President Donald Trump has achieved some major impacts with his imposition of a 90-day hold on foreign assistance. He is sparking anger and hostility toward the United States in place of the goodwill that has been generated by USAID services and assistance programs.
Trump has stopped emergency assistance that has helped people affected by war — including the feeding centers that serve nearly a million people in Sudan. He is also threatening the lives of millions of people who depended on U.S.-funded health services for survival. This administration ended the vast number of economic development programs helping people to improve their lives, stopped education programs enabling children and young people to go to school and work for a better life.
Trump stopped services that prevented poverty from separating children from their families and other programs that enabled separated children to reunite with their families. I’ve worked internationally on family care for children for over 45 years, 25 of those as an adviser for USAID’s children in adversity programs, and I’ve seen the good that U.S. foreign assistance has done.
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Musk has taken down the USAID website that showed the many ways its funding has been saving and improving lives, and its absence makes it easier for him to lie about what was really being achieved.
U.S. foreign aid programs have been only 1% of the federal budget, so cutting them will have little impact on the federal deficit. Stopping these vital services will result in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths among children and adults around the world, and the services can’t simply be restarted after the 90-day hold because the organizational structures necessary to implement them have already been decimated.
This not in the interests of the American people, and it is generating hostility toward this country. It is harmful to all concerned.
John Williamson.
Richmond.
From the Archives: University of Richmond in the 1970s
11-06-1975 (cutline): University of Richmond's football team watches as their homecoming queen and her princesses try to get in on the action.
03-04-1971 (cutline): Trash litters area across from lodges in University of Richmond's fraternity row.
04-05-1974 (cutline): About 400 University of Richmond students protested the school's visitation policy last night by staging visits according to their own rules, which they adopted Wednesday. The school officially forbids visitors of the opposite sex in student rooms on weeknights.
09-11-1977 (cutline) WDCE station manager John Curtin mans microphone on UR campus.
09-01-1977 (cutline): The University of Richmond has opened it's 160,000-square-foot science center that includes a library, 27 teaching laboraties, adjoining preparation and instrument rooms, as well as five lecture halls, a 145-seat auditorium, ecological computers, a Celestron telescope and mound pad, a vivarium and herbarium, a Foucault pendulum and an electron microscope. The modular building has three floors and a partial basement. The building cost $8 million and was designed by John Carl Warnecke and Associates.
03-03-1978 (cutline): University of Richmond students are playing pool in the University Commons that overlook the Westhampton Lake. The deep windows give an excellent view of the tree-lined lake.
09-19-1975 (cutline): Marshall Bank, a 19-year-old UR student held a bunch of books he'd checked out of the university library as hostages until the authorities undertook to improve the way they cared for rare volumes.
11-18-1971 (cutline): These are the tree top students of last year's freshman class at the University of Richmond, taking a walk on their campus. They have received the R.E. Loving Book Awards, presented annually to the students who compile the highest academic average at the university during the freshman year. They also were honored at a convocation today sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa. From left are Marbry B. Hopkins II of Towson, Md., Janet Y. Ferrell of Danville and David H. Pankey of Richmond. Hopkins and Pankey had perfect 4.0 averages; Miss Ferrall had a 3.8.
05-08-1970 (cutline): University of Richmond students discuss war, Kent State Shootings. Dr. George M. Modlin, UR President, later addressed rally.
01-30-1973 (cutline): Campus patrol prepares to ticket for an unfortunate automobile.
03-16-1976 (cutline): After about two years of being dry, the University of Richmond's Westhampton Lake is filling with water. A spokesman said yesterday the water will be allowed to accumulate six feet for the time being. Following further construction on the University's $4.5 million student commons (background), the lake will be allowed to fill completely. The spokesman added there are no plans to stock the lake with fish, but as fish accumulate naturally, fishing permits will be issued to students, faculty and alumni living near the university. In the foreground is a pedestrian bridge that crosses to an island in the middle of the lake.
04-03-1975 (cutline): A section of the fourth floor wall at the University of Richmond's Boatwright Memorial Library collapsed today, leaving a gaping 44-foot-wide hole on the west side of the building. A university spokesman said there were no injuries. The building was evacuated and sealed off for several hours after the collapse.
