Matthew K. Ribar

Rubio said no children died? Add that to the pile of lies. At least Musk admitted “he gave zero fucks.”

And all this? For a bunch of AI-generated hallucinations and outright lies about “corruption” at USAID.

By the way, in the initial wave of AI-powered program cuts, Lewin, Rubio, and Musk pinballed between cutting production contracts, then restoring production while cutting shipping, then cutting shipping while restoring production, etc.

Starting production takes time, arranging shipping takes time, the shipping itself takes time. That was true before they fired everybody and its even more true now.

This means food goes undelivered. Delays pile up. Much of the world’s supply of ready to use therapeutic food (RUTF) is made in either Lubbock, TX or Rhode Island, far from where it is used.

But Rubio, Musk, and Jeremy Lewin fired single person at USAID who knew how this process works. There are a handful of contracts officers (high-level) and program assistants (entry level) left, but none of the core staff who do the work (i.e. save lives).

A $45 Treatment Can Save a Starving Child. US Aid Cuts Have Frozen the Supply

This article highlights the fundamental lie behind Rubio’s claim that humanitarian aid is still flowing. Have grants been signed? A couple (massive cuts to humanitarian food). Has money been obligated? It’s starting to trickle. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/h...

Look, I hate to get all 1938 here, but this is exactly the same concession that Hitler made over Czechoslovakia.

Do Moderates Do Better? Uncovering Bias in Split Ticket’s WAR Scores

We took a close look at Split Ticket's WAR metric, which has become influential in Democratic circles for suggesting moderates significantly outperform progressives.

Our finding: The metric contains systematic biases that overstate the advantage of moderation. A corrected model shows no advantage.🧵

E.J. Antoni has more insurrections to his name than published papers

i mean, a genuinely striking thing about trump is that he basically never makes an appearance in the actual city outside

The Demographic and Health Survey’s death, and potential revival, explained Why this obscure survey from USAID has life-or-death stakes for global health. The Gates Foundation announced $25 million in emergency funding, but the long-term solution is far from clear.

Excellent article by Pratik Pawar on the consequences of cutting the Demographic and Health Surveys, and efforts to revive them. I'm quoted briefly.

Trump and Republicans know that America’s presence and influence around the world is critical.

Yet they’re destroying USAID and other foreign programs, ceding our global leadership to China.

The worst part about this "interview" is that all of Lewin's opinions are very obviously post hoc justifications. He went in with presumably ketamine fueled rage, destroyed everything, and made up a policy justification after.

At one point, several WASH advisors within BHA were debating if using the word "sewage" or "poop" was more likely to get their work past the DOGE bros.

Meanwhile Farritor and Lewin are using a shitty AI to determine what aid continued, and then canceling it all anyways. This led to a lot of dumb decisions at BHA, like transport contracts for food assistance being canceled, but not the food assistance itself, and vice versa.

Pete Marocco was fired from Trump 1 for being too crazy and trying to unilaterally dismantle his corner of USAID. My best guess is that Marocco was covering his ears and saying "lalala" the whole time. I'd love to see him deposed.

This is what I was hearing from inside USAID at the time---it was Farritor and Lewin unilaterally making these decisions. The problem is that the director of state foreign assistance, Pete Marocco, was probably giving these guys cover.

How the Threat of Trump’s Highest Tariff Derailed an African Nation

When the Trump administration said "trade not aid," it turns out they don't mean trade either:

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/w...

Jfc

MOSCOW REPORTS BOOMING ECONOMY; But Observers Find Facts Unsupported by Figures 9.5% Growth Asserted Local Statistics Questioned Soviet Maintains Industry Showed 9.5% Growth in '62 (Published 1963)

NYT (Jan. 1963): MOSCOW REPORTS BOOMING ECONOMY
"Every three months, statistics on results of the state plan are published. The statistics are unfailingly optimistic. Each time they raise questions ... about the relationship of statistics to reality."

www.nytimes.com/1963/01/28/a...

You have to wonder what the New York Times was thinking in publishing this. But shame on them.

When asked if supporting “the values of a democratic society that has a Bill of Rights, that supports human freedom and human dignity in some way,” Lewin replies “But is it our idea to go pander?”

He also defunded the International Food Relief Partnership, a program meant to build capacity among small, (usually faith based) organizations to distribute humanitarian assistance

Lewin claims that religious groups never had the opportunity to engage with State or USAID, while defunding a variety of grants to Christian organizations like World Vision or Caritas.

He pretends as if he and the Trump regime didn’t attempt to destroy PEPFAR, and apparently the 1.9 billion in cuts to PEPFAR proposed by the Trump regime will all come from “overhead.”

He pretends the US will still do humanitarian assistance even while he oversaw the dismantling of the disaster assistance response teams (DARTs) that actually did this work. There’s no replacement here.

The sheer doublethink of saying “[Trump] is offering real, genuine, above-board, bilateral trade relationships” while simultaneously levying tariffs to address our trade balance with Lesotho boggles the mind.

He says that USAID failed to create meaningful growth. You can tell this is bad faith because he destroyed USAID’s massive `development experience clearinghouse,’ which provided the data and impact evaluations which directly proved him false.

Lewin claims USAID violated the executive orders about the pause in foreign aid. The truth? USAID continued to pay contractors for costs which were incurred before the stop work order. Lewin refused to pay implementing partners these costs even after he was ordered to by federal courts.