Editor,

President’ Trump’s government is cutting every program in sight, that is if it looks like it might be favored by Democrats. He and Elon Musk toss words like “waste,” “efficiency,” “evil,” “criminal” and “corrupt” around like throwing the proverbial spaghetti against the wall. Musk gleefully bounces around on a stage with a chainsaw, crowing about his wonderfulness. And nowhere to be found in this abstract, poorly thought-out justification is there any mention of consequences. Musk’s summation: “Time for it to die,” a line borrowed from the movie “Blade Runner.”

On Jan. 24, President Trump stopped work and money on all foreign assistance awards (humanitarian aid was 0.24% of Gross National Income). Funding for the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS (PEPFAR), a program initiated by President George W. Bush, was included in the cuts. PEPFAR is estimated to have saved 26 million lives and prevented 7.8 million children from having HIV at birth (prevention cost: 12 cents per day).

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote an editorial after visiting the African nations affected by the cutting of USAID money. While there, Kristof talked to recipients and workers affected by the cuts. In his opinion article (“Why Is It Our Job to Keep Kids in Poor Countries Alive?”) he drew on a variety of sources to assess the total damage. My summation of the various estimates he presented in detail gives a total of three million deaths in the next year, along with substantial increases in expensive care for polio, malaria, tuberculosis, and malnutrition among the survivors.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has advanced ideas for doing away with measles vaccination arguing that they are harmful. David Wallace-Wells reports (New York Times, 3/20/25) that Lancet (a medical analysis organization) has estimated that if measles vaccines were stopped, two million lives per year would be lost. Lancet also estimates that measles eradication programs have saved 100 million lives worldwide since they began. Musk’s untrue assertion: No one has died since aid was cut. These examples are just a few of the “nasty” effects stemming from their widespread government attack.

President Trump and Elon Musk are using value-laden language as a smoke screen covering monstrously unethical behavior. The irony: They are ignoring and denying the abominable consequences of their actions while claiming ethical purity.

Edwin Anderson

Langley