{"id":195,"date":"2026-05-21T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T17:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=195"},"modified":"2026-05-21T17:09:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T17:09:00","slug":"trump-and-elon-musk-crushed-usaid-hunger-and-violence-followed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Elon Musk Crushed USAID. Hunger and Violence Followed."},"content":{"rendered":"
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This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>Grist\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>

Read more Trump Wasn\u2019t on the Primary Ballot in Georgia. He Still Won.<\/a><\/p>\n

For decades, <\/span>the US Agency for International Development (USAID), worked across many of the world\u2019s most food-insecure and climate-besieged regions, funding thousands of humanitarian, healthcare, food, and disaster relief programs. That all changed last year when, days after President Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration, his administration issued a stop-work order that suspended nearly all of USAID\u2019s overseas programs. Then, last July, the administration informally dissolved the agency\u2014leading to the largest withdrawal of American international development aid in more than 60 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A new study published May 14 in the journal Science<\/em> suggests the sudden USAID shutdown could have been linked to an uptick in violent conflict across much of Africa, with some of the most politically fragile regions seeing the largest spikes. Outside experts, however, caution that the findings are preliminary and may not capture the bigger picture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Farming and agricultural markets are easily disrupted by conflict, and when conflict occurs, food security worsens because fighting can limit communities\u2019 access to food. At the same time, deepening food insecurity in fragile political states contributes to social unrest. Climate impacts then layer onto this fragility. Extreme weather is second only to conflict in having the greatest effect on global hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition,\u00a0according to a UN report. That\u2019s in part because it\u00a0causes people to migrate\u00a0as they flee places\u00a0destroyed by rising seas and cataclysmic storms, which, in turn, can fuel conflict.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is undeniable that USAID programming around food aid, including emergency food kitchens, therapeutic foods, and health and water programming on which basic food and nutritional security is built, provided a critical lifeline to millions of women, children, and families in severe nutritional deficits,\u201d said Zia Mehrabi, a food security and climate change researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. \u201cWho in their right mind would retract healthcare and food so abruptly, in so many places, when the direct result is people suffering and dying?\u201d<\/p>\n

In analyzing the impact of funding cuts on conflict across 870 subnational African regions that had been receiving different levels of USAID services, the Science<\/em> paper\u2019s authors found that in the roughly 10 months that followed the administration\u2019s immediate withdrawal of aid, areas that had previously received more USAID support may have experienced more or different types of conflict. <\/p>\n

Using two global datasets that track funding disbursements and violent conflict, the study suggests that, in areas with high historical USAID funding, there was a 12.3 percent increase in conflict overall and a 7.3 percent surge in armed battles; protests and riots in these areas rose by 6.8 percent and battle-related fatalities by 9.3 percent after the shutdown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Austin Wright, a University of Chicago researcher who studies the political economy of conflict, and a co-author of the\u00a0paper, the effects have been swift and destabilizing. \u201cThere is nothing that we\u2019re aware of in recorded human history of the magnitude of that shutdown, in terms of ending a country\u2019s commitment at a global scale,\u201d said Wright.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Established in 1961, USAID was created to encourage economic and social development in emerging nations while countering the Cold War influence of the Soviet Union. Building resilience in foreign political systems has, in recent decades, been \u201cone of the main goals of the work of USAID,\u201d said Chelsea Marcho, a senior director for research and policy at the Food Security Leadership Council and former USAID official under former President Joe Biden, who was not involved in the Science<\/em> paper. <\/p>

Read more HHS Refuses to Say What An Anti-Vaccine Activist Is Doing at the Agency<\/a><\/p>\n

The study showing that violence may have been less severe in places where USAID had helped build stronger institutions, she said, only underscores the value of those aid investments. One example is the largely discontinued work to develop more resilient food systems across sub-Saharan African nations facing higher rates of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But what many tend to forget, said Marcho, is that USAID also funded the bulk of pivotal data collection efforts across much of the world\u2019s most food-insecure and climate-vulnerable regions. The dissolution of the agency has prompted widespread disruptions in everything from localized weather monitoring to\u00a0one of the primary global famine early-warning systems. Although some of these systems have since been restored, the gaps in monitoring coupled with the decreased capacity across aid organizations means it is all the more difficult to understand what is happening on the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, the end of USAID has buckled our ability to measure the very outcomes of the end of USAID. \u201cThe visibility that we have around food security is potentially in decline at the same time that the risks to the system are increasing,\u201d said Marcho. \u201cHow do we actually get the data we need?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mehrabi finds the new paper creates \u201cmore questions than answers.\u201d He argues the mechanisms of measurement are unclear, the analysis period is too short, and the authors don\u2019t adequately disentangle USAID\u2019s specific effects from Trump\u2019s simultaneous cuts to other US international funding sources, such as the State Department. \u201cThe results are clearly early and tentative,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it is a leap to say this is all attributable to USAID.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wright, for his part, acknowledged the study has limitations, including a short post-shock observation window of just 10 months, a disbursement baseline drawn from the first Trump administration rather than the period immediately before the cuts, and a geographic scope confined to Africa\u2014leaving much open to future research. He says the team ran extensive robustness checks addressing these concerns, detailed in the paper\u2019s appendix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After running his own reanalysis of their data, Mehrabi, however, remains unconvinced. What\u2019s more, he warns against the possible takeaway that the presence of American developmental intervention equates to stability. The US, he argues, could more effectively help deter widespread conflict and hunger in nations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, through more equitable benefit-sharing of natural resource extraction from critical mineral supply chains. This would \u201cfar outweigh any benefits from foreign aid,\u201d proposed Mehrabi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, with an annual budget of tens of billions and an institutional history spanning 64 years, USAID\u2019s developmental footprint throughout the African continent was no small thing. \u201cOne cannot simply create USAID all over again, or give it a mandate and give it funding and assume that we have waved a wand and we can reverse the damage done,\u201d said Wright.<\/p>

Read more Trump Has Been Investing in Companies and Then Pumping Them in His Speeches<\/a><\/p>\n<\/article>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers are still grappling with the consequences of America\u2019s abrupt retreat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump and Elon Musk Crushed USAID. Hunger and Violence Followed. - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=195\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump and Elon Musk Crushed USAID. 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