Vital read from @jeremykonyndyk.bsky.social in @nytimes.com The closure of USAID & disregard for the human toll was the 1st step in a dark shift in US aspirations toward naked power and extractive self-interest. It's leaving the US friendless, isolated, and weaker. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...

My sister, Meeta, and I are heartbroken to report that our beloved mom, Sushila Goswami Gawande, a joyful force of nature and a pediatrician for three decades in Athens, Ohio, died on December 17. We will miss her dearly. Her obit describing her remarkable life: www.legacy.com/legacy/sushi...

Read to the end. NPR asked why the Trump team ended a low-cost program that cured millions of tropical diseases w drugs donated by pharma. The spokesperson replied with an NPR headline—“Farewell to USAID”—and said: “What do you think farewell meant?” www.npr.org/sections/goa...

My wife, Kathleen: “In the future, we will just be data. We will be just ones and zeroes. But I will be a one. Not a zero.”

This is your must read this week. Read this. It is about leukemia and the powers and limits of science and the terrifying dangers of the turn against it. It is human and excoriating and beautiful. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

The CDC website has been lobotomized. Where it once presented the decades of evidence debunking the false claims of a link between vaccines and autism, that has now been replaced with junk science.

I spoke with @BigThink about why even the most experienced professionals need a coach — including surgeons. It’s one of the most under-utilized ways people improve. Video: youtu.be/tW7ClAexgHI?...

I helped make a film, out this week, called “Rovina’s Choice,” about the deaths this man without conscience or accountability has caused — already 600,000, ⅔ of them children.

Today @TheNewYorker released our short documentary “Rovina’s Choice” online. It traces the ongoing effects of the sudden shutdown of US foreign aid through the story of one mother in Kenya as she seeks to save her daughter from sickness and starvation. 🎥 1/ www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

I watched the 1st meeting day of RFK Jr’s handpicked committee of vaccine advisors. It was utterly depressing. 1/

9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...

#freedc I returned from the wedding of our daughter to find the city where I have lived for the last 3 years in the midst of a military takeover. The military policing Americans. This is happening. It is a danger for everyone in our country. Now is the moment to turn out in protest.

Excellent read from @danielleofri.bsky.social on the reality for clinicians as NIH, CDC, FDA recs are put under political controls: “Medical professionals can no longer fully trust federal health guidance, and our patients are the ones who will suffer the most.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/o...

truly www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...

They came for the foreign aid workers, justice department, public health institutions, universities and researchers, law firms, media organizations, not to mention longtime immigrants. Now it is nonprofits too. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

"The anti‑vax movement, once seen as confined to the U.S., is now spreading globally." An excellent, if sobering, piece from Rivka Galchen.

“Foreign aid has changed nothing.” “These are not our problems.” “The system is dysfunctional.” “The countries we aid are corrupt.” “Other countries aren’t doing enough.” I have heard all these arguments too. @nickkristof.bsky.social succinctly answers. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/o...

This was supposed to be a breakthrough year in the 44-year-long struggle against H.I.V. It's turned into something very different. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/h...

This is a travesty & a nightmare. The US was a founder of @gavi.org. It lowers global vaccine costs, has vaccinated 1B children, & averted 19M deaths. This pull out will cost 100s of thousands of children's lives a year - and RFK Jr will be personally responsible. www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

This twice-yearly shot almost completely prevents HIV and is now approved. It could shut down HIV. It needs to roll out in at risk groups. But Trump has gutted HIV prevention at home and abroad. That could be stopped, however. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/h...

Americans Are Going to Die’ -- Why Dr. Fiona Havers, an influential vaccine researcher, left the CDC. The wholesale dismissal of the agency’s scientific advisers crossed the line, she said (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/h...

After Musk’s dismantling of USAID, deaths can be counted by the hundreds of thousands. “If there were justice in the world, Musk would never be able to repair his reputation, at least not without devoting the bulk of his fortune to easing the misery he’s engendered.“ www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/o...

“No children are dying on my watch,” said Rubio. It's blatantly false. Credible estimates count 190K deaths so far. In Kenya, I am seeing devastating impact, incl this child's starvation & many deaths directly caused by Rubio’s actions. More in my @msnbc.com clip. www.instagram.com/atul.gawande...

“What I do know is that my colleagues, many…like me, foreign scientists, are terrified of being detained or having their visa status revoked.” It’s 3 months since ICE put Kseniia Petrova in detention for a customs violation normally handled with a fine. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/o...

Read the actual #math on DOGE cuts from Jessica Reidl. Musk claims $165B in savings are vastly overstated. And the cuts to IRS & loan recovery staff will produce 100s of billions in net loss of revenues. Net: Costs up. Lives lost. Country harmed. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

MCC is small but backs key infrastructure development in developing countries — such as power grids, ports, and access to critical minerals. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/u...

Yet another example of the gutting of key parts of HHS.

I saw firsthand the impact of stop-work-orders/terminations at USAID & now Harvard. My new @NewYorker piece is on the serious implications for the lives of millions across the world and the US – including for my own family and very possibly your own. 🧵 www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

1/3 During my training, I never saw measles, Haemophilus influenzae b, or syphilis—because effective public health strategies had nearly eliminated these threats. But what I once took for granted, those public health victories, are sliding backward

Friends and former USAID global public health professionals have launched an emergency campaign to support high-impact local HIV organizations with stop gap funding. Please consider supporting to directly help them continue HIV services in the near term while they plan for the future. 🧵1

USA led the world in expertise stopping HIV, incl preventing mother to child transmission. But DOGE has now dismissed every global prevention expert at USAID, CDC, & State Dept. The risk is insane: Resurgent HIV & 500K child deaths by 2030. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/h...

.@SenBooker's marathon effort moved me more than I could explain. And this piece from @Dahlialithwick beautifully articulates what I couldn't. slate.com/news-and-pol...

On Friday, the Trump admin announced it was shuttering USAID by the end of the fiscal year. @nkorpett.bsky.social spoke to @agawande.bsky.social about why USAID matters and the consequences of destroying it. Watch their conversation here or wherever you get your podcasts:

State Dept gave Congress its full list of 5,300+ USAID program terminations. The sweeping cuts for health alone - from global childhood vaccines to surveillance for deadly diseases to malaria work - entail massive loss of life & national security risk. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/h...

It’s the world’s most deadly infectious disease. But it strikes the world’s most downtrodden and neglected, including here at home. So we turn our eyes. Not you, @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social. You’ve made the story of TB personal. And your vivid, moving, vital book makes us grateful you did.

What happens when you do surgery with a chainsaw www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-...

Nothing will kill more children than the ongoing decimation of CDC, NIH, and USAID work to lift vaccine uptake in the US and world. Child survival rose 75% in the last 50 years. Vaccines account for 40% of that. Measles vax alone was 60% of the benefit. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

This is a huge victory against arbitrary, unchecked power -- and a key step toward restoring at least some of USAID's vital work to save lives and to advance freedom and American security.

Even before Zelensky’s visit, Sec. Rubio had terminated vital USAID support to sustain Ukraine’s energy grid. “The USAID initiative had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in helping Ukraine's energy grid recover from attacks from Russia.” www.nbcnews.com/politics/sta...

Ready Fire Aim is a lousy way to govern.

Thousands of fired USAID employees were given 15 minutes today to clear out their personal belongings from headquarters.

Rubio terminated 5800 USAID contracts – more than 90% of its foreign aid programs – in defiance of the courts. Here’s a list of just some of the lifesaving awards that were terminated. Nearly all were Congressionally mandated. They’ve saved millions of lives. 🧵

Invaluable thread about the damage to vaccine access and development from the Trump administration's step by step weakening of US health capacity.

JUST IN: Another medical horror story in an affidavit from a USAID employee stationed overseas. Says his pregnant wife was not medevac-ed for emergency health care because of directives from DC. Took intervention of a U.S. senator to reverse — but was too late. s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

I am in Cairo, where I have been visiting with health organizations, including WHO and other partners of USAID. Trump and Musk say lifesaving assistance is not affected by the shutdown of USAID and support to WHO. I can tell you that is 100% false. #SaveAID www.instagram.com/share/_ogGRd...

“Speculation that the U.S. might eliminate its foreign aid program has been met with cheers from Beijing, to Moscow and Tehran.” time.com/7221668/ted-...

Trump’s sudden cutoff of funding and staff at USAID has meant the loss of “almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid…, a government watchdog warned Monday.” This whole wire report on the accelerating catastrophe bears reading. www.therepublic.com/2025/02/10/u...

Elon Musk wants to strip out payments for the indirect costs of doing vital research for the federal govt — while SpaceX gets to keep its undisclosed indirect rate.

From independent @USAID sources, >800 contracts and awards are being terminated en masse – with the procurement team subject to hourly checks on speed of executing terminations. The pace has exceeded the ability to confirm whether lifesaving assistance or any Congressional mandate is affected.