A year after the Trump administration ended most U.S. democracy funding, Carnegie Endowment scholars find that no actor has stepped in to fill the void, with established Western donors largely maintaining but not expanding their commitments — and several, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK, cutting democracy aid further.

Lawfare argues that the Trump administration's termination of nearly all of its $1.8 billion in aid to Afghanistan—along with the shuttering of U.S.-funded border reception centers and the elimination of the State Department office overseeing the region—has left some 2.9 million returnees facing extreme poverty and social isolation while erasing early-warning systems along the Pakistan border. 

El País travels to Nairobi to meet women left without contraception after the dismantling of USAID stranded $9.7 million in pills, IUDs, condoms, and implants in Belgian warehouses facing destruction or expiration, with public clinics that relied on USAID for their supplies now recording months of zero stock and post-abortion care cases up 50%. An estimated 108,000 Kenyan women will lose implant access this year.

HuffPost reports that the New World screwworm has been confirmed in south Texas for the first time in decades, roughly a year after DOGE eliminated the USAID-funded program that monitored and helped contain the parasite's northward spread. While it remains unclear whether the cuts directly enabled the outbreak, the case has raised alarm about a potentially costly crisis for the U.S. cattle industry as beef prices climb.

A new report from House Oversight Democrats finds that the Trump administration's dismantling of USAID has contributed to an estimated 600,000 deaths, two-thirds of them children, while also hampering the global response to the ongoing Ebola outbreak, The Hill reports.

In a bipartisan rebuke of the Trump administration's approach to foreign assistance, the House passed an $8 billion Ukraine security aid package with 18 Republicans breaking from party leadership to support military loans, reconstruction funding, and new sanctions targeting Russia's energy and financial sectors, The Washington Post reports.

When the Trump administration dismantled USAID in early 2025, it also took down the public archive documenting decades of U.S. global health achievements — leaving many without baseline data. Think Global Health reports that former USAID officials have launched an interactive tool recovering fiscal year 2019–2023 data.

In this opinion, Nicholas Kristof argues that the dismantling of USAID and the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO have directly worsened the current Ebola outbreak by eliminating early-warning infrastructure, expert presence in the DRC, and disease preparedness planning.

U.S. funding cuts to UNFPA-supported maternity services in northeastern Central African Republic are forcing overwhelmed clinics to reduce staffing and cut outreach, Al Jazeera reports.

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.