A USAID worker I know died helping others. Trump is trashing his memory.

Hines Brian February 7, 2025No Comments

Mark Mitchell worked for the USAID — the United States Agency for International Development.

He joined the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are members of prior to his USAID job. Once Mark became part of USAID, his overseas postings prevented him from attending our meetings except when he returned to Salem for a visit.

But he'd keep in touch with us via email, and always had fascinating stories to tell of his USAID work when we'd see him periodically. Then one day a close friend of his told us that Mark had died when the bus he was traveling in had a serious accident in Georgia, the country next to Russia, not the state.

Mark's name is on the USAID Memorial Wall. The May 2024 issue of The Foreign Service Journal has a page listing the "99 memorialized names of USAID Foreign Service officers, Foreign Service Nationals, and contractors who lost their lives while serving the U.S. government to promote international development." Mark Mitchell is in the final 2010-present category.

Mark was a realist. He would talk about the problems he and USAID were having in whichever country he was posted, which included Afghanistan. But he also spoke about the importance of the work he was doing in countries that needed the assistance USAID brought to the people there.

If Mark was still alive, he'd be justifiably outraged at the wrecking ball Donald Trump and his billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, are flinging at USAID. Musk has said with zero evidence to back him up that USAID is a criminal organization. That's an insult to the brave, hard-working people who work for the agency.

Far from proving criminality, a Washington Post story says that 11 of 12 claims by the Trump administration about USAID merely wasting taxpayer money are misleading, wrong, or lack context.

The only claim that was true was: “$1.5 million to ‘advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities’." That sounds fine to me, but even if someone is a DEI-hater, spending $1.5 million on a dubious project out of a $40 billion budget certainly doesn't justify putting USAID "in a wood chipper," as Elon Musk said in a disgusting tweet on X.

Here's excerpts from the Washington Post story.

As the Trump administration this week dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, the primary vehicle for U.S. foreign aid, the White House issued a statement justifying its actions. Titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” the news release claimed USAID “has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.”

The news release then listed 12 examples, plucked from the websites of right-wing media. But the numbers cited — as low as $32,000 — hardly justify the claim that these are “massive sums” of money. In fact, they are so low that some of the funds appear to have been awarded at the ambassador level, without Washington involvement. At least one dated from the first Trump administration, and some were actually State Department grants, not USAID.

…In fiscal year 2023, USAID was appropriated about $25 billion by Congress, according to ForeignAssistance.gov. (The website in recent days has been changed to combine USAID spending with foreign aid distributed by the State Department, so the combined total is nearly $39 billion.) The White House identified only about $12 million in grants — one of which was $6 million — though one allegation vaguely claimed “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Upon inspection, that turned out to be from 2005 to 2008.

As a reader service, we examined these line items, as they have spread across social media. By eliminating USAID’s website, the administration made [it] harder to ascertain the details of some of these programs. But we determined that, as framed by the White House, only one claim — out of 12 — was accurate.

By contrast, Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who has a home in Oregon, wrote a moving piece about USAID, "The World's Richest Men Take On the World's Poorest Children." This excerpt describes some of the benefits USAID brings to the world.

I’ve seen genuine improvements in U.S.A.I.D. over the years. Its public-private partnership to tackle lead poisoning, announced last year, was a model of American leadership. And so from my travels, this is what U.S.A.I.D. has come to mean to me:

I’ve seen women and girls with obstetric fistula, a horrific childbirth injury, get a $600 surgery that gives them back their lives — and this is something that U.S.A.I.D. supports.

I’ve seen men humiliated by elephantiasis and grotesquely enlarged scrotums, occasionally requiring a wheelbarrow to support their organs as they walk. And U.S.A.I.D. has fought this disease and made it less common.

I’ve seen children dying of malaria (and I’ve had malaria), and I’ve seen U.S.A.I.D. help achieve major strides against the disease over the last two decades.

I’ve seen southern Africa ravaged by AIDS. And then President George W. Bush’s landmark program against AIDS, called PEPFAR and implemented in part through U.S.A.I.D., transformed the landscape. I saw coffin makers in Lesotho and Malawi grumble that their business was collapsing because far fewer people were dying. PEPFAR has saved 26 million lives so far. (In the coming months, I’ll see if I can calculate how many lives are lost to Trump’s cuts in aid.)

I’ve seen the suffering of communities where people in middle age routinely go blind from trachoma, river blindness or cataracts — and the transformation when U.S.A.I.D. helps prevent such blindness.

Trump scoffed that U.S.A.I.D. was “run by radical lunatics.” Is it radical lunacy to try to save children’s lives? To promote literacy for girls? To fight blindness?

If this is woke, what about the evangelical Christians in International Justice Mission, which, with U.S.A.I.D. support, has done outstanding work battling sex trafficking of children in Cambodia and the Philippines? Does Trump believe that rescuing children from rape is a radical lunatic cause?

Trump’s moves are of uncertain legality, not least because U.S.A.I.D. was established by Congress, but the outcomes are indisputable. Around the world children are already missing health care and food because of the assault on the agency that Kennedy founded to uphold our values and protect our interests.

To billionaires in the White House, it may seem like a game. But to anyone with a heart, it’s about children’s lives and our own security, and what’s unfolding is sickening.