#NNPA BlackPress

A Nation Without Mercy: Trump’s Budget of Death and the Collapse of USAID

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that can only be described as state-engineered cruelty.

Published

8 months ago

November 10, 2025

Stacy M. Brown

By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

The Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe that can only be described as state-engineered cruelty. Reports from The New Yorker, KFF, ABC News, and humanitarian groups reveal a grim portrait of what happens when governance becomes an instrument of vengeance rather than stewardship.

President Trump’s second term began not with promises of compassion but with an executive order freezing all foreign aid, a move that would become the prelude to the deliberate erasure of the world’s largest aid agency. Within weeks, USAID was gutted—its workers dismissed, its programs dismantled, its warehouses of medicine and food left to rot. As of November, estimates show that more than 600,000 people—two-thirds of them children—have died from the ripple effects of that act. This is not the invisible hand of fate. It is the heavy hand of policy. The Trump administration didn’t merely stop aid—it severed a lifeline for the world’s poor. Clinics once sustained by USAID have shuttered across Africa and Asia. Health workers who used to deliver antiretrovirals and malaria nets are now unemployed. The World Food Programme, stripped of U.S. support, operates at less than half its needed capacity in places like Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, where starving mothers now cradle their dying children in silence.

The cruelty of this moment lies not just in the deaths but in the lies used to justify them. Trump’s lieutenants—Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk—called USAID a bloated relic. They claimed they were rooting out waste. Yet the numbers tell another story. The administration spent $40 billion to prop up Argentina’s far-right junta, $170 million on two private jets for South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, and even allowed FBI Director Kash Patel to use a $60 million government aircraft to attend a wrestling event where his girlfriend performed. Trump himself has spent over $30 million in taxpayer funds playing golf while slashing food aid for American families and cutting health care for the poor. He poured $300 into destroying the White House’s east wing and creating a vanity ballroom while gutting funding for global nutrition programs. Meanwhile, USAID—an agency that costs each American about twenty-four dollars a year—had saved ninety-two million lives since its founding. Its programs helped cut child mortality in half, controlled outbreaks of HIV and tuberculosis, and lifted entire nations from the edge of despair. The Trump administration snuffed out that light in a single stroke of the pen.

The results are biblical in scale and bureaucratic in method. In Myanmar, where 20 million people depended on U.S. aid, HIV and malaria deaths are climbing again. In Bangladesh, more than a million Rohingya refugees are now on the brink of starvation. Across sub-Saharan Africa, clinics that once thrived under USAID’s maternal health programs have closed, leaving women to give birth in the dark, unaided, and unseen. Even in the Caribbean, where Hurricane Melissa tore through Jamaica and Haiti, the consequences of the agency’s destruction were immediate. The State Department, now responsible for aid delivery, scrambled to respond with barely $24 million in assistance, less than what USAID could have mobilized in a day. Officials in Washington hailed it as a success, blind to the reality that lives were lost because the machinery of mercy had been dismantled.

At home, the hypocrisy is just as staggering. The administration argues it cannot afford to sustain food programs like SNAP and WIC, while the federal deficit has ballooned by nearly $7.8 trillion under Trump, and has been driven by tax cuts for the wealthy and reckless spending disguised as nationalism. The debt, the deaths, the decadence, they are all part of the same rot. The death of USAID marks more than the end of an agency. It is the end of a promise that America would use its wealth to heal, not to harm. The cruelty is the point, but cruelty has a cost. It stains the conscience of a nation that once sent doctors where there were none, food where there was hunger, hope where there was despair. Atul Gawande, writing in The New Yorker, called it “public man-made death.” He described the children of Kenya’s Kakuma camp, dying for lack of a peanut-paste packet that once cost sixty cents. He warned that these deaths, though quiet and dispersed, are no less real than those caused by bombs or bullets. “We cannot let the people affected—health workers like those of Clinic 7, families like Rovina Naboi’s—go unseen,” he wrote. “And we cannot let the consequences go unaccounted for.”

In the end, Trump’s legacy may not be written in the walls he promised to build, but in the graves of those he let die, not out of necessity, but out of indifference.

Stacy M. Brown

Posts by Stacy M. Brown

Up Next

Democrats Are Digging In Harder as Eight Dems Sided to Reopen the Government

Don't Miss

Headlines and Hot Topics. Chris Lodgson Joins the conversation

Stacy M. Brown

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

Jovita Moore Mural Still Has Not Been Repainted in Grant Park

ATLANTA VOICE — A mural depicting late journalist Jovita Moore, painted on the exterior wall of a building now occupied by Bellwood Coffee in Grant Park, was painted over in April. Moore passed away in 2021 after decades of working in Atlanta television news. Bellwood Coffee owners stated in May they were unaware of Moore’s identity or significance to the community before painting over the mural.
The post Jovita Moore Mural Still Has Not Been Repainted in Grant Park appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 8, 2026

Oakland Post

At the corner of Boulevard, SE. and Rosalia St., SE., directly across the street from an abandoned home and a Methodist Church, is Bellwood Coffee. One of hundreds of coffee shops in Atlanta, this place of business would not be worth a solitary discussion if not for the way its exterior walls are currently painted. There was once a mural depicting the late Jovita Moore, a beloved journalist who worked in Atlanta for decades. Moore, who passed away in 2021, mentored many of the people you see on television newscasts today. Though her legacy will never be forgotten, it was the mural of her image that was erased.

In April, members of the Grant Park community voiced their disgust at the mural, which graced a side wall of the building now occupied by Bellwood Coffee’s Grant Park location, before it was painted over. In its place are the words “Bellwood Coffee; Cocktails, Biscuits, Dry Goods, Air Conditioning. *Heat Too”. In May, the business owners responded to the community pushback on social media by acknowledging they did not know who Moore was before painting over her image. And later admitted that they did not attempt to find out what she meant to the community.

On May 21, the Bellwood Coffee Instagram account had a post about being “in close contact with Jovita’s family and are actively working on next steps in this process.” Two months later, the mural has not been replaced, repainted, or repositioned on the property. Nothing has been done. Black history is often erased, most recently by the current Presidential administration, but oftentimes on a smaller, quieter scale. The mural was originally painted by muralist Tommy Bronx, who had been in contact with the business owners about repainting it. As of July 6, Tommy Bronx had responded to a direct message via his Instagram account from The Atlanta Voice about any updates on his plans to repaint the mural.

“We’re currently working on it. You should see some movement in the weeks to come,” he wrote in a response.

On Monday, July 6, the business had several patrons inside and was running smoothly with three employees manning the counter. The Atlanta Voice dropped by Bellwood Coffee to get a look at the exterior wall where the mural once stood as a memorial to a journalist and mother who lost her life to brain cancer at the young age of 54. Moore’s image added some color to the block. The grey wall in its place does not.

A direct message was sent to the Bellwood Coffee Instagram account, and there hasn’t been a response as of 7 p.m. on Monday.

The post Jovita Moore Mural Still Has Not Been Repainted in Grant Park appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.

Based on reporting by Atlanta Voice.

The post Jovita Moore Mural Still Has Not Been Repainted in Grant Park appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

‘Proud to Hang Her from a Tree’: Man Arrested for Threatening Black Senator

ATLANTA DAILY WORLD — A New York man faces felony hate crime charges for allegedly posting a threat against New York State Senator Lea Webb. James A. Crosby, 49, of Binghamton, was arrested by New York State Police after investigators determined he posted a threatening comment on a social media news post about a Juneteenth celebration.
The post ‘Proud to Hang Her from a Tree’: Man Arrested for Threatening Black Senator appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 8, 2026

Oakland Post

A New York man is facing felony hate crime charges after allegedly posting that he’d be “proud to hang” New York State Senator Lea Webb from a tree in response to a news story about a Juneteenth celebration.

James A. Crosby, 49, of Binghamton, was arrested June 23 by New York State Police after investigators determined he posted a threatening comment on a WBNG 12 News Facebook post. “I’d be proud to hang her from a tree,” Crosby wrote, according to WBNG.

Crosby was charged with making a terroristic threat as a hate crime, a class C felony, per the New York State Police. He is currently being held at Broome County Jail.

During the subsequent investigation, state police found Crosby was in illegal possession of firearms despite being prohibited from owning them due to a prior felony conviction. Investigators recovered a rifle, a large-capacity ammunition feeding device, and a firearm suppressor — all prohibited under New York state law, per the NYSP.

Crosby was charged with four additional counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, all class D felonies.

Webb, who represents New York’s 52nd Senate District, had been a featured speaker at a Juneteenth flag-raising ceremony at Binghamton City Hall, where the celebration included prayers and the singing of the Black national anthem.

Police said Crosby’s comment was posted in response to a WBNG news story covering the event.

The day before his arrest, Crosby posted a Facebook apology claiming the comment “was not intended to be racial in any way” and was made in reference to what he described as a “criminal,” citing criticism of Webb over her use of nonprofit legal aid in a foreclosure case — a matter state watchdogs said created an appearance of a conflict of interest, per the Ithaca Voice. He was arrested the following day.

Webb issued a public statement June 25 condemning the threat.

“It was extremely disappointing and hurtful to see the now-deleted threat and attacks on my life in response to a story about Juneteenth, a national holiday that recognizes the ending of slavery in America,” she said. “Feedback and thoughts on policy are one thing, but to make a public call for lethal violence is absolutely unacceptable and dangerous. We must recognize our shared humanity and reject violence in all forms.”

She thanked Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and law enforcement for their “swift response.”

Following Crosby’s comments, social media users called for a boycott of his contracting business, Crosby Home Improvements.

The Binghamton City Democratic Committee also called for an investigation into the incident before his arrest.

The Black Information Network is your source for Black News! Get the latest news 24/7 on The Black Information Network. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app or click HEREto tune in live.

The post ‘Proud to hang her from a tree’: Man arrested for threatening Black Senator appeared first on Atlanta Daily World.

Based on reporting by Atlanta Daily World.

The post ‘Proud to Hang Her from a Tree’: Man Arrested for Threatening Black Senator appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

CARICOM: Strengthen Integration for Future Generations

NEW YORK CARIB NEWS — Outgoing CARICOM Chairman Terrance Drew called on regional leaders to build a stronger and more effective Caribbean Community that benefits future generations. Speaking at the 51st Regular Meeting, Drew urged modernization of governance structures and improved implementation of Community decisions to make CARICOM safer and more prosperous.
The post CARICOM: Strengthen Integration for Future Generations appeared first on BlackPressUSA.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 8, 2026

Oakland Post

Speaking Sunday at the opening of the 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government in Saint Lucia, Dr. Terrance Drew said the region must modernize its governance structures, improve the implementation of Community decisions, and ensure CARICOM becomes safer, more prosperous, and more relevant to the lives of its citizens.

The meeting, being held under the theme “CARICOM: From Resilience to Renewal in a Changing World,” coincides with the Community’s 53rd anniversary. During the ceremony, Dr. Drew formally handed over the rotating CARICOM chairmanship to Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister, Philip J. Pierre.

Reflecting on his six-month tenure as chairman, Drew praised fellow regional leaders for maintaining their commitment to democracy, good governance, unity, and the rule of law despite mounting global economic and geopolitical challenges.

“Throughout these challenges, CARICOM chose engagement over isolation. Together, we reaffirmed our commitment to a fair and rules-based international trading system and ensured that the interests of small developing states continued to be heard.”
Trending
Salon teaches dads how to style daughters’ hair

He highlighted progress made in strengthening the CARICOM Single Market and Economy, including deeper trade cooperation, expanded labour mobility, and efforts to lay the foundation for long-term economic growth. Drew also noted the Community’s growing partnerships beyond the Caribbean, particularly with the African Union, while stressing that every international partnership should advance the interests of all parties involved.

The outgoing chairman also expressed appreciation to Dr. Carla Barnett and the CARICOM Secretariat for their professionalism and unwavering support during his tenure.

“Whenever I called, you answered. Whenever support was required, you and your team responded with diligence, competence, and excellence.”

Dr. Drew urged the Secretariat to continue preserving its impartiality while faithfully implementing decisions made by Heads of Government, saying that balance has helped strengthen the regional integration movement.

The conference continues in Saint Lucia with regional leaders expected to deliberate on key issues including regional security, climate resilience, trade, economic integration, food security, Haiti, reparations, and strengthening the CSME.

Based on reporting by New York Carib News.

The post CARICOM: Strengthen Integration for Future Generations appeared first on BlackPressUSA.