‘Ignorance and cruelty’: former USAID official details devastation inflicted by Doge cuts

Nicholas Enrich was an eyewitness to the dismantling of the US foreign aid organization by the Trump administration Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Nicholas Enrich was working in Kenya in 2003 when the then US president George W Bush signed a landmark $15bn, five-year commitment to combat HIV, the largest international health commitment by any nation to fight a single disease. It was the peak of the epidemic, and for the young American government aid worker “it clicked that my government was ready to join the fight against HIV and I was excited to be a part of that”, he says. More than 20 years on, Enrich, now 43, has published an account of what happens when a new US administration comes in with an agenda powered by an “America first” ideology and a plan to refashion the US’s outward international posture. That account, published last week as Into the Wood Chipper – a phrase taken from a comment by Elon Musk on Doge cuts at the agency – details the early days of Doge’s foray into the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the freestanding federal agency established in 1961 by John F Kennedy as a strategic inst

Apr 18, 2026 → Apr 18, 2026