowd that sees global cooperation as weakness?
This isn’t fiscal responsibility. It’s deliberate sabotage of the systems that keep us safe. And just like with Yemen, it’s another case of humanitarian cruelty wrapped in the language of “America First.”
The truth? Real patriotism means protecting people. It means funding the doctors, the scientists, and the aid workers who are on the front lines of global crises—because the next one is always just a flight away.
Trump doesn’t want you to think about that. But we should. Because while he picks fights with our allies and strangles public health funding, diseases don’t stop to debate ideology. They just spread.
Don’t let him gamble with your life.
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