The Dizzying Rube Goldberg Effect

Consider just one of the wreckages wrought by a single man's ego and another one's Sharpie. A special edition of America Eats!

This is what I’ve come to imagine how our lives are ruled today. The inaugural constructed a new roller coaster kind of governance where a lot of collateral damage will hit people before the structure fails altogether or there is nothing and no one else left to damage.

Last week is a fine illustration. Our government pulled all funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for their global initiatives. Like me, perhaps you have only a sliver of awareness of what the agency does or the impact its programs have on people around the world. The role it plays in our country’s security can not be overstated.

This is why I am sharing a Facebook post that my sister, Sue, sent me from her friend and colleague, Annē Linn. They worked closely together at Rutgers University Nursing School to help create the school’s global programing in many countries including Africa where both had previously worked. My sister has since retired and, until a few days ago, Annē worked for USAID’s President’s Malaria Initiatives which provided and administered malaria prevention measures.

Late last week, Elon Musk effectively dissolved USAID by pulling its funding. Its website was taken down over the weekend and its leadership removed. But this is how lame they are—they failed to take down the agency’s Flickr account. Take a look—pictures, as they say, are worth a thousand words.

Annē Linn in Sierra Leone.

Please read the following from Annē and share it far and wide. These stories have to come out so we can all understand both the United States greatness and now its possible failure.

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I lost my job on Tuesday. Along with almost 400 talented and committed people who have dedicated their lives to improving the lives and health of people around the world. But this is not about my job. My job is a drop in an immense bucket of suffering that the halt on foreign aid is causing, with cascading impacts beyond what I can describe. There is much out there about the scale of these impacts, so I want to focus on my own experience of these last days and the impact on my specific work.

On day 1 of the new administration, one of the executive orders was a halt of obligations, or funding currently with USAID (US Agency for International Development) going to projects. I was worried about this (along with orders about return to the office, since as someone who relocated to be nearer to our families, I knew that this would eventually impact me) because of new projects that were in need of funding to get their vital work started. But I resolved to roll up my sleeves to articulate how the work I was involved with was indeed aligned with Secretary Rubio’s stated goals of making American safer, stronger, and more prosperous.

My job for the past six years has been with the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, or PMI. Malaria still kills around 600,000 people each year—mostly children under five. But in the 30 countries where PMI works, the malaria mortality rate has been reduced by half since the initiative was launched in 2006 by George W. Bush. If this is not a show of American strength, I don’t know what is. Aid is diplomacy and fosters goodwill. Malaria harms economies when people can’t work, and PMI’s work to fight this disease allows economies to grow—and with the globalization of today’s economy, that means more shared prosperity.

Did I join this field because of these goals? No. As a Christian, I was compelled by the gospel, the words of Jesus, to use my life to try to diminish suffering for the world’s most vulnerable. This has been more than a career—it has been a vocation, where my greatest gifts have met the world’s greatest need. I have had no radical agenda other than the notion that no child should die from a mosquito bite. I have been so proud to tell my children about my work and the American greatness it represented. And now I have had to tell them that I no longer have a job, and I’ve had to explain why.

Because I did not have a chance to articulate how my work meets Secretary Rubio’s goals. On Friday, he sent a new memo adding on to the original executive order. Now all aid would be halted for a 90 day review. Stop work orders would be issued to all projects immediately, with almost no exceptions, despite the obvious lifesaving nature of our work. That’s where my layoff came to be. As contract staff, we were told that the entirety of our contract was stopped and they were unable to continue our employment. Two thirds of the PMI team at USAID just evaporated.

I have no objection to reviewing the work. By all means. But the immediate halts are nothing but cruel. And wasteful. If we want to talk about government efficiency, let me just provide a few small examples of the waste. I have been involved with a piece of work in Sierra Leone (a photo from which I have added to this post) to test how we might be able to *more cost effectively* deliver an intervention with proven outcomes. A survey was scheduled to be conducted next week to measure these outcomes, but it’s all halted, and now we won’t know whether we could have actually provided this intervention with fewer resources and achieved the same outcomes. All the resources that went into this work are wasted.

Healthcare workers and the children they were caring for.

Malaria is very seasonal, as mosquitoes flourish during the rainy season. Planning things like distributions of bednets and preventive medicine for children has a precise timeline that will fall apart, making this work less effective, if it even happens at all. And children, children of God, will die unnecessarily.

I was supposed to go to a meeting on child survival next week (which of course I will not be doing on account of being laid off and the meeting being canceled because of the stop work order). My ticket was non-refundable (because that’s the cheaper option). Even if it does end up being just a “pause”, how many organizations will be able to maintain staff for three months without being able to pay them to do any work? My non-contract colleagues, the federal employees who were not laid off, have been instructed not to conduct any work. As someone who has considered myself a steward of taxpayer resources for the last six years, this waste infuriates me.

On Monday, the career (non political appointed) leadership of every bureau at USAID was escorted out of the building and placed on administrative leave. The global health leadership are people that I respect so much, that have served our country through their dedication to the mission of the agency, and I am sickened to think of them being treated as an enemy. The next morning, as contractors got our layoff notices, we heard about pictures of smiling beneficiaries of US foreign assistance being removed from their frames. Why do this other than to expressly try to terrorize the workforce, my colleagues who, to me, represent the best of America. They have been the most talented and passionate people I have ever worked with.

This is what the rhetoric from this administration looks like in practice. I will be ok. I am scrappy and privileged. But so much is not ok. No matter who you voted for, if reading this has stirred any compassion in you, please speak out. Share this post or a summary. Contact your representatives—the budgets that are frozen were approved by Congress, and the ordered halt of this work is contrary to the balance of power intended in the constitution. (Contrary to popular belief, our foreign aid budget is less than 1% of our overall national budget.) The freeze on all federal grants was rescinded because people spoke out and said that it wasn’t ok. Secretary Rubio issued a waiver for HIV treatment. We can stop this. Even if you think we should diminish foreign aid, this can be done in a more thoughtful and strategic way.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me to check in as this has hit the news. It has meant a great deal. I will be disabling comments because this is my experience and not fodder for debate. But if you have questions, please get in touch directly. America is great because America is good. We can still be good.

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An update: Marco Rubio has announced that he is folding USAID into the State Department. We can hope he has a better appreciation of its diplomantic usefulness. At the very least it may offer some protection from Musk.

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Thank you for stopping by today and reading Annē’s story. Consider contacting your Representatives and Senators to voice your concerns.