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USAID’s reproductive health funding has saved millions of lives. Now it’s gone. • Alabama Reflector

Published

7 months ago

February 9, 2025

Staff Editor

alabamareflector.com – Jessica Kutz, The 19th – 2025-02-09 07:01:00

USAID’s reproductive health funding has saved millions of lives. Now it’s gone.

by Jessica Kutz, The 19th, Alabama Reflector
February 9, 2025

This story was originally reported by Jessica Kutz of The 19th. Meet Jessica and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy.

On Sunday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, boasted that he was gutting the federal agency tasked with providing foreign aid to its poorest.

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk, the tech billionaire head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, posted on his social media platform, X.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established in 1961 to provide foreign assistance to impoverished countries around the world through food aid and humanitarian and economic development work. It is also one of the world’s largest providers of contraception through its family planning program. According to the Congressional Research Service, the agency’s funding in 2023 was about $40 billion, which represented less than 1 percent of the federal budget.

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Beth Schlachter, senior director of U.S. engagement for MSI Reproductive Choices, a global non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides contraception and abortion care, said Musk’s comment made her feel sick.

“You can just hear the cavalier, malicious, cruel approach to it as they’re laughing,” she said, referring to a conversation Musk broadcast earlier in the day on his platform about the cuts. “I can’t get past it. It’s so malicious and disgusting. You have to believe that the cruelty is the point.”

MSI Reproductive Choices doesn’t receive USAID funding, but Schlachter has worked for decades at both the State Department and with NGOs on programs that build up support for sexual and reproductive health rights, maternal care and access to contraception globally. She’s seen the ways USAID funding has saved lives through its family planning initiatives. Now she worries about the immediate fallout for people across the world. She and other experts say women and LGBTQ+ people will face significant and deadly consequences because of an abrupt pause in aid.

“There will be maternal deaths, and there will be unintended pregnancies,” she said.

USAID started its family planning program in 1965 as an anti-population growth initiative, Schlachter said. “[It was] really a racist program to ensure that Black and Brown people had less babies. But it morphed over time into being the backbone of the reproductive health sector within global health.”

Experts say the family planning work, which ranges from sexual education, access to contraceptives, and maternal and infant health, have all been implemented as a way to bolster the human rights of women and girls around the world. By giving people the ability to delay pregnancy into adulthood, and the choice to go to school or have fewer children, they and their families are healthier.

“Ultimately, in planning their families, their children are more prosperous. They themselves are able to work now,” said Onikepe Owolabi, director of international research at the Guttmacher Institute, a Washington-based organization that tracks reproductive health policy.

USAID has been rocked by the Trump administration after an executive order signed on his first day in office halted all foreign funding for 90 days and a stop work order issued on January 24 for all existing foreign assistance awards. While a waiver was issued a week later to continue funding for “life-saving humanitarian assistance,” family planning was specifically excluded from the action. Separate from the executive orders, it was reported by the New York Times on Thursday that nearly all staff from the agency of about 10,000 employees would be let go.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been announced as the acting administrator for the agency — signaling a potential, though according to legal experts not constitutional, move to dissolve the agency’s functions into his department. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

For over a decade, USAID has spent about $600 million annually for its family planning work.

“The good that money has done is unquantifiable,” Owolabi said. She received training through a USAID-funded program for HIV prevention and treatment and family planning while she was a medical student in Nigeria.

She’s seen how that money has led to better maternal health outcomes and helped combat HIV in places like Rwanda and Uganda through training doctors and providing supplies and antiretrovirals to clinics. Now she’s hearing accounts of how that work has been affected.

“Imagine a rural area in Uganda, a small health outpost where women will come with their babies for care, or their pregnancy, or [where a] child can receive immunization, or for family planning counseling,” she said. “The staff can’t work because of the stop work order, the drugs, the medications, the commodities … are no longer available because USAID is one of the largest procurers and suppliers of commodities in this country. So you handicap health workers, you handicap the health system. You hold the logistics and supply chain ransom.”

Demonstrators gathered on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, to protest the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

As of 2023, 67 percent of contraceptives supplied through USAID went to Africa, where some of the leading causes of death for girls and women are related to pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections like HIV. According to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, if no contraceptive care is provided by USAID in 2025, that will lead to about 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and over 8,000 deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth complications.

“Women will die as a result of this decision,” said Rachel Clement, senior director of government relations at PAI, a global advocacy group. “Those people will die from preventable maternal mortality causes.”

Owolabi said even Momentum, a program implemented during the first Trump administration to help women survive childbirth in places like India, Senegal and Nigeria, has been shut down. One of the initiatives under the program was created to reduce maternal and infant mortality by training doctors on how to perform cesarean sections and other types of lifesaving procedures, as well as how to insert and take out intrauterine devices. Without that critical care, “they are exposing women with complicated pregnancies, a majority of who are low income, to die simply because they can’t access it,” she said.

The pause on family planning work has also impacted the United Nations Population Fund, the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency. USAID provides between 40 to 50 percent of the funding that goes to humanitarian work at the UN.

This includes maternal health programs in Afghanistan, where the UN has had a presence for about 40 years. Up until the funding pause, the UN was able to continue providing that care through midwives that worked in rural health clinics in mountainous regions of the country.

“We try to have a midwife in every single one of [the clinics], and we have over 1,700 midwives that are supported by U.S. funds that are mostly frozen right now,” a UN official said.

Prevention and care for HIV is another concern for advocates. While the State Department issued a waiver to continue providing funding for HIV treatment, experts say it’s still not reaching clinics on the ground through programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The global program, known as PEPFAR, has been credited with saving more than 26 million lives through providing access to antiretrovirals, which suppress the virus, and preventing the spread of HIV in 5 million children, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations program on AIDS.

While the State Department funds the program, much of the work is implemented by USAID. According to reporting from The New York Times, no money has been distributed from USAID since the initial freeze on foreign assistance, and stop work orders are still in effect. Groups on the ground are waiting for instructions to restart work, but so far none have been issued. As a result, hundreds of organizations had to halt services, according to The New York Times.

Once someone stops taking antiretrovirals, the virus can become detectable again within a few weeks, making people more likely to transmit it to others. A temporary disruption to the medication can also lead to drug resistance for someone with HIV, making their regimen less effective. PEPFAR also pays for PrEP, a medication that protects those at high risk of contracting HIV. According to the State Department, PEPFAR accounts for 90 percent of PrEP treatment initiations globally.

While advocates say HIV treatments could resume under the State Department program, new executive orders aimed at weeding out “gender ideology” and DEI in the department mean it may not serve those most at risk of exposure to HIV.

“Are they going to allow men who have sex with men? Are they going to include female sex workers, who have the highest risk of HIV transmission, in programming?” Owolabi asked. “Or are they going to impose their values on programming, and thus not going to protect the most at risk?”

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Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

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News from the South - Alabama News Feed

FBI raids Maryland home of Trump critic John Bolton

Published

2 days ago

August 22, 2025

Staff Editor

alabamareflector.com – Ariana Figueroa – 2025-08-22 13:52:00

by Ariana Figueroa, Alabama Reflector
August 22, 2025

WASHINGTON — FBI agents raided the home and office of former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump who has become a frequent critic of the president, to investigate Bolton’s handling of classified documents, according to multiple media reports.

The raid on a former Trump adviser’s house represents an escalation from the Justice Department in targeting critics of Trump, whom he vowed to go after should he return to the White House for a second term.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Trump said he was not briefed on the raid of Bolton’s house in the wealthy suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, and office in Washington, D.C., according to White House pool reports.

But the president noted his longstanding feud with his former adviser.

“I’m not a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said. “He’s a real sort of a low life. He could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”

Earlier this year, the president revoked the security detail for Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration in 2005 and 2006.

Following his time in the Trump administration, Bolton, who was an important member of the Bush administration’s national security team that favored active military involvement in the Middle East, emerged as a chief Republican foreign policy critic of Trump, authoring a 2020 book that blasted the president and widened the public rift between the two men.

Bolton has not been charged with a crime and is not in custody, according to The Associated Press, which cited a person familiar with the matter.

The first Trump administration launched an investigation into Bolton to probe if he improperly used sensitive information in his book. The current search involves federal officials investigating Bolton’s actions over the last four years, according to the New York Times, which cited a federal law enforcement official.

Trump documents case

Trump himself was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents after the FBI raided his Florida golf course and main residence of Mar-a-Lago in 2022. A federal judge dismissed the resulting criminal charges against Trump.

FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media that “NO ONE is above the law,” and that FBI agents were “on mission.”

The FBI declined to comment.

In 2020, the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Bolton’s book and tried to block its publication, but were stymied in court.

Patel also wrote a 2023 book where he lists Bolton, along with a dozen other people, as members of the “deep state” who are working against Trump, according to the Times.

The post FBI raids Maryland home of Trump critic John Bolton appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content presents a factual and detailed account of the FBI raid on John Bolton, a former Trump adviser turned critic, and provides context about Bolton’s history with Trump and his actions post-administration. It highlights the conflict between Trump and Bolton, includes direct quotes from Trump that are critical of Bolton, and references investigations into classified documents related to both men. While it covers perspectives from both sides and notes legal outcomes such as dismissed charges, it subtly emphasizes alleged abuse of power and retaliation by the Justice Department against Trump’s critics. This leads to a center-left lean, aiming for critical scrutiny of Trump and his administration while avoiding overtly partisan language.

News from the South - Alabama News Feed

Grants to boost local emergency alert systems in question as public media agency closes

Published

4 days ago

August 20, 2025

Staff Editor

alabamareflector.com – Jennifer Shutt – 2025-08-20 15:01:00

by Jennifer Shutt, Alabama Reflector
August 20, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will no longer administer a grant program that has so far provided millions of dollars to local television and radio stations to upgrade the equipment they use to send out emergency alerts.

The change comes after Republican lawmakers voted last month to defund the corporation, following a request from President Donald Trump to zero out more than $1.1 billion in previously approved spending for the organization.

Congress originally formed the Next Generation Warning System grant program in fiscal 2022 and provided the Federal Emergency Management Agency about $40 million during its first year.

FEMA then gave that money to CPB to reimburse stations for infrastructure and other improvements meant to get emergency alerts sent through the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System to more Americans.

That appears on track to change in the months ahead.

FEMA officials wrote in a notice of funding opportunity for the current fiscal year that the grants will now go directly to state and tribal governments that can then award funding to public broadcasting stations that make improvements to their emergency alert systems.

Democrats and some Republicans have raised concerns that without funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, local stations wouldn’t be able to raise enough funding to remain in operation, potentially leading to holes in the country’s emergency alert system.

‘Rescission consequences’ for local public media

CPB, which plans to cease operations later this year, announced this week that it would no longer be able to administer the grant funding Congress approved during fiscal 2023 and 2024. The corporation had yet to determine which applicants would receive the funding lawmakers provided for those two years.

“CPB has been fully invested in the NGWS program and its mission to protect the American public,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison wrote in a statement. “This is one more example of rescission consequences impacting local public media stations and the communities they serve—in this case, weakening the capacity of local public media stations to support the safety and preparedness of their communities.”

That could potentially leave much of the $136 million in grant funding approved by Congress in limbo.

CPB wrote in a statement that “FEMA should assume responsibility for disbursing the funds as Congress intended, or most of the FY 2022 funding—and all funds from FY 2023 and FY 2024—will go undistributed.

“As a result, critical emergency alerting equipment will not be purchased, leaving communities, especially those in rural and disaster-prone areas, without the upgrades Congress intended.”

A FEMA official, speaking on background, couldn’t say definitively how the agency would handle funding for those three fiscal years.

The White House and Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to requests for comment from States Newsroom on Wednesday about the grant program.

Projects funded so far include:

Mid-South Public Communications Foundation in Cordova, Tennessee, which received $1.657 million to “replace a transmitter and two emergency generators to ensure the rural agricultural communities in Tennessee, Mississippi, and eastern Arkansas receive timely emergency communications.”
Blue Ridge PBS in Roanoke, Virginia, which received $1.122 million to “replace critical broadcast infrastructure that will strengthen their signal in the mountainous region to reach more rural communities with targeted emergency alerts.”
Louisiana Public Broadcasting, which received nearly $2 million to “install transmitters and antennas for KLTL-TV in Lake Charles and KLTM-TV in Monroe and update alerting equipment to enable statewide delivery of alerts and warning messages.”

Congress votes to end public media funds

Kate Riley, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations, released a written statement this week calling CPB’s inability to administer the grant program for FEMA “yet another devastating result of the rescission of public media funding.”

She also called on FEMA “to establish a new process for delivering this funding to public broadcasters” and urged “Congress to restore essential direct funding to local stations throughout this country whose communities depend on them for lifesaving public safety services, proven educational resources and essential community connections.”

Trump sent Congress a rescissions request in early June, proposing lawmakers eliminate previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and several foreign aid accounts.

The House voted mostly along party lines to approve the full $9.4 billion proposal later that month. GOP senators, except Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, approved a similar bill in July after removing spending cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. The House voted to clear the revised legislation a few days later, sending the bill to Trump for his signature.

The post Grants to boost local emergency alert systems in question as public media agency closes appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Political Bias Rating: Center-Left

This content presents a critical view of the Republican-led defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and highlights concerns from Democrats and some Republicans about the negative impact on local emergency alert systems. It emphasizes the consequences of budget cuts initiated by former President Trump and Republican lawmakers, portraying these actions as harmful to public safety and local media. The overall tone and framing suggest a center-left perspective that supports public broadcasting funding and is critical of conservative fiscal decisions affecting it.

News from the South - Alabama News Feed

U.S. agriculture secretary announces end to subsidies for solar panels on farmland

Published

5 days ago

August 19, 2025

Staff Editor

alabamareflector.com – Sam Stockard – 2025-08-19 15:01:00

by Sam Stockard, Alabama Reflector
August 19, 2025

This story originally appeared on Tennessee Lookout.

U.S. Agriculture officials announced a new initiative Monday to stop subsidies for solar energy panels that take up farmland while supporting cuts in agriculture grants to Tennessee universities.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins introduced the initiative by the Trump administration after a Future Farmers of America breakfast at the State Fairgrounds in Lebanon where she said the federal government will make new grants to bolster Tennessee farming while targeting grants that don’t help farmers’ production.

Rollins criticized the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and “market distorting incentives” for solar panels, which she said are eliminating Tennessee farmland.

The secretary made the statements even though a study by the nonpartisan Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations found that solar facilities aren’t likely to be the “primary driver” of development on farmland for decades. The study also determined that land can be returned to farming once a solar facility goes out of use.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn speaks at a Future Farmers of America breakfast featuring U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Aug. 28, 2025. Standing behind Blackburn is Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and U.S. Rep. John Rose. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

Earlier this year, the federal government made dramatic cuts to higher education grants, including eliminating more than $31 million in funding to the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, which houses agricultural research and resources for Tennessee farmers and communities in 95 counties.

Rollins defended the reductions, saying “Those cuts were being made in programs that did not align with the president’s vision of putting farmers first.”

Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden of Tennessee described the reduction as a “repurposing” and said changes were made in research funding based on whether a grant “helps a farmer in the field make more money.” Projects aimed at “clean energy” or based on “racial criteria” were eliminated, he said.

In addition to stopping solar panel development on farmland, Rollins announced that nearly $89 million will go toward 13 rural development projects in 28 Tennessee counties to “promote partnerships” and infrastructure investments for rural education. The department has distributed nearly $100 million this year to more than 10,000 farmers through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program, according to Rollins.

Some farmers have said they expect prices to increase because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which are forcing them to pass on higher rates to customers. Rollins said Monday the administration has signed eight new trade agreements expected to boost the nation’s economy.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.

The post U.S. agriculture secretary announces end to subsidies for solar panels on farmland appeared first on alabamareflector.com

Political Bias Rating: Center-Right

The content presents a generally favorable view of policies and officials associated with the Trump administration, emphasizing support for traditional farming interests and criticism of the Biden administration’s approach to solar energy subsidies and grant allocations. While it includes some factual context and opposing data, the framing and focus on defending cuts to higher education grants and promoting rural development align more closely with center-right perspectives that prioritize agricultural production and skepticism of certain clean energy initiatives.