Mark Baker

Trump and Musk talked about waste in humanitarian aid--and I found it. In a warehouse in West Africa, I found millions of doses of valuable American medicines meant to prevent river blindness and other ailments. But Trump canceled distribution, so now they're just gathering dust; when they expire, they will have to be destroyed at great expense. The financial and human cost I saw on this trip -- it was a tragedy caused by the administration's cancelation of USAID, and kids are already dying as a result. So are moms in childbirth. Babies are again being born with AIDS. So when Musk and Rubio say no one has died from aid cuts, I challenge them to join me on a trip like this, and I'll show them how their policies are killing kids. My column: nytimes.com/2025/06/21/opini… (with suggestions for readers who want to help)

Elon Musk says that no one has died because he slashed humanitarian aid. I went to South Sudan to check if that's true. It's not. Within an hour of starting interviews, I had the names of a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl who had died because of decisions by wealthy men in Washington. The visit that moved me the most was to a remote area that used to have no health care, where women routinely died in childbirth. Then a US-funded maternity clinic opened through @UNFPA in December, and not one woman has died since. I showed up, and people mistakenly thought I was responsible for the clinic. One new mom wanted to name her baby for me, and the village elders thanked me and hailed America's generosity. What they didn't know was that Trump/Musk had cut all funding for UNFPA and that as a result the maternity clinic will close this month, and women will once again be bleeding to death in the dust. Here's a giftlink to my report from ground level about what the shutdown of USAID means: nytimes.com/interactive/2025…