Marco Rubio Stands by Cuts That Killed Hundreds of Thousands of People
Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he’s proud of the closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development — but he really shouldn’t be.
At a press conference on Friday, Rubio was request whether he maintained his false claim earlier this year that the Trump administration’s massive cuts to USAID I didn’t kill anyone. Rather than confess, he doubled down on his deadly decision.
“I’m very proud of the changes we’ve made to foreign aid,” Rubio said. The secretary of state said the United States would enter into more than 50 “health deals” with foreign countries by the end of 2025, to eliminate intermediary NGOs that took a cut of the aid.
Under these health pacts, foreign countries would not only receive aid, but they would also receive “a plan to build their own self-sufficiency,” Rubio said.
The State Department has only recently begun rolling out its health agreements with foreign countries, agreements that represent a major reduction of American health spending in each of these countries. So far, only eight health agreements have been announced, all with the governments of sub-Saharan countries: Cameroon, Kenya, Lesotho, Uganda, Mozambique, Eswatini, Rwanda and Liberia.
It’s unclear how the secretary of state plans to reach agreement on another 42 deals by Dec. 31.
But Rubio’s sweeping budget cuts have already had devastating consequences on communities around the world. By November 2025, cut funding for USAID aid to fight infectious diseases had already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children, according to Atul Gawandeformer Deputy Administrator for Global Health at USAID during the Biden administration.
The Center for Global Development calculated that the number of potential lives lost due to current spending cuts could range from 500,000 to a million. Future spending cuts could result in the loss of 670,000 to 1.6 million lives.
