For decades, USAID’s family planning program was the main source for contraception and HIV treatment in some countries. Experts say without it, women and LGBTQ+ people will die.

Jessica Kutz
February 7, 2025

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.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/02/usaid-women-lgbtq-reproductive-health-funding-pause/