Last summer, the Dalai Lama was having a party in Dharamshala for his 90th birthday, and Bethany Morrison, a newly appointed State Department official, was eager to meet with him there. Inconveniently, the United States had recently canceled about $12 million worth of annual foreign aid benefiting Tibetan-exile communities as part of the implosion of USAID. This, Morrison and other State officials thought, would not make a particularly good impression on His Holiness, according to a former State and a former USAID official.
Along with using his wife's pregnancy announcement as proof that he gets action (shudder), Vice President JD Vance used his speech at the March for Life rally on Friday to announce a devastating expansion of the Trump administration's global gag rule. The rule, which already blocked federal funding for global organizations that even dare utter the word "abortion," will now include any organization that the administration deems as promoting transgender rights or diversity inclusion initiatives.
After several 10-second faults and inaccurate PG&E notifications claiming, Power is on we were plunged into a sustained blackout. We cannot compete globally while navigating a vulnerable, 1970s-era overhead grid. Reliability is a shared responsibility; as neighbors, we are committed to trimming private trees and providing maintenance access. However, we need a matching commitment to modernization. We plead for PG&E and the city to invoke Rule 20A credits to underground our lines.
The Trump administration initiated seismic changes in world of foreign aid with dramatic impacts on health and poverty programs. Scary (and sometimes ancient) viruses circulated. But there were moments of hope and beauty, too like an award-winning collection of drone photos. That's all evident in our selection of the stories that got the most page views in 2025. Here are the most popular stories from our global health and development coverage in Goats and Soda.
After waiting four years to return to the White House, President Donald Trump did not hesitate. Congratulations from foreign leaders were still pouring in on Inauguration Day when Trump signed his first directive. That day, he issued a raft of executive orders, proclamations and pardons that remade vast swaths of public policy and upended lives around the globe. Among those affected by his actions were journalists.
Immigration policy Dozens of raids have not only violated immigrants' human rights and torn families apart: They have jeopardized the national food supply. Farmworkers already work physically hard jobs for low wages. In legitimate fear for their lives and liberty, reports indicate that in some places 70% of people harvesting, processing, and distributing food stopped showing up to work by mid-2025.
If there's one belief that unites Americans across the political spectrum, it's that other countries are the reason we can't have nice things. "We sent $250 billion to Ukraine," the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk wrote on X in January. "And yet we can't get water to fight fires in California." In 2023, Assemblyman (and now New York City Mayor-Elect) Zohran Mamdani told an audience at a Democratic Socialists of America conference that
Earlier this year, Donald Trump appointed a 28-year-old Doge alumnus, Jeremy Lewin, to oversee his administration's approach to global aid. Lewin's primary task has been to gut the US's aid funding. In an interview with the New York Times, Lewin argued that the traditional approach, which he termed the global humanitarian complex, didn't help poor countries progress beyond aid, instead keeping them dependent. The system, he continued, has demonstrably failed.
Somebody's got to do something about it. Someone has to take a stand. And there needs to be a conservative wing of the Republican party, and sometimes I'm it. Right now I am it, said Paul. I'm opposed to deficit spending. I proposed an alternative, the penny plan, which would balance over five years. And I will vote for that.
There are many more substantial grounds that render him patently unqualified to receive the award. Among the numerous reasons that make him one of the least deserving people in the world who should be honored, he has single-handedly destroyed the United States Agency for International Development, which has saved hundreds of millions of people from hunger and disease, and promoted democracy and the rule of law around the world.
The court ruled that the administration can continue to freeze or terminate billions of dollars that Congress had earmarked for foreign aid spending. In a 2-to-1 vote, a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the plaintiffs in the case...did not have the legal standing to bring a lawsuit.
The government has admitted that slashing foreign aid spending will likely see global deaths rise, as it confirmed the cuts will fall disproportionately on women and girls' education and on projects across Africa.
Senate Republicans are considering changes to Trump's request to cancel $9.4 billion in spending, primarily affecting public broadcasting and foreign aid fighting famine.
Massie mentioned that both Trump and AIPAC have to think about the political risks they face; if they challenge him and fail, they lose credibility.
