November 29, 2025 • 33 mins
Former USAID official for the Bureau of Global Health Dr. Atul Gawande details the implications of dismantling USAID as well as his new documentary Rovina's Choice. Laura K. Field examines her new book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
we don't have a great show for you today. Former
Assistant Administrator for USAID at tool Gwande stops by to
talk about the implications of the dismantling of USAID. But
(00:22):
first we have Laura k Field to talk about her
new book, Furious Minds The Making of the Maga New Right.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Laura, Thank you so much for
having me Millie.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
The book is Furious Minds The Making of the Maga
New Right. Now this is first of all, I have many, many,
many questions I want you to first talk about. So
this is like the intellectual movement shaping Donald Trump's agenda.
Now again this is Donald Trump. So it is a
(00:55):
little bit oxymoronic the idea that there's an intellectual movement here,
but actually there were is and like well, Trump one
point zero, the intellectual movement was basically like Bronze or
Trump two point zero, they did actually manage to put
together sort of the worst of conservative thinking and the
worst of authoritarianism and the worst of trump Ism, so sort.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Of give us the top line of what that looks like. Yes,
thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
So the book covers twenty sixteen through twenty twenty four,
and it tries to articulate the coalescence of this movement.
And it started in twenty sixteen, but as you said,
it was kind of nascent for the first Toll administration.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
There are key moments.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I try to track those where they start to come
together in conferences and there are books published.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Is SEEPAC involved in some of these key moments, I
mean not really.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I'm really trying to take the one slice that's the
kind of the upper crust, right, So it's people mainly
with PhDs or who somehow or otherwise journalists or thinkers
who are crucial to this unfolding.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
So who are those people?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
So there's a cast of characters at the begin, and
each chapter kind of profiles a different one. You've got
people like Michael Anton, who was at the real forefront
of this, Patrick Denin.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Michael Anton comes from tell Us. There are these different
clusters and cohorts.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
He's one of the main guys from the group I
call the claire Montors, who are the Claremont Institute affiliates
who people have probably heard of because of John Eastman
and the January sixth sort of coup memos that became
a real centerpiece of that. But they're also connected with
Larry Arne of the Hillsdale Hillsdale College, President of Hillsdale,
sort of involved in patriotic education and sort of really
(02:34):
raw raw for the American Founding. That's the first group
that immerved this. Yeah, second and I sort of do this.
This is the unfolding during the first Trump administration. All
the sort of the table is set, but they don't
have the full Yeah, they're not really in motion yet.
So then there's Patrick denin Is chapter three, and he
wrote this book Why Liberalism Failed. This is the post
(02:54):
liberal cohort, and it includes mainly Catholic thinkers.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So Raba Mari was really important at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Glad and Pappen Adrian Vermule comes in and those are
the main people.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
The goal is to sort of infuse the movement with religion.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, well, in a way it's there's Christian nationalism sort
of pervading all the different parts of this, but they're
the Catholic version of this.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Of all the people, I write about.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
They're the most elite and sort of sophisticated and some
of the most radical. And yes they're trying to infuse
it with religion, but more just traditional morality per se.
But from a really sort of state centric perspective, there's
some people who wanted to destroy the state and who
are attached to the kind of small government vision, and
that's the deconstructing the administrative state. But the post liberals
(03:39):
want to harness the power of the state and use
it towards what they call the common good right. And
so you even have a whole new constitutional theory written
by Adrian Vermule that seeks to replace originalism with a
much sort of thicker, more robust and old fashioned traditionalism,
which would overturn gay marriage, I think if they had
their brothers.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
But it's a constitutional mechanism, and generally the post liberals
are just concerned to kind of re establish a patriarchal,
old fashioned traditionalism. Third group is the nat cons Joram
Hazzoni is the leader here and this is the organizing
sort of big tent group they formed these conferences. They're
committed to nationalism as their group sort of grounding principle and.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Where do they come from?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Oh, they're from all over and this is kind of
an international group. But Israeli is an Israeli American and
again it's kind of big tent, kind of messy. They
bring in people from all the different cohorts and so
it's it's not they wouldn't openly advocate for ethnic nationalism,
but you can kind of track how it's radicalized towards
(04:45):
something more openly Christian, more openly Nativists over the course
of the whole unfolding.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
This is like the Victor Orbon kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
They're all sort of there with Victor Orbon to be fair,
but yes, I think you know, he's a political actor too,
and so are the natcon so he's not super theoretical.
But the post liberals have gone Patrick Deneen has gone
to see Victor Orbon.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
They're all kind of inspired by Orbon.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
The book doesn't have too much about international affairs, even
though this is happening all around the world. It's very
America focused, but Victor Orbon does keep popping up. Yeah,
the sort of first half is all of this coming together,
and then there's January sixth and just to kind of
answer your original question about what it looks like on
the ground. They were sort of behind January sixth in
some important ways, and then they sort of took over
(05:30):
the some mainstream institutions in DC, like the Heritage Foundation.
You have the anti CRT move with Christopher Rufo, all
of that happening in the Red States. You have Project
twenty twenty five. You have jd Vance making it to
be the nominee. He's really their guy. And then finally
the you know, the victory again. I mean, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's not all on them.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Obviously, there's a whole bunch of There's a lot going
on in MAGA. So this is one stream of it,
but it's that jd Vance theoretical stream. This fueling many
of the ideas, and it's not entirely coherent.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Dar, I want you to explain to us what happened
at Heritage first, because Okay, I was at Cepack and
I'm looking at the videos advertising Heritage and I'm thinking, oh,
this is terrible, but it's not as bad as a
lot of the other staff. And then all of a sudden,
yarrow off they go completely nuts. So how does that happen?
(06:25):
And also like talk us through sort of that how
that happens.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, So the Heritage Foundation has been giving advice to presidents,
to Republican presidents for decades.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Right, they always do this big.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Booklet, and they helped staff the new administrations, and that's
been going on since Reagan. In the first Trump administration,
they did help staff. They didn't put up any firewall
against Trump. They weren't fully anti Trump. But at around
that time, during the first administration, they had a new
president named Cake Cole James. She was the first black president,
I believe, of Heritage, and she was pretty moderate. During
(06:59):
the George Floyd protests, she wrote something, you know, saying
we need to take some of this stuff seriously. Kim
Holmes was I think the vice president, you know, right
beneath her at Heritage through that period, and he wrote
against nationalism as a principle, you know, thinking this isn't
the way we want to go.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, they were like normal, They were pretty normal.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
They were sort of and that meant a lot of
people left Heritage who were trumpy. They they were protesting,
they were thinking this isn't trumpy enough. Why have you
gone so mainstream? So normaly so paradoxically in my mind.
After January sixth, those two resigned. They brought on Kevin Roberts,
who was pretty much fully radicalized, very much of the
(07:38):
Claremont ethos and mindset, the kind of knowing what time
it is?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Are you ready for the counter revolution?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
You know, kind of based as they say, So Kevin
Roberts came on at this point the National Conservative Group
was pretty much clearly very trumpy, pretty radical, and Kevin
Roberts went to that nat Con conference in twenty twenty
two and kind of kissed the ring of Net Coughton said,
Heritage is coming over to you.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
We're not here to welcome you to our movement, we
are now joining yours.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That was a very clear symbol a lot of people,
you know, you can read accounts of this saying, thank god,
somebody's finally in there at Heritage, who understands what time
it is, who understands, you know, what Trump is a means,
and is ready to take action. Now we see all
of that kind of imploding because they clearly radicalized, and
right now, if readers are listening, there's a kind of
dramatic infighting happening at Heritage over the direction that they've
(08:29):
gone under. Kevin Roberts sparked by this controversy because he
defended Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Nick Fuentes, who's a
vicious anti Semite and white supremacist.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So Kevin Roberts did that because he is ideologically aligned
with Tucker Carlson, or because he is scared of like
fill out the uh.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
So I think what's going on is that Kevin Roberts
does not want to alienate Tuck Carlson because Tucker Carlson
is still extremely powerful in the movement. I think he's
had to walk a fine line. I think he's very
sympathetic to a lot of the radical things that Tucker
is saying, though he also claims to not be an
anti Semite or a racist, so he's he doesn't want
to lose that the clout that Tucker brings. But he's
(09:17):
also it's hard to know exactly what he thinks in
his heart of hearts. But a lot of these folks
I write about have theorized some of this under the
banner of no enemies to the right, and so this
is they've debated it, and there's arguments on both sides.
Right about whether you try to exclude Nazis from your
party or whether you embrace that because they bring something
to your base. And so that's the level of debate
(09:41):
that they're having, and they have it's imploded over anti Semitism,
and you know, and that these real divides between people
over what's happening in Israel, some of which are sincere
disagreements about American involvement and foreign policy, and some of
which are just disgusting anti Semitism. Least through all of
this is still rampant Islama phobia. They don't seem to
(10:01):
care at all about the misogyny, the racism, and they've
still got Trump as their figurehead. So it's all it's
I'm glad that these fissures are coming to light and
that there are these debates that are happening, like it's better,
I guess that Kevin Roberts be called to account for
sympathizing with Tucker Carlson given what's Tucker Carlson has become.
It's still pretty pathetic that this is the argument they're
(10:23):
having in the Heritage Foundation. So I'm glad donors are
freaking out and backpedaling on some of this. But it's
it's I mean, i'd say too little, too late, too late,
doesn't quite capture the nature of what's been happening.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Do you think that Kevin Roberts is walking a fine
line or not very smart? Oh that's the big trick here.
It's really hard to say. I haven't. I haven't. I've
spoken to a lot some of these people, not a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
You know. I was working off their own writings and
their public history and their tweets. But I think he's
walking a fine line. I don't think he's dumb at all.
I think they know he knows exactly what he's been
up to. I think he's foolish to have done that.
But this guy has a PhD in history. He's not foolish.
He's totally radicalized. I guess that's the temptation I talk
about in the book. You know, people are tempted to
(11:08):
say this is look at these idiots, look at these
fascist dummies, And a lot some of them are right.
But I'd say these are extremists, and they're very smart,
and they've been very successful. I think they're radically different
from most GOP voters, and that's one reason to kind
of take hope I think they're far more radicalized and
extreme than many voters, but they're really smart. I wouldn't
(11:30):
want to debate them, you know, it's hard. They've got
all kinds of many of them on different issues. Right,
they're super they're super well versed in their own weird
version of reality.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Christopher Rufo, I think listeners of this podcast might not
totally understand who he is. I think of him as
like a person who became famous on Twitter. So explain
that story. So Christopher Rufo is an important figure.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Who's been so effective, and so he's one of these
just amazing political actors. I don't put him in the
brilliant category of like thinkers and writers, but he's been
so savvy and so effective. He's very much of the
Claremont mindset, where he really poses as someone who wants
to kind of restore the true the triumphs of the
(12:15):
American founding, and.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
A lot of them appeal.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I think something your listeners might find surprising is they're
constantly appealing not just to like Western civilization, but to
the great books, traditions, right, and things like the good,
the true, and the beautiful. So you have Christopher Rufo
who's a propagandist at bottom, and has pretty much admitted
as much. He's not acting in good faith. He thinks
you have to lie to the public to get what
(12:38):
you want. And he's been really heavily involved in these
criticisms of Higher ED that have been very effective against
the critical race theory. He sort of started up that
whole attack line of attack against sort of all of
Higher ED just these really clumsy lumping everything in together,
but also causing huge problems in Higher ED and getting
people fired. And then he's also on the new board
(13:01):
at New College, so basically he's on the front end
of some of these attacks on Higher ED and beyond
that too.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
He's just been in.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
A really effective sort of spokesperson for so much of
what's happening on the new right.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Talk us through the JD. Vance of it, because JD.
Vant is young, he's a convert, which is a strange thing,
but he's also very tied in with these people.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, so JD.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Vance, he's close with Peter Teel and he's close with
Patrick Denin, and Patrick Denin is this figure who's got
this deep critique of liberalism or he's arguing that liberalism
sort of liberal democracy per se has destroyed the social fabric,
made us all sort of desiring of a strong man,
and so he's got this critique of liberal democracy that's
(13:49):
sort of moored in Catholic social teaching, and so jd
Vance basically converted to Catholicism and converted to trump Ism
at exactly the same time. And so it's this weird
thing where I think he was so radicalized by some
of the ideas around him, he became persuaded that Trump
was a reasonable vehicle for this radical agenda. But he's
got his fingers in all the different parts of the
(14:10):
new Right. So he's happy to go speak at the
Claremont Institute and they praise him with honors. He's happy
to align with the tech bros right, who are kind
of on the sidelines in my book, but obviously very
important right with Elon Musk and Peter Teel and everything
that's happened so far in twenty twenty five. And so
he's often presented as this bridge figure between the different
(14:33):
cohorts because he's just happy to.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Play along with all of them, and they.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
I think, with the exception of perhaps some cohorts in
the tech section, because there's I think some infighting there.
They're quite happy to embrace JD. Vance, and I think
they all see him as the most of them see
him as the torch bearer for the future of their.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Movement, even despite the fact that his belief system seems
to shift so much.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I think they see it, and I think it might
This is hard to untangle because he seems from the
outside to be a total opportunist too, will go wherever
the winds blow right. But I think from their perspective,
they see him and I think he may actually be
more of a true believer convert to this far right
dogmas that that are now pervasive in these in these
communities and groups.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
What do you think the lesson here is for people
who are hoping for a Republican party that becomes sane again.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I think that's a bit of a long term project
if you were to like just like sum them up,
how they got so powerful or how they got us here.
So I think this group has been very effective at
the culture wars, somewhat to their own peril.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
That can only go on so long.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
They're very angry, they're very hyped up, and I think
they're pretty detached from what ordinary Americans experience, even while
claiming to speak for that. And so I think I
write so much about their radical ideas, and they're very
effective sort of yeah, like I said, propaganda for that,
and they're on all the podcasts and they're writing all
this stuff, generating all this buzz all the time, especially online.
(16:08):
But I don't think it's real in a lot of ways.
And I think that they're quite detached from, like I said,
ordinary Americans and just from reality.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And so there's a lot of hatefulness here.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
There's a lot of dehumanizing rhetoric, and I don't think
ordinary Americans, including Trump voters and ordinary Republicans, are really
on board with all of this. I don't think they
maybe really get just how radical it is, even though
Trump is pretty radical and his own weird thing. My
hope of my book is that it shows readers how
extreme some of this stuff is and how different from
(16:38):
their own understanding of conservatism is and of the American principles,
the American founding, and so that you know, in the
near term, they'll turn away from it. They'll start to
see some of these problems and search for something different.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
That's so interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Laura,
You're very welcome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
A tool.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Gwan Day is the former Assistant administrator of USAID and
the former Initiative Director at the WAJO and the author
of the Checklist Manifesto.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Welcome to past politics, Glad to be here. I would
love you to just.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Give us like sort of two sentences on your background,
just because I think it's so relevant to what we're
talking about today.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Well, I'm a surgeon up in Boston. I am a
professor at the Harvard Medical School in public health, and
I got to lead Global health at USAID for the
last three years up until the new administration came in
in January.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Jesus, you also have a MacArthur, You're published a ton
of books, your nose slash. I would love you to
talk about what's happening with USAID right now.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Well, go back to inauguration, and I was leading global
health until eleven fifty nine, twenty five hundred people in
sixty five countries responding to everything from a bowl out
breaks to are cutting off medicines to Ukraine, to dealing
with improving nutrition and addressing child malnutrition and HIV. So
at noon, I'm gone and within about six hours, the
(18:12):
President has signed an order saying that all of this
kind of work is being brought to halt, that all
foreign assistance for humanitarian purposes or otherwise is halted. By
the weekend, the orders are going out. Marco Rubio has
turned the executive order into instructions, explaining that even medicines
(18:32):
on the shelf, food in the warehouses cannot be distributed.
It comes apparent within about two to three weeks that
hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk, that hundreds
of thousands of people will die, and Doge is swinging
elon Musk's chainsaw, and there is no stopping or even
(18:54):
attempting to address that concern. And so what was a
pause became a complete dismantling of the US Agency for
International Development, and that meant also the purging of the staff,
termination of eighty three percent of the projects and awards
that were placed. What was left was funds that were
(19:17):
impounded and some and the kneecapping of projects that are
that they did keep going but were now in a
much diminished state. And you know, the estimates as of
November are six hundred thousand dead thus far, mostly children.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Six hundred thousand dead mostly children. That needed more explanation,
So in what countries and.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
How Yeah, one thing to understand is USAID. A recent
analysis pulled apart that in the last twenty years USAID
saved ninety two million lives, mostly children. And the way
it does it is two different ways. One way is
direct humanity, terran assistants and disasters. You know, this is
(20:03):
the largest non military civilian capacity. And when Russia, for example,
caught off access to pharmaceutical supplies and medicines basically, and
pharmacies were shut down after the invasion when they bombed
the oxygen factories in Ukraine, that the immediate humanitarian response
we oversaw included getting medicines back into the country, opening
(20:27):
up a new avenue for supply chain, getting oxygen factories
going again, and you know, responding to hurricanes, responding to
climate disasters, et cetera. But then a large part of
what USA does is also working on big, long term
projects to advance. For example, one of the earliest things
that did when John F. Kennedy established it was work
(20:49):
towards the eradication of smallpox, which was achieved in nineteen
seventy nine. Now, the eradication of polio, the control of
HIV and TB. There are twenty six million people who
lives have been saved from HIV. There's similar numbers of
children whose lives have been saved by developing new approaches
that save lives of people with malnutrition. Those are hard
(21:11):
to see. So these deaths, you know where, Well, there's
almost one hundred countries where USA IT is active. Is
heavily in low income countries. It was once in places
like Latin America and India and Korea where that kind
of work advanced not just survival but getting them to
become middle and then higher income countries that go from
(21:33):
aid partners to trade partners. Africa is a big part
of where that IT now is. That's where some of
the poorest and still lowest income places in the world art.
It's not the only one, and so a fair amount
of the work that I did over the last three
years was in that country.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
So I'd love you to just talk us through.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Did anyone come in and fill the gap or their
philanthropies or there are other countries.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Did China do some stuff for now?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
So that's part of what I went to find out.
So I traveled starting in the spring to Kenya. In particular,
Kenya's growing middle income economy is following the pathway that
India went to go from advancing into becoming a wealthier
country and partner. But it's surrounded by very poor places,
(22:26):
some of them unstable. Somalia, South Sudan. What I saw
there was number one, we had cut off food aid,
we had cut off the medicines, we had cut off
importantly programs that helped the country bring expertise, that got
their vaccination rates up and got the HIV under control,
things like that, And then other countries, if anything, followed
(22:47):
the US lead and change as well. Why Well, big
part of the reason is when we also switched our
stance on Russia and were no longer consistently on the
Ukraine side, Europe had to invest in their defense Jesus,
they pulled money out and then the terriffs hit, and
(23:10):
that has also affected the currencies of other countries.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Japan is not just because tariffs.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
They've had thirty percent lower currency in the last five years,
and so even when they hold their spending stable in
a place like Africa, they've lost ground. And they also
have not stepped up the force. So China has China
has done some increased spending, but you know when we
pulled out a who China helped come in to say
(23:36):
that the World Health Organization is a priority for them,
and that has led to some funding, but nowhere near
where our leadership was. It's not just the funding. The
US has been a singular force for leadership around cooperation
to take on big, ambitious things that have doubled the
human life span. That is the special place that America
(23:57):
has led and that that's the biggest thing that has
been harmed Jesus.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So talk us through other countries where this is happening,
where this sort of shortfall is from USAID and other
regions more generally, if you want to just give us
sort of like the topography of it.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Yeah, so if we think about I'll give it an example,
which is global health security, so detecting where there are
outbreaks happening across the world. There's a network of about
fifty countries that USAID has made sure that we have
coverage around the world. So for example, let's talk about
Central Asia, Russia and China. We do not have any
(24:35):
line of sight if they have bird flu coming, We
don't know it. We didn't know it. With COVID we
find out when across the border.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
But this will be worse.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
This could be worse.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
So Central Asia.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
We while I was in office, we established relationships with Tajikistan, Kazakhstan,
and Mongolia, working with their virologists, getting access to their laboratories,
investing in strengthening their capacity, and they became part of
a network that monitors for bird flu so that we
see it when it is anywhere in that region before
(25:05):
anybody else, before waiting for it to get to us.
Similar you know, we have countries, you know, Jamaica, Brazil
where we've set up this kind of capability that has
been shut down. We don't have that bird flu monitoring
and capacity in that same structure at all, and we
don't have the fast response capabilities. The team is a
fraction of the one that we had present and it's
(25:28):
in it's no longer supported by these office people in
offices around the world that are readily at hand. And
so you know, you have real harm and loss of
capacity for the United States and for our interests, not
to mention humanities.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Greater risk of a really bad pandemic without any trap.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
That's right, Whether it's ebola erupting in a region, or
it's the next bird flu, or you know, there's a
case of bird flu now and that's cropped up in
Washington State and new human case of a new variant
a bird flu, and we don't have that same level
of surveillanist to know where might that have come from originally,
Now that there's a good chances that it erupted in
(26:09):
the United States, but one of the things is that
our public health was weak and abroad. We have now
been dismantling it here at home too, with the ways
we have kneecapped CDC, the National Institutes of Health and others.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, I'm surprised at how little like fill in there's
been from philanthropic interests or from other countries. I mean,
has there been anything anywhere for like this sort of
preparedness staff the Global Health or now?
Speaker 4 (26:37):
So, Yes, the World Health Organization plays an important role
in having that kind of you know, they can have
partnerships in every country to have emergency response and so on.
They have had because of the US cuts, have had
to lose twenty five percent of their staffing. Overall, countries
are stepping up and it would have been worse than that,
(26:57):
China most most notably. But what I would say is
this film that I talked about is called Ravenus Choice.
You know, it's hard to see what exactly is happening
on the ground, and we're the reason we made this
film was a group of filmmakers who followed me as
I went into Kenya and you can see the various partners.
All of the cuts have led to a situation where
(27:18):
people refugees coming can only get one meal a day,
not enough protein to really survive. And then the story
is of a mother who is with her child, sick
and malnourished, trying to navigate the system to find their
care and get help. There have been some efforts by
(27:38):
philanthropies that have tried to fill in the gaps, but
it's so much money, right, It's not just that it's
so much money, it's that they could put money in.
But you know, what we were doing was supporting training,
having people that you see in the film who have
lost their jobs as midwives or as community health workers,
(27:58):
and then the expertise that brings capacity. You know, we
taught them how to lower their death rate for severely
marish children from twenty percent to under one percent. And
it's one of the untold miracles of the last twenty
years is that there are over a million children whose
lives are saved now because of the discoveries that the
(28:20):
US made and other partners in research on how to
do that and then designing these therapeutic foods that get there.
And philanthropy is playing a big role and has played
a big role in trying to keep that chain moving.
But they don't have the power, not to mention the size,
but the power of the US government to you know,
bring countries and have them coordinated to accomplish all the
(28:44):
nuts and bolts that make it happen.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So incredibly depressing. I've known about this story and my
husband is always talking about it.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Just say the number again.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah, we have lost already six hundred thousand lives as
of November under conservative estimates of what has happened. And
you know, at the same time, the administration has professed
in total ignorance of it. They say there's not a
single life, Mark Rubio. It's recently a few weeks ago
saying there's not a single life that's been lost, and
it's just not true. And they know it's not true,
(29:15):
but they have been indifferent to that harm.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
If Democrats win the midterms, I guess they could do
hearings which could maybe bully the administration into reopening some
of it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Well, I say there's two things. Number one is that
if the Congress can pass a budget, which is an
open question, even the Republicans restore funding from the NIH
for public health for humanitarian assistants abroad, they themselves support
this happening, and you could start rebuilding some of that capacity.
(29:46):
But the capacity was built over six decades. It involved
networks of millions of people that we enabled to make
stuff happen in a coordinated way. That coordination and that
trust will take years to build back.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Because some of this is this Pocket recision for seven
billion dollars of AID, right, that's right, that russ fought
passed after Republicans and Democrats in Congress approved the aid,
and then they clawed it back with the Pocket recision.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Right, the Pocket recision removed funds. For example, one of
their core areas. Of the funds that removed was maternal
and child health survival. HIV funds were preserved. HIV has
been cut about fifty to sixty percent, and that's one
of the best off areas.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
And were they preserved because of petfar and the history
of Bush's involvement.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
In it, or is there something else?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
There was advocacy in lobbying that helped keep it going.
You had people like Susan Collins stepping in and Murkowski
stepping in to say, we'll put our bodies on the
tracks for the HIV work.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
But you know, people Republicans.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Were not doing that around maternal and child health survival.
They're not doing it around sustaining vaccination around the world,
the single biggest contributor to reduction in child mortality. Forty
percent of the gains of the last half century have
come from vaccines. And you know they're being cowed by
what Trump is doing on vaccines to not defend vaccines
(31:15):
abroad or at home.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
So dark, I.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Want to say, it doesn't have to be that dark, right,
So number one is we can't let what's happening go invisible,
right the denials. We have to bear witness to the
harm being done. And then what can change in midterms
is holding people accountable for the live lost. This is
what Richard Reeves, the Storian called public man made death
and that is something that we can speak out about
(31:42):
and then hold people accountable for and change.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Oh man, all right, we'll give a call to action
for people.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
What could they do?
Speaker 4 (31:51):
I'd say there's two things. On a personal level, you know,
it's organizations like UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, Helen Keller,
Internet National, These are key food aid and multi malnutrition
organizations and child survival organizations. There's am REF Health Africa.
Also there are local organizations like that. But I'd say
number two is please see the film Rovenus Choice, which
(32:15):
is up for an Oscar nomination, and more attention. We
can get to telling the story and saying this cannot
go away. You know, you can see it on YouTube,
you can see it on the New Yorker website. It's
been done with the New Yorker where I'm a on
staff there as well. And I think we want to
have the word out and make it clear that this
(32:35):
is not forgotten after nine months.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate this, Mollie,
thank you for having me on.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
It's You're awesome to do it.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. We're on vacation, but that doesn't mean
we don't have a great show for you today. Former
Assistant Administrator for USAID at tool Gwande stops by to
talk about the implications of the dismantling of USAID. But
(00:22):
first we have Laura k Field to talk about her
new book, Furious Minds The Making of the Maga New Right.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Laura, Thank you so much for
having me Millie.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
The book is Furious Minds The Making of the Maga
New Right. Now this is first of all, I have many, many,
many questions I want you to first talk about. So
this is like the intellectual movement shaping Donald Trump's agenda.
Now again this is Donald Trump. So it is a
(00:55):
little bit oxymoronic the idea that there's an intellectual movement here,
but actually there were is and like well, Trump one
point zero, the intellectual movement was basically like Bronze or
Trump two point zero, they did actually manage to put
together sort of the worst of conservative thinking and the
worst of authoritarianism and the worst of trump Ism, so sort.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Of give us the top line of what that looks like. Yes,
thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
So the book covers twenty sixteen through twenty twenty four,
and it tries to articulate the coalescence of this movement.
And it started in twenty sixteen, but as you said,
it was kind of nascent for the first Toll administration.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
There are key moments.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I try to track those where they start to come
together in conferences and there are books published.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Is SEEPAC involved in some of these key moments, I
mean not really.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I'm really trying to take the one slice that's the
kind of the upper crust, right, So it's people mainly
with PhDs or who somehow or otherwise journalists or thinkers
who are crucial to this unfolding.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
So who are those people?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
So there's a cast of characters at the begin, and
each chapter kind of profiles a different one. You've got
people like Michael Anton, who was at the real forefront
of this, Patrick Denin.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Michael Anton comes from tell Us. There are these different
clusters and cohorts.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
He's one of the main guys from the group I
call the claire Montors, who are the Claremont Institute affiliates
who people have probably heard of because of John Eastman
and the January sixth sort of coup memos that became
a real centerpiece of that. But they're also connected with
Larry Arne of the Hillsdale Hillsdale College, President of Hillsdale,
sort of involved in patriotic education and sort of really
(02:34):
raw raw for the American Founding. That's the first group
that immerved this. Yeah, second and I sort of do this.
This is the unfolding during the first Trump administration. All
the sort of the table is set, but they don't
have the full Yeah, they're not really in motion yet.
So then there's Patrick denin Is chapter three, and he
wrote this book Why Liberalism Failed. This is the post
(02:54):
liberal cohort, and it includes mainly Catholic thinkers.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So Raba Mari was really important at the beginning.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Glad and Pappen Adrian Vermule comes in and those are
the main people.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
The goal is to sort of infuse the movement with religion.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, well, in a way it's there's Christian nationalism sort
of pervading all the different parts of this, but they're
the Catholic version of this.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Of all the people, I write about.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
They're the most elite and sort of sophisticated and some
of the most radical. And yes they're trying to infuse
it with religion, but more just traditional morality per se.
But from a really sort of state centric perspective, there's
some people who wanted to destroy the state and who
are attached to the kind of small government vision, and
that's the deconstructing the administrative state. But the post liberals
(03:39):
want to harness the power of the state and use
it towards what they call the common good right. And
so you even have a whole new constitutional theory written
by Adrian Vermule that seeks to replace originalism with a
much sort of thicker, more robust and old fashioned traditionalism,
which would overturn gay marriage, I think if they had
their brothers.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
That kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
But it's a constitutional mechanism, and generally the post liberals
are just concerned to kind of re establish a patriarchal,
old fashioned traditionalism. Third group is the nat cons Joram
Hazzoni is the leader here and this is the organizing
sort of big tent group they formed these conferences. They're
committed to nationalism as their group sort of grounding principle and.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Where do they come from?
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Oh, they're from all over and this is kind of
an international group. But Israeli is an Israeli American and
again it's kind of big tent, kind of messy. They
bring in people from all the different cohorts and so
it's it's not they wouldn't openly advocate for ethnic nationalism,
but you can kind of track how it's radicalized towards
(04:45):
something more openly Christian, more openly Nativists over the course
of the whole unfolding.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
This is like the Victor Orbon kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
They're all sort of there with Victor Orbon to be fair,
but yes, I think you know, he's a political actor too,
and so are the natcon so he's not super theoretical.
But the post liberals have gone Patrick Deneen has gone
to see Victor Orbon.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
They're all kind of inspired by Orbon.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
The book doesn't have too much about international affairs, even
though this is happening all around the world. It's very
America focused, but Victor Orbon does keep popping up. Yeah,
the sort of first half is all of this coming together,
and then there's January sixth and just to kind of
answer your original question about what it looks like on
the ground. They were sort of behind January sixth in
some important ways, and then they sort of took over
(05:30):
the some mainstream institutions in DC, like the Heritage Foundation.
You have the anti CRT move with Christopher Rufo, all
of that happening in the Red States. You have Project
twenty twenty five. You have jd Vance making it to
be the nominee. He's really their guy. And then finally
the you know, the victory again. I mean, I wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
That's not all on them.
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Obviously, there's a whole bunch of There's a lot going
on in MAGA. So this is one stream of it,
but it's that jd Vance theoretical stream. This fueling many
of the ideas, and it's not entirely coherent.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Dar, I want you to explain to us what happened
at Heritage first, because Okay, I was at Cepack and
I'm looking at the videos advertising Heritage and I'm thinking, oh,
this is terrible, but it's not as bad as a
lot of the other staff. And then all of a sudden,
yarrow off they go completely nuts. So how does that happen?
(06:25):
And also like talk us through sort of that how
that happens.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Yeah, So the Heritage Foundation has been giving advice to presidents,
to Republican presidents for decades.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Right, they always do this big.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Booklet, and they helped staff the new administrations, and that's
been going on since Reagan. In the first Trump administration,
they did help staff. They didn't put up any firewall
against Trump. They weren't fully anti Trump. But at around
that time, during the first administration, they had a new
president named Cake Cole James. She was the first black president,
I believe, of Heritage, and she was pretty moderate. During
(06:59):
the George Floyd protests, she wrote something, you know, saying
we need to take some of this stuff seriously. Kim
Holmes was I think the vice president, you know, right
beneath her at Heritage through that period, and he wrote
against nationalism as a principle, you know, thinking this isn't
the way we want to go.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, they were like normal, They were pretty normal.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
They were sort of and that meant a lot of
people left Heritage who were trumpy. They they were protesting,
they were thinking this isn't trumpy enough. Why have you
gone so mainstream? So normaly so paradoxically in my mind.
After January sixth, those two resigned. They brought on Kevin Roberts,
who was pretty much fully radicalized, very much of the
(07:38):
Claremont ethos and mindset, the kind of knowing what time
it is?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Are you ready for the counter revolution?
Speaker 3 (07:45):
You know, kind of based as they say, So Kevin
Roberts came on at this point the National Conservative Group
was pretty much clearly very trumpy, pretty radical, and Kevin
Roberts went to that nat Con conference in twenty twenty
two and kind of kissed the ring of Net Coughton said,
Heritage is coming over to you.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
We're not here to welcome you to our movement, we
are now joining yours.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That was a very clear symbol a lot of people,
you know, you can read accounts of this saying, thank god,
somebody's finally in there at Heritage, who understands what time
it is, who understands, you know, what Trump is a means,
and is ready to take action. Now we see all
of that kind of imploding because they clearly radicalized, and
right now, if readers are listening, there's a kind of
dramatic infighting happening at Heritage over the direction that they've
(08:29):
gone under. Kevin Roberts sparked by this controversy because he
defended Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Nick Fuentes, who's a
vicious anti Semite and white supremacist.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So Kevin Roberts did that because he is ideologically aligned
with Tucker Carlson, or because he is scared of like
fill out the uh.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
So I think what's going on is that Kevin Roberts
does not want to alienate Tuck Carlson because Tucker Carlson
is still extremely powerful in the movement. I think he's
had to walk a fine line. I think he's very
sympathetic to a lot of the radical things that Tucker
is saying, though he also claims to not be an
anti Semite or a racist, so he's he doesn't want
to lose that the clout that Tucker brings. But he's
(09:17):
also it's hard to know exactly what he thinks in
his heart of hearts. But a lot of these folks
I write about have theorized some of this under the
banner of no enemies to the right, and so this
is they've debated it, and there's arguments on both sides.
Right about whether you try to exclude Nazis from your
party or whether you embrace that because they bring something
to your base. And so that's the level of debate
(09:41):
that they're having, and they have it's imploded over anti Semitism,
and you know, and that these real divides between people
over what's happening in Israel, some of which are sincere
disagreements about American involvement and foreign policy, and some of
which are just disgusting anti Semitism. Least through all of
this is still rampant Islama phobia. They don't seem to
(10:01):
care at all about the misogyny, the racism, and they've
still got Trump as their figurehead. So it's all it's
I'm glad that these fissures are coming to light and
that there are these debates that are happening, like it's better,
I guess that Kevin Roberts be called to account for
sympathizing with Tucker Carlson given what's Tucker Carlson has become.
It's still pretty pathetic that this is the argument they're
(10:23):
having in the Heritage Foundation. So I'm glad donors are
freaking out and backpedaling on some of this. But it's
it's I mean, i'd say too little, too late, too late,
doesn't quite capture the nature of what's been happening.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Do you think that Kevin Roberts is walking a fine
line or not very smart? Oh that's the big trick here.
It's really hard to say. I haven't. I haven't. I've
spoken to a lot some of these people, not a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
You know. I was working off their own writings and
their public history and their tweets. But I think he's
walking a fine line. I don't think he's dumb at all.
I think they know he knows exactly what he's been
up to. I think he's foolish to have done that.
But this guy has a PhD in history. He's not foolish.
He's totally radicalized. I guess that's the temptation I talk
about in the book. You know, people are tempted to
(11:08):
say this is look at these idiots, look at these
fascist dummies, And a lot some of them are right.
But I'd say these are extremists, and they're very smart,
and they've been very successful. I think they're radically different
from most GOP voters, and that's one reason to kind
of take hope I think they're far more radicalized and
extreme than many voters, but they're really smart. I wouldn't
(11:30):
want to debate them, you know, it's hard. They've got
all kinds of many of them on different issues. Right,
they're super they're super well versed in their own weird
version of reality.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Christopher Rufo, I think listeners of this podcast might not
totally understand who he is. I think of him as
like a person who became famous on Twitter. So explain
that story. So Christopher Rufo is an important figure.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Who's been so effective, and so he's one of these
just amazing political actors. I don't put him in the
brilliant category of like thinkers and writers, but he's been
so savvy and so effective. He's very much of the
Claremont mindset, where he really poses as someone who wants
to kind of restore the true the triumphs of the
(12:15):
American founding, and.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
A lot of them appeal.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
I think something your listeners might find surprising is they're
constantly appealing not just to like Western civilization, but to
the great books, traditions, right, and things like the good,
the true, and the beautiful. So you have Christopher Rufo
who's a propagandist at bottom, and has pretty much admitted
as much. He's not acting in good faith. He thinks
you have to lie to the public to get what
(12:38):
you want. And he's been really heavily involved in these
criticisms of Higher ED that have been very effective against
the critical race theory. He sort of started up that
whole attack line of attack against sort of all of
Higher ED just these really clumsy lumping everything in together,
but also causing huge problems in Higher ED and getting
people fired. And then he's also on the new board
(13:01):
at New College, so basically he's on the front end
of some of these attacks on Higher ED and beyond
that too.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
He's just been in.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
A really effective sort of spokesperson for so much of
what's happening on the new right.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Talk us through the JD. Vance of it, because JD.
Vant is young, he's a convert, which is a strange thing,
but he's also very tied in with these people.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, so JD.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Vance, he's close with Peter Teel and he's close with
Patrick Denin, and Patrick Denin is this figure who's got
this deep critique of liberalism or he's arguing that liberalism
sort of liberal democracy per se has destroyed the social fabric,
made us all sort of desiring of a strong man,
and so he's got this critique of liberal democracy that's
(13:49):
sort of moored in Catholic social teaching, and so jd
Vance basically converted to Catholicism and converted to trump Ism
at exactly the same time. And so it's this weird
thing where I think he was so radicalized by some
of the ideas around him, he became persuaded that Trump
was a reasonable vehicle for this radical agenda. But he's
got his fingers in all the different parts of the
(14:10):
new Right. So he's happy to go speak at the
Claremont Institute and they praise him with honors. He's happy
to align with the tech bros right, who are kind
of on the sidelines in my book, but obviously very
important right with Elon Musk and Peter Teel and everything
that's happened so far in twenty twenty five. And so
he's often presented as this bridge figure between the different
(14:33):
cohorts because he's just happy to.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Play along with all of them, and they.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
I think, with the exception of perhaps some cohorts in
the tech section, because there's I think some infighting there.
They're quite happy to embrace JD. Vance, and I think
they all see him as the most of them see
him as the torch bearer for the future of their.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Movement, even despite the fact that his belief system seems
to shift so much.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I think they see it, and I think it might
This is hard to untangle because he seems from the
outside to be a total opportunist too, will go wherever
the winds blow right. But I think from their perspective,
they see him and I think he may actually be
more of a true believer convert to this far right
dogmas that that are now pervasive in these in these
communities and groups.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
What do you think the lesson here is for people
who are hoping for a Republican party that becomes sane again.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I think that's a bit of a long term project
if you were to like just like sum them up,
how they got so powerful or how they got us here.
So I think this group has been very effective at
the culture wars, somewhat to their own peril.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
That can only go on so long.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
They're very angry, they're very hyped up, and I think
they're pretty detached from what ordinary Americans experience, even while
claiming to speak for that. And so I think I
write so much about their radical ideas, and they're very
effective sort of yeah, like I said, propaganda for that,
and they're on all the podcasts and they're writing all
this stuff, generating all this buzz all the time, especially online.
(16:08):
But I don't think it's real in a lot of ways.
And I think that they're quite detached from, like I said,
ordinary Americans and just from reality.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And so there's a lot of hatefulness here.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
There's a lot of dehumanizing rhetoric, and I don't think
ordinary Americans, including Trump voters and ordinary Republicans, are really
on board with all of this. I don't think they
maybe really get just how radical it is, even though
Trump is pretty radical and his own weird thing. My
hope of my book is that it shows readers how
extreme some of this stuff is and how different from
(16:38):
their own understanding of conservatism is and of the American principles,
the American founding, and so that you know, in the
near term, they'll turn away from it. They'll start to
see some of these problems and search for something different.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
That's so interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Laura,
You're very welcome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
A tool.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Gwan Day is the former Assistant administrator of USAID and
the former Initiative Director at the WAJO and the author
of the Checklist Manifesto.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Welcome to past politics, Glad to be here. I would
love you to just.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Give us like sort of two sentences on your background,
just because I think it's so relevant to what we're
talking about today.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Well, I'm a surgeon up in Boston. I am a
professor at the Harvard Medical School in public health, and
I got to lead Global health at USAID for the
last three years up until the new administration came in
in January.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Jesus, you also have a MacArthur, You're published a ton
of books, your nose slash. I would love you to
talk about what's happening with USAID right now.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Well, go back to inauguration, and I was leading global
health until eleven fifty nine, twenty five hundred people in
sixty five countries responding to everything from a bowl out
breaks to are cutting off medicines to Ukraine, to dealing
with improving nutrition and addressing child malnutrition and HIV. So
at noon, I'm gone and within about six hours, the
(18:12):
President has signed an order saying that all of this
kind of work is being brought to halt, that all
foreign assistance for humanitarian purposes or otherwise is halted. By
the weekend, the orders are going out. Marco Rubio has
turned the executive order into instructions, explaining that even medicines
(18:32):
on the shelf, food in the warehouses cannot be distributed.
It comes apparent within about two to three weeks that
hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk, that hundreds
of thousands of people will die, and Doge is swinging
elon Musk's chainsaw, and there is no stopping or even
(18:54):
attempting to address that concern. And so what was a
pause became a complete dismantling of the US Agency for
International Development, and that meant also the purging of the staff,
termination of eighty three percent of the projects and awards
that were placed. What was left was funds that were
(19:17):
impounded and some and the kneecapping of projects that are
that they did keep going but were now in a
much diminished state. And you know, the estimates as of
November are six hundred thousand dead thus far, mostly children.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Six hundred thousand dead mostly children. That needed more explanation,
So in what countries and.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
How Yeah, one thing to understand is USAID. A recent
analysis pulled apart that in the last twenty years USAID
saved ninety two million lives, mostly children. And the way
it does it is two different ways. One way is
direct humanity, terran assistants and disasters. You know, this is
(20:03):
the largest non military civilian capacity. And when Russia, for example,
caught off access to pharmaceutical supplies and medicines basically, and
pharmacies were shut down after the invasion when they bombed
the oxygen factories in Ukraine, that the immediate humanitarian response
we oversaw included getting medicines back into the country, opening
(20:27):
up a new avenue for supply chain, getting oxygen factories
going again, and you know, responding to hurricanes, responding to
climate disasters, et cetera. But then a large part of
what USA does is also working on big, long term
projects to advance. For example, one of the earliest things
that did when John F. Kennedy established it was work
(20:49):
towards the eradication of smallpox, which was achieved in nineteen
seventy nine. Now, the eradication of polio, the control of
HIV and TB. There are twenty six million people who
lives have been saved from HIV. There's similar numbers of
children whose lives have been saved by developing new approaches
that save lives of people with malnutrition. Those are hard
(21:11):
to see. So these deaths, you know where, Well, there's
almost one hundred countries where USA IT is active. Is
heavily in low income countries. It was once in places
like Latin America and India and Korea where that kind
of work advanced not just survival but getting them to
become middle and then higher income countries that go from
(21:33):
aid partners to trade partners. Africa is a big part
of where that IT now is. That's where some of
the poorest and still lowest income places in the world art.
It's not the only one, and so a fair amount
of the work that I did over the last three
years was in that country.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
So I'd love you to just talk us through.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Did anyone come in and fill the gap or their
philanthropies or there are other countries.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Did China do some stuff for now?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
So that's part of what I went to find out.
So I traveled starting in the spring to Kenya. In particular,
Kenya's growing middle income economy is following the pathway that
India went to go from advancing into becoming a wealthier
country and partner. But it's surrounded by very poor places,
(22:26):
some of them unstable. Somalia, South Sudan. What I saw
there was number one, we had cut off food aid,
we had cut off the medicines, we had cut off
importantly programs that helped the country bring expertise, that got
their vaccination rates up and got the HIV under control,
things like that, And then other countries, if anything, followed
(22:47):
the US lead and change as well. Why Well, big
part of the reason is when we also switched our
stance on Russia and were no longer consistently on the
Ukraine side, Europe had to invest in their defense Jesus,
they pulled money out and then the terriffs hit, and
(23:10):
that has also affected the currencies of other countries.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Japan is not just because tariffs.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
They've had thirty percent lower currency in the last five years,
and so even when they hold their spending stable in
a place like Africa, they've lost ground. And they also
have not stepped up the force. So China has China
has done some increased spending, but you know when we
pulled out a who China helped come in to say
(23:36):
that the World Health Organization is a priority for them,
and that has led to some funding, but nowhere near
where our leadership was. It's not just the funding. The
US has been a singular force for leadership around cooperation
to take on big, ambitious things that have doubled the
human life span. That is the special place that America
(23:57):
has led and that that's the biggest thing that has
been harmed Jesus.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So talk us through other countries where this is happening,
where this sort of shortfall is from USAID and other
regions more generally, if you want to just give us
sort of like the topography of it.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Yeah, so if we think about I'll give it an example,
which is global health security, so detecting where there are
outbreaks happening across the world. There's a network of about
fifty countries that USAID has made sure that we have
coverage around the world. So for example, let's talk about
Central Asia, Russia and China. We do not have any
(24:35):
line of sight if they have bird flu coming, We
don't know it. We didn't know it. With COVID we
find out when across the border.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
But this will be worse.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
This could be worse.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
So Central Asia.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
We while I was in office, we established relationships with Tajikistan, Kazakhstan,
and Mongolia, working with their virologists, getting access to their laboratories,
investing in strengthening their capacity, and they became part of
a network that monitors for bird flu so that we
see it when it is anywhere in that region before
(25:05):
anybody else, before waiting for it to get to us.
Similar you know, we have countries, you know, Jamaica, Brazil
where we've set up this kind of capability that has
been shut down. We don't have that bird flu monitoring
and capacity in that same structure at all, and we
don't have the fast response capabilities. The team is a
fraction of the one that we had present and it's
(25:28):
in it's no longer supported by these office people in
offices around the world that are readily at hand. And
so you know, you have real harm and loss of
capacity for the United States and for our interests, not
to mention humanities.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Greater risk of a really bad pandemic without any trap.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
That's right, Whether it's ebola erupting in a region, or
it's the next bird flu, or you know, there's a
case of bird flu now and that's cropped up in
Washington State and new human case of a new variant
a bird flu, and we don't have that same level
of surveillanist to know where might that have come from originally,
Now that there's a good chances that it erupted in
(26:09):
the United States, but one of the things is that
our public health was weak and abroad. We have now
been dismantling it here at home too, with the ways
we have kneecapped CDC, the National Institutes of Health and others.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, I'm surprised at how little like fill in there's
been from philanthropic interests or from other countries. I mean,
has there been anything anywhere for like this sort of
preparedness staff the Global Health or now?
Speaker 4 (26:37):
So, Yes, the World Health Organization plays an important role
in having that kind of you know, they can have
partnerships in every country to have emergency response and so on.
They have had because of the US cuts, have had
to lose twenty five percent of their staffing. Overall, countries
are stepping up and it would have been worse than that,
(26:57):
China most most notably. But what I would say is
this film that I talked about is called Ravenus Choice.
You know, it's hard to see what exactly is happening
on the ground, and we're the reason we made this
film was a group of filmmakers who followed me as
I went into Kenya and you can see the various partners.
All of the cuts have led to a situation where
(27:18):
people refugees coming can only get one meal a day,
not enough protein to really survive. And then the story
is of a mother who is with her child, sick
and malnourished, trying to navigate the system to find their
care and get help. There have been some efforts by
(27:38):
philanthropies that have tried to fill in the gaps, but
it's so much money, right, It's not just that it's
so much money, it's that they could put money in.
But you know, what we were doing was supporting training,
having people that you see in the film who have
lost their jobs as midwives or as community health workers,
(27:58):
and then the expertise that brings capacity. You know, we
taught them how to lower their death rate for severely
marish children from twenty percent to under one percent. And
it's one of the untold miracles of the last twenty
years is that there are over a million children whose
lives are saved now because of the discoveries that the
(28:20):
US made and other partners in research on how to
do that and then designing these therapeutic foods that get there.
And philanthropy is playing a big role and has played
a big role in trying to keep that chain moving.
But they don't have the power, not to mention the size,
but the power of the US government to you know,
bring countries and have them coordinated to accomplish all the
(28:44):
nuts and bolts that make it happen.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So incredibly depressing. I've known about this story and my
husband is always talking about it.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Just say the number again.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
Yeah, we have lost already six hundred thousand lives as
of November under conservative estimates of what has happened. And
you know, at the same time, the administration has professed
in total ignorance of it. They say there's not a
single life, Mark Rubio. It's recently a few weeks ago
saying there's not a single life that's been lost, and
it's just not true. And they know it's not true,
(29:15):
but they have been indifferent to that harm.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
If Democrats win the midterms, I guess they could do
hearings which could maybe bully the administration into reopening some
of it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:26):
Well, I say there's two things. Number one is that
if the Congress can pass a budget, which is an
open question, even the Republicans restore funding from the NIH
for public health for humanitarian assistants abroad, they themselves support
this happening, and you could start rebuilding some of that capacity.
(29:46):
But the capacity was built over six decades. It involved
networks of millions of people that we enabled to make
stuff happen in a coordinated way. That coordination and that
trust will take years to build back.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Because some of this is this Pocket recision for seven
billion dollars of AID, right, that's right, that russ fought
passed after Republicans and Democrats in Congress approved the aid,
and then they clawed it back with the Pocket recision.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Right, the Pocket recision removed funds. For example, one of
their core areas. Of the funds that removed was maternal
and child health survival. HIV funds were preserved. HIV has
been cut about fifty to sixty percent, and that's one
of the best off areas.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
And were they preserved because of petfar and the history
of Bush's involvement.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
In it, or is there something else?
Speaker 4 (30:40):
There was advocacy in lobbying that helped keep it going.
You had people like Susan Collins stepping in and Murkowski
stepping in to say, we'll put our bodies on the
tracks for the HIV work.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
But you know, people Republicans.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
Were not doing that around maternal and child health survival.
They're not doing it around sustaining vaccination around the world,
the single biggest contributor to reduction in child mortality. Forty
percent of the gains of the last half century have
come from vaccines. And you know they're being cowed by
what Trump is doing on vaccines to not defend vaccines
(31:15):
abroad or at home.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
So dark, I.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Want to say, it doesn't have to be that dark, right,
So number one is we can't let what's happening go invisible,
right the denials. We have to bear witness to the
harm being done. And then what can change in midterms
is holding people accountable for the live lost. This is
what Richard Reeves, the Storian called public man made death
and that is something that we can speak out about
(31:42):
and then hold people accountable for and change.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Oh man, all right, we'll give a call to action
for people.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
What could they do?
Speaker 4 (31:51):
I'd say there's two things. On a personal level, you know,
it's organizations like UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee, Helen Keller,
Internet National, These are key food aid and multi malnutrition
organizations and child survival organizations. There's am REF Health Africa.
Also there are local organizations like that. But I'd say
number two is please see the film Rovenus Choice, which
(32:15):
is up for an Oscar nomination, and more attention. We
can get to telling the story and saying this cannot
go away. You know, you can see it on YouTube,
you can see it on the New Yorker website. It's
been done with the New Yorker where I'm a on
staff there as well. And I think we want to
have the word out and make it clear that this
(32:35):
is not forgotten after nine months.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate this, Mollie,
thank you for having me on.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
It's You're awesome to do it.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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