Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID by Nicholas Enrich

Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID

by Nicholas Enrich

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Politics & PowerSociety & Culture

After Trump's second inauguration, the new Department of Government Efficiency went after USAID first. Enrich, a civil servant across four administrations who had become acting assistant administrator for global health that January, gives you the shutdown from inside, and the whistleblowing memos he released about it.

Core ideas
  • Aid stopped in transit: Medicine and food shipments were halted mid-route, and a court order to keep funding was disregarded.
  • Memos that mattered: He was put on leave on March 2, 2025, but hundreds of halted programs came back after the memos, and a Supreme Court case over dismantling USAID cited them.
  • The cost, attributed: Atul Gawande asserts in the foreword that the closure has already killed at least three-quarters of a million people, mostly children.
Published2026
ISBN9781668226957
ReadOct 2026

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