Good morning. Donald Trump’s decision to wind down the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was met with profound and widespread condemnation. Yet his administration has remained undeterred in its plans.
The metaphors for the destruction – he has taken an axe to the global agency – have even bled through to the real world, with one of the most striking images of the first few months of Trump’s term being Elon Musk waving a chainsaw around on stage. All to drive home one point: there will be no more foreign assistance.
In late March, the White House revealed the final details of its plan to fully absorb USAID into the state department, reduce its staff to about 15 positions, and cut 83% of its programmes. The remaining 17% will be administered directly by the state department.
All of this is part of Trump’s America First agenda – and it was echoed over the weekend by reports that a draft executive order proposes the closure of many embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa. Whether that goes ahead or not, the indiscriminate dismantling of aid structures has already caused widespread disruption around the world.
Today’s newsletter looks at just four of the 50 countries that have been affected by these cuts. That’s right after the headlines.
Five big stories
Cancer research | British cancer patients are being denied life-saving drugs and trials of revolutionary treatments are being derailed by the red tape and extra costs brought on by Brexit, a damning report warns. The analysis concludes that UK patients are missing out even as those in Europe benefit from pioneering research.
Ukraine | Volodymyr Zelenskyy has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s Easter ceasefire as a fake “PR” exercise and said Russian troops had continued their drone and artillery attacks across many parts of the frontline. He said that, as of 6pm UK time on Sunday, the Russian army had violated the ceasefire “more than two thousand times”.
Israel-Gaza war | Israel’s military has admitted to several “professional failures” and a breach of orders in the killing of 15 rescue workers in Gaza last month, and said that it was dismissing a deputy commander responsible. But the report does not recommend any criminal action against the military units responsible for the incident.
Trump administration | Before the US launched military strikes on Yemen in March, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, sent detailed information about the planned attacks to a private Signal group chat that he created himself, which included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
Smartphones | Parents should be prepared to make difficult decisions over their child’s smartphone usage rather than trying to be their friend, the children’s commissioner for England has said. Dame Rachel de Souza said this should include parents considering the example they are setting their children through their own phone usage.
In depth: The devastating impact of Trump’s cuts, from Myanmar to Sudan
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Myanmar
The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck the war-torn country at the end of March was the first large-scale natural disaster to occur since the Trump administration’s cuts to USAID. More than 3,300 people were killed, nearly 5,000 injured, and tens of thousands of homes were damaged, with some neighbourhoods reduced to ashes.
Myanmar has been one of the leading recipients of US foreign assistance in south-east Asia for more than a decade, and that money and support has only become more vital since the outbreak of civil war in 2021. Nearly 20 million people, roughly a third of the population, were already in need of humanitarian assistance and protection before the earthquake.
The US has pledged just $9m in aid. For comparison, in 2023 when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria, the US pledged $185m. But it is not merely a question of funding. In 2023, it deployed hundreds of relief workers. In Myanmar, there are few staff present on the ground, and it is not clear whether any of the money will get to where it needs to be. In fact, earlier this month, the government fired three aid workers who had been sent to Myanmar to assess how the US could contribute to relief efforts, just days after they arrived in the devastated city. Without assistance and funding, rescue workers have struggled to recover bodies from collapsed buildings and debris.
The US appears to have doubled down on this minimalist approach, with secretary of state Marco Rubio stating that Washington is “not the government of the world”. As many predicted, other actors have stepped in, just as Rubio suggested they should. China, Russia, India and the UK – albeit even as it reduces its own international aid budget – have moved to fill the conspicuous void left by the US, a development that will almost certainly have consequences for America’s international standing.
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Afghanistan
Earlier in April, the US terminated funding for World Food Programme (WFP) emergency operations in more than a dozen countries, a decision widely condemned for endangering the lives of millions. Within days, the state department reversed the decision for several countries, but upheld the cuts in Afghanistan and Yemen. The government stated that the reductions were based on “credible and longstanding concerns that funding was benefiting terrorist groups including the Houthis and the Taliban”.
Approximately 23 million people in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, are in need of humanitarian assistance. The US has previously accounted for 43% of the total aid funding entering the country, so these cuts have been devastating. Last week, the aid agency Action Against Hunger – which lost significant funding through the cuts – said that the result would be children dying from malnutrition.
Similarly, the WFP estimates that the loss of funding in Afghanistan will end all of its emergency food distribution in the country for the foreseeable future. Approximately 2 million people, including about 400,000 malnourished children and mothers, rely on this assistance.
According to current and former USAID officials and partner organisations, the cuts are also affecting medical care, access to safe drinking water, support for maternal health services for millions of women, services addressing gender-based violence and mental health treatment for survivors of sexual and physical abuse.
Accessing the most basic medical care has now become infinitely more difficult as more than 200 World Health Organization-supported health facilities in Afghanistan have either closed or ceased functioning, in a country that already was facing a healthcare crisis due to critical underfunding. The WHO estimates that 10% of Afghans could lose healthcare by the end of the year.
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Sudan
As the war in Sudan enters its third year, the country is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis: 30 million people are in need of aid, more than half of them children. Around half of Sudan’s population of 50 million are experiencing some degree of acute hunger, and famine has taken hold in at least five areas, including several parts of Darfur and Kordofan. It is estimated that half a million people died from hunger and disease across Sudan in 2024 alone.
Last year, USAID contributed 44% of Sudan’s $1.8bn humanitarian response, according to the UN. Within weeks of the cuts, 80% of community kitchens across Sudan closed, leaving millions at risk of dying from starvation or preventable illness. The cuts have also affected Sudanese refugees who have fled into Chad. Life-saving resources such as food and water, along with other US-funded programmes including mental health counselling and education, which were already operating on extremely limited budgets, have been further reduced.
The cuts are vastly consequential for the staff who work for local NGOs, too. In this piece for the Conversation, Naomi Ruth Pendle, an international development expert working with a team of Sudanese researchers in South Kordofan state, notes that each salary supported dozens of family members.
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South Africa
Over the past two decades, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, known as Pepfar, has had a significant global impact on the prevention and treatment of HIV and Aids. Experts have also said that Pepfar funding was contributing to research efforts aimed at finding a cure for HIV. However, that work came to a halt earlier this year, and researchers believe the cuts could set progress back by several years.
The Lancet estimates that without consistent and stable funding for Pepfar programmes, up to one million children could become infected with HIV, nearly half a million could die from Aids by 2030, and 2.8 million children could be orphaned across the region.
South Africa, which has the largest HIV and Aids programme in the world, is particularly vulnerable to these cuts and has been thrown into turmoil. Over 7 million people in the country are now living with HIV, including an estimated 270,000 children under the age of 14. In the past year, South Africa received approximately $440m in Pepfar funding, accounting for more than a fifth of its $2.56bn HIV budget.
Linda-Gail Bekker, an HIV and Aids researcher at the University of Cape Town, reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine in February that if Pepfar’s funding is not replaced, South Africa could face 565,000 additional new HIV infections and 601,000 more deaths from the virus by 2034. The additional healthcare required would cost an estimated $1.7bn.
It is not only the direct healthcare that this funding supports. Other vital services that help families with infected children – such as food vouchers and support groups – have also been cut.
Even if Donald Trump were to attempt to reverse course and restore the department along with all of its funding, the damage already inflicted will have lasting consequences, both in terms of human suffering and in the erosion of international trust. As former USAID senior official Atul Gawande told the New Yorker last month: “Everybody’s taking on the lesson that America cannot be trusted. That has enormous costs.”
What else we’ve been reading
Sport
Football | Leicester City’s relegation from the Premier League was confirmed as Trent Alexander-Arnold’s goal consigned them to a 1-0 defeat against Liverpool. But Liverpool had to wait to have their title triumph confirmed as their closest challengers Arsenal beat Ipswich 4-0. Meanwhile on Sunday, Wolves beat Manchester United 1-0 and Chelsea beat Fulham 2-1.
Formula One | Oscar Piastri won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, his third of the season, moving to the top of the drivers’ championship standings with a display of calm and confidence. Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc completed the podium.
Cricket | Nat Sciver-Brunt is being lined up as the next England captain by the new coach, Charlotte Edwards. The Surrey all-rounder has been identified as the outstanding candidate to replace Heather Knight, who stepped down last month after England’s Ashes whitewash in Australia.
The front pages
“UK cancer patients losing out on life-saving drugs ‘due to Brexit’” says the Guardian’s splash headline this morning. The i has “Mini nuclear plants network for UK raises security fears”. “World’s confidence battered as trade uncertainty haunts key IMF meetings” – that’s the Financial Times and the Times goes with “UK boosts munitions to end dependence on US”. “Sickening” – the Mirror reports on trophy hunting holidays “on sale at fair in Britain”. “No10: We won’t stop pro-trans plotters” says the Telegraph, and the Mail demands “Starmer must break his silence on trans judgment”. “‘Disgraceful!’ Court heroes targets for vile abuse” – the Express refers to the “women campaigners who won biological sex battle”.
Today in Focus
The authors taking on Mark Zuckerberg
Why do authors see Meta’s AI model as a threat to their livelihoods? Ella Creamer reports
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
What did you have planned for your next birthday? Going to your favourite restaurant? Trying something new?
Either way, Don Pettit probably has you beat. The now 70-year-old spent his birthday yesterday hurtling from space through the Earth’s atmosphere at hundreds of miles an hour in a tiny hunk of metal.
Yes, Nasa’s oldest astronaut celebrated another year as he plonked to the ground in Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan alongside two Russian cosmonauts after finishing a 220-day shift at the International Space Station.
Commenting on his return, Nasa said in a low-key statement Pettit was “doing well and in the range of what is expected for him following return to Earth”.
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
