To the Editor:
Those who sow chaos intend to make us confused, overwhelmed, and mentally and emotionally fatigued to the point that we are unable to remember all the previous crises and only focus on the crisis of the day, or we tune out completely. Such it is with the chaos sown by the Trump administration.
When we do the end-of-year review for 2025, how acute will the early actions of the federal administration feel when 11 months of continued chaos has dimmed our memories? Will we have forgotten all about their actions in the first days of the administration to pause and then terminate programs funded by USAID grants? Their hope is that we will forget that they denied other human beings, including many children, food, health care, clean water, and other life-sustaining measures. The complicity of the Republican-led Congress ensured that these programs would not be reinstated.
According to Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease mathematical modeler, 332,553 people died worldwide because of the cuts in USAID, including 224,575 children, as of June 26. The numbers keep rising and the true toll will never be known. Foreign aid is not like a water spigot that can be turned off and then turned on again. Many programs were forced to close immediately, rather than have any transition. A well being drilled was left unfinished. Food waiting to be distributed sat in warehouses to spoil. It will take years, if ever, to be able to reverse the damage done by the Trump administration. For those children who died because of our lack of compassion, nothing can be done.
Sincerely,
Carol Olivieri
Pennington
