Narratives of American “greatness” abound surrounding July 4, but by whom and for whom are they created? As we observe the U.S.’s 250th birthday, I am reminded of the words of James Baldwin, who wrote that, in the true pursuit of justice, one does not lend an ear to those who are invested in maintaining power, but instead, “one goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law’s…

Source

Elon Musk and his apologists are getting upset by people pointing out that his illegal destruction of USAID had resulted in the avoidable deaths of countless people in exchange for no benefits whatsoever. Always both a maximalist and a liar, he’s claiming that no deaths at all have resulted from his termination of extremely cost-effective aid programs. This is obviously false, as systematic evaluation reveals:

Elon Musk really doesn’t want you to say he’s responsible for the deaths of millions.

Earlier this week, Musk threatened to sue Rep. Ro Khanna for charging him with destroying the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and putting millions of lives at risk around the world:

“There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk,” Khanna said. “You know, they’re celebrating that he created 4,400 millionaires [with his SpaceX IPO], but they don’t talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling USAID.”

In response, Musk called Khanna a liar, threatened to sue, and said he should be in prison.

But Khanna is making a perfectly reasonable claim here. In that quote, he is (carefully) citing a peer-reviewed study that estimated the effects of dismantling USAID. It found that Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will result in 14 million deaths overall by 2030, of which 4.5 million will be children under the age of 5.

This is probably a high-end estimate, but even lower end projections with different methodologies sit between 670,000 and 1.6 million annual deaths compared to a fiscal year 2023 baseline.

In other words, the toll from USAID cuts seems to be at best around two-thirds of a million people annually1; that’s about as many people as were killed during the Civil War. At worst, Musk is tied to the deaths of 14 million.

If DOGE had managed to cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget, Musk and his defenders would certainly have taken credit. It’s bizarre then to disclaim responsibility for the tragic consequences of the cuts they did make.

“But where are the names? Name the names!” Well, here you go [gift link]:

“There is not even a single dead child!” Musk protested on social media. I noted that I had met many families of children who had died — and that’s when he concluded that I was lying.

Musk’s assertion that not a single child died is absurd, yet he doubled down: “They cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

On X, I began to give Musk some names. Let me elaborate:

Jibia was a 10-year-old girl, ranking third out of 58 students in her fourth-grade class in Rwamwanja, Uganda. Aid cuts meant that the local clinic ran out of $2 bed nets to protect from mosquitoes, as well as anti-malaria medicines. Jibia died of malaria last July, her mother told me outside the family home. Medical records confirmed that, and health workers told me that she would have been fine without the aid cuts: Replacing her tattered bed net with a new one could have prevented malaria, and in any case drugs would have helped her to recover promptly.

Yamah Freeman hemorrhaged while pregnant with her third child in her village in Liberia. The United States had provided ambulances to the local hospital, but the aid cuts under Musk and President Trump meant that the ambulances had no fuel. The strongest young men in the village placed her on their shoulders and raced down the path toward town, shouting encouragement to her as they ran, but she bled to death along the way. Her parents and sister told me about this, and I visited her grave.

Achol Deng, 8, had been infected with H.I.V. at birth in South Sudan but had been kept alive by American-provided medicines costing just 12 cents a day. The dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. and the resulting chaos meant that she lost her caseworker and access to medicines, and soon died of an opportunistic infection, health workers told me.

I could keep going. A Boston University researcher estimated that the aid cuts have cost more than 750,000 lives worldwide. A study published in the Lancet, the British medical journal, forecast that at present rates, the aid defunding will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030.

DOGE would, in itself, suffice to make Trump one of the worst presidents in American history. And all the money in the world won’t make Elon Musk any less of a horrible person and I’m happy that it’s getting to him.

The post Elon, Elon, what a killer appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

You may have heard that a giraffe named Gracie skipped town—"town" being the Cedar Hollow Ranch in Leakey, Texas. Gracie, who is estimated to be around 3 or 4 years old, had been living there since May. Gracie is a reticulated giraffe, a species known for their clean and geometric pattern of brown spots. The owner of the ranch, Vick Jones, told The New York Times that Gracie had wandered to a fenced corner of the ranch, which is nestled in a canyon, climbed a slab of rock to nibble on some trees, and then descended on the other side of the fence. From there she wandered in the Texas outback, oblivious that she had made headlines as a "runaway" and a "fugitive"—a giraffe "on the loose."

Although she occasionally popped up on game cameras from private properties in the area, Gracie dodged the authorities for nearly two weeks, leading Sheriff Nathan Johnson to decree "In almost 30 years of being a lawman, this is my first escapee giraffe," per USA Today. There was a rush of AI-generated memes of Gracie enjoying the local sights. The giraffe was found four miles from the ranch after an extensive helicopter search, and Jones organized efforts to capture Gracie and return her to the ranch. Sheriff Johnson, upon sharing the news, reported that Gracie was found "fat and happy" and that "she had a 'catch me if you can, sucker' attitude."

It is funny to think about a giraffe wandering through Texas, just as it is funny to think about the search for said giraffe—perhaps nature's most obvious animal—taking two weeks. Sheriff Johnson, to be sure, is having some fun in his press conferences, whether his jokes are landing or not. But, as Kenny Torrella smartly pointed out for Vox, the reasons a giraffe like Gracie was in Texas in the first place are not so funny.

Anjali Dayal is a professor at Fordham University. I regard her as a social media friend because we share many interests, including an enthusiasm for the United Nations. I don’t usually just post a series of Bluesky posts, but she speaks the truth very well in this series.

Updating – I posted too soon. Anjali is still adding to the thread.

The post Don’t Look Away appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.