No Saving Grace

America is getting out of the life-saving business. One of the first acts of the Trump 2.0 administration was to cut USAID funds that were keeping people alive. This was not a mistake or an oversight or evidence of administrative ineffectiveness. It was part of a new American policy that goes something like this: We don’t provide help to anyone unless there’s something in it for us. Hana Kiros in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Trump Administration Is Ending Aid That It Says Saves Lives. “A year after the Trump administration began the dismantlement of USAID, it is initiating a new round of significant cuts to foreign assistance. This time, programs that survived the initial purge precisely because they were judged to be lifesaving are slated for cancellation … Each of the newly canceled awards represents an occasion in which federal workers had previously convinced Trump appointees that the money would help meet the most basic survival needs of people fleeing war, caught in deadly disease outbreaks, or in danger of starving to death, a former senior State Department official, who left the administration in the fall, told me. ‘It has to be: ‘If we don’t deliver this, people die immediately,” they said.” In other words, the last vestiges of decency must be erased.