History Will Remember Those Who Stayed Silent on the Destruction of USAID

I am writing to demand accountability for the destruction of USAID, an agency that saved an estimated 92 million lives over two decades. It was dismantled in days, with no legislation, no debate, and no public mandate. The justification came from Mike Benz, a YouTube conspiracy theorist who NBC News linked to a secret alt-right account where he wrote that Hitler “had some decent points” and that he wanted “white identity politics to grow like wildfire.” He had no development background and no policy credentials. Elon Musk amplified his content more than 160 times. Within weeks, 13,000 USAID staff were fired, 5,341 contracts were cancelled, and the agency was gone. The human cost did not wait. Boston University researchers estimate more than 762,000 people have died as a result of the cuts, roughly 103 deaths every hour. Children died of malnutrition in Nigeria and Kenya within days of U.S.-funded clinics closing. HIV medication sat stranded in warehouses. Marco Rubio told Congress no one had died while ProPublica was documenting children starving in Kenyan refugee camps. My spouse and I watched our health insurance increase from $1,250 to $1,489 a month this year as our coverage shrank. We are still waiting to see how any of this benefited us. It did not. USAID cost each American roughly $105 a year. None of that money came back to us. The tariffs imposed by the same administration cost our household more than $1,300 annually, according to Yale Budget Lab. The savings went toward offsetting a multitrillion-dollar tax package. Americans paid more and got nothing in return. Andrew Natsios, who ran USAID under President Bush, called this a destruction, not a reform. One hundred twenty retired generals had warned for years that cutting diplomacy means buying more ammunition. They were right, and the people in this building knew it. The officials who watched this happen without raising a voice will not be remembered as pragmatists. They will be remembered as people who chose silence while 762,000 died from preventable causes. Go on record. Demand an investigation into how Mike Benz gained access to an agency he helped dismantle. Demand accountability for every death that followed.