According to NPR, the Trump administration's overhaul of U.S. foreign aid has disrupted HIV care delivery under PEPFAR — the program credited with saving 26 million lives since 2003 — leaving health workers uncertain about the program's future.

In a new book, former USAID official Nicholas Enrich provides a firsthand account of DOGE's dismantling of the agency, describing how unqualified operatives tore apart decades of global health and development expertise, The Guardian reports.

Despite steady overall treatment numbers, U.S. funding disruptions have sharply reduced HIV testing and prevention efforts under PEPFAR, raising concerns that undetected infections and future cases could surge, Reuters reports.

Robert Rotberg argues that the Trump administration's cuts to USAID and PEPFAR have been devastating for sub-Saharan Africa.

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, warns that aid cuts are stoking global economic instability amid the Iran war, noting that $40 billion has already been stripped from the world's poorest populations.

As part of its broader dismantling of traditional U.S. foreign assistance, the Trump administration is pushing U.N. member states to endorse a "Trade Over Aid Initiative" that promotes free-market reforms over donor-funded development, the AP reports.

New foreign assistance contracts and awards have plummeted 86% in number since the shuttering of USAID, with the few large agreements that remain flowing overwhelmingly to international organizations rather than to U.S. firms and nonprofits, according to the Center for Global Development.

Despite a landmark 2018 U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the deliberate starvation of civilians, food continues to be weaponized with near impunity, argues David Beasley, former World Food Programme director.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Rockefeller Foundation president Rajiv Shah warns that if the current trajectory holds, the cuts to Overseas Direct Assistance could result in more than 9 million preventable deaths by 2030.

DW reports that the Trump administration is pressuring Zambia to sign a bilateral health deal that would tie continued HIV treatment funding — relied on by 1.3 million people — to demands for access to the country's critical mineral reserves.

Global aid from OECD countries fell 23.1% in 2025 — the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance, with the destruction of U.S. foreign aid programs accounting for three quarters of the global decline.

A new Carnegie Endowment report finds that the termination of U.S. foreign assistance to independent media has gutted newsrooms, emboldened autocratic government crackdowns, and opened the door for Russian and Chinese influence to fill the vacuum.

The Trump administration's shuttering of USAID — which had injected roughly $200 million annually into Ethiopia's health care system — has left pregnant women paying out of pocket for ultrasounds, prenatal vitamins, and delivery room supplies that were once free, threatening to reverse decades of progress on maternal mortality, The Globe and Mail reports.

As the Trump administration's gutting of U.S. foreign aid sparks debate over America's diminishing global influence, NPR speaks with soft power scholars around the world to explain what the concept means — and what is at stake when aid dollars, once a tool for winning hearts and minds, disappear.

Global development aid fell by a record 23% in 2025 to $174.3 billion — the largest single-year drop ever recorded — with the U.S. alone driving three-quarters of the decline following the dismantling of USAID, according to new OECD data reported by Reuters.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration has quietly negotiated 28 bilateral health agreements with mostly African nations as part of its "America First" global health strategy, but its refusal to disclose the full terms publicly has alarmed transparency advocates and partner governments who fear disease-fighting funds are being leveraged to extract unrelated political and economic concessions.

Despite pledging to cut out "beltway bandits" in favor of local organizations, the Trump administration's overhaul of foreign aid funneled hundreds of millions in new dollars to a handful of large U.S.-based contractors in 2025, according to the New York Times.

As the U.S. dismantles its foreign aid infrastructure, China is seizing the opportunity to expand its global influence — pivoting away from large-scale infrastructure loans toward smaller, visible health and development projects designed to win hearts and minds in the very communities that U.S. aid once served, NPR reports.

Despite Congress appropriating nearly $6 billion for global HIV/AIDS work in 2026, NPR reports that the Trump administration's State Department is deliberately withholding funds from the CDC — threatening to shut down PEPFAR programs that serve more than 12 million people living with HIV across Africa and beyond, with one CDC official calling it "a controlled demolition."