A new report found that global wildfire activity in 2025 was among the lowest of the past two decades by area burned, yet devastating fires still caused major human and economic losses. Researchers also warn that USAID cuts are threatening key disaster datasets used for wildfire monitoring and early warning systems.

Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman argues in Foreign Affairs that while the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID has been deeply damaging, the development sector can still make progress by pivoting toward investment in local capacity and self-reliance.

As the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa surpasses 1,000 suspected and confirmed cases, NPR reports that the dismantling of USAID has left the U.S. significantly less equipped to contain the crisis. A former USAID acting assistant administrator for global health warns that America's capacity to stop this outbreak, or future ones, is far weaker than it once was.

The Trump administration defunded war crimes accountability programs in Ukraine, leaving investigators understaffed, evidence archives suspended, and prosecutors without support, Reuters reports.

One year after Trump dismantled USAID, the Caribbean is still grappling with the collapse of agricultural programs that helped smallholder farmers, built climate resilience, and strengthened food security across a region where 42% of the population is food insecure. Forbes reports that closed programs significantly reduced community resilience when Hurricane Melissa struck in 2025.

EM-DAT — a 30-year-old database of more than 27,000 natural and technological disasters relied upon by climate scientists, governments, and humanitarian organizations worldwide — faces closure after Trump's dismantling of USAID eliminated the 90% of its funding that came from the agency, Carbon Brief reports.

Bloomberg reports that clinics in flood-hit Mozambique are still contending with the fallout from last year's abrupt U.S. aid cuts, which forced layoffs of community health workers and disrupted disease surveillance, even as the Trump administration pursues a new bilateral health deal framework intended to replace the aid it dismantled.

As simultaneous Ebola and hantavirus outbreaks test U.S. preparedness, CBS highlights how cuts to the CDC, HHS, and USAID have hollowed out the outbreak detection and response infrastructure needed to contain them — including disease surveillance systems in the DRC.

U.S. cuts to global aid have gutted community health programs across South Africa, leaving clinics like Johannesburg's We Care with a fraction of their former workforce and fewer health workers available to support low-income people living with HIV and AIDS, NPR reports.

As outgoing World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain steps down, she warns PBS NewsHour that U.S. aid cuts, compounded by global funding reductions and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have left the WFP able to cover less than half of what the world needs, with more than 315 million people now facing acute hunger, more than double the 2019 figure.

Writing for Inkstick, Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Priya Moran argues as FY27 appropriations get underway Congress still has the opportunity to reverse course and reinvest in the life-saving, cost-effective foreign aid and peacebuilding programs that advance both American values and national security.

The Trump administration's foreign aid freeze abruptly halted decades-long war-legacy programs in Vietnam eroding Vietnamese trust in U.S. reliability and prompting Hanoi to accelerate its diversification toward China and other partners, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs reports.

As the world grapples with the first major disease outbreak since the U.S. gutted its global health support, experts warn the loss of funding, personnel, and coordination capacity has disrupted contact tracing, delayed detection, and left partner organizations scrambling to cover gaps the U.S. once filled, The Hill reports.

Save the Children US President and CEO Janti Soeripto tells Al-Monitor that the loss of roughly 80–85% of the organization's USAID-funded programs has left her organization serving only three of the 18 most underserved localities in northern Darfur.

Al Jazeera reports after nearly 12 years of conflict and severe funding cuts, humanitarian support at Yemen's IDP camps has been reduced to a trickle, leaving displaced families and host communities alike struggling to survive on fewer than two meals a day — a crisis deepened by U.S. aid reductions.

The Washington Post reports that the dismantling of USAID has left the U.S. without the disaster-response teams, partner networks, and logistics capacity that made coordinated outbreak containment possible. According to the Washington Post, former officials warn that the infrastructure needed to stop outbreaks at their source, before they reach American shores, no longer exists.

Having dismantled USAID, the Trump administration is replacing roughly $44 billion in foreign assistance with bilateral "America First" health deals that offer recipient countries five years of reduced funding in exchange for up to 25 years of patient data and, in some cases, preferential access to critical minerals,, the Financial Times reports.

A fast-moving Ebola outbreak in central Africa is exposing the fallout of sweeping U.S. public health cuts, with experts warning weakened surveillance and response systems may have allowed the virus to spread undetected for months. 

Intensified U.S. immigration enforcement and the contraction of humanitarian aid are transforming the region from a corridor of northward transit into one of prolonged displacement and weakened government capacity to respond, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The WHO declared the Ebola outbreak in the DRC and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern. Former U.K. Africa minister Rory Stewart warns the crisis should be a "wake-up call," The Independent reports.