United States Agency for International Development (USAID): Trump will surely burn in hell for his reckless, cruel, and unnecessary cuts to this agency (Africa edition)

 

Headline:  New York Times, 2/4/2026

Stephanie Nolen reports:

Onchocerciasis is one of 21 afflictions, most of them treatable and preventable, that the World Health Organization classifies as neglected tropical diseases. Together, they affect more than a billion people, but because many are among the poorest people in the least developed places, these diseases have historically received little funding, research or attention. 

While they are rarely fatal, these diseases exact a huge toll in human suffering, including pain, disfigurement and disabilities such as blindness. They are sometimes called “biblical” because they have plagued humans for so long that they are mentioned in ancient texts

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2026

USAID:  Trump will surely burn in hell for his reckless, cruel, and unnecessary cuts to this agency (Afghanistan edition).  (2/7)

2025

USAID disembowelment:  Conservatives practice a perverted form of Christianity.  (4/8/2025)

USAID to farmers?  So how exactly is that going to work, Brooke Rollins?.  (4/1/2025)

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United States Agency for International Development (USAID): Trump will surely burn in hell for his reckless, cruel, and unnecessary cuts to this agency (Afghanistan edition)

Headline:  New York Times, 2/4/2026

Elian Peltier, Yaqoob Akbary, and Safiullah PadshahThe U.S. aid cuts in

Afghanistan were as sudden as they were brutal. Even after the U.S. withdrawal and the end of the war in 2021, the United States continued pouring money into Afghanistan. From the 2021 Taliban takeover until last year, Washington had provided nearly $1 billion annually — over a third of all aid flowing into one of the world’s poorest countries. That funding has all but evaporated with the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

The agency’s programs once helped clear landscapes scarred by war and mines, diversify crops and keep millions from hunger. Four million children are now at risk of dying from malnutrition, according to the World Food Program, the most in a quarter-century. 

“The U.S. withdrawal exacerbated an already bad situation,” said Sherine Ibrahim, a former head of the Afghanistan office of the International Rescue Committee, which received three-quarters of its funding from the U.S. government. “No other donor has stepped in and no one will in those proportions.” 

Nearly 450 health centers closed because of the cuts, including a tiny white building in the drought-stricken village of Nalej, where Malika Ghullami safely gave birth to two children in past years and was pregnant again with twins last year. [emphasis added]

Related post:

USAID disembowelment:  Conservatives practice a perverted form of Christianity.  (4/8/2025)

USAID to farmers?  So how exactly is that going to work, Brooke Rollins?.  (4/1/2025)

Homes now being built at mammoth Hill Valley subdivision in Madison Wisconsin (February 2026 construction site visit)

 

Photo and video by Retiring Guy

Headline:  Wisconsin State Journal, 11/25/2025

Chris Rickert reports:

The Hill Valley subdivision on Madison’s Far West Side is just getting underway, with developer Veridian Homes ready to build its first home and six lots already sold. 

Now if only someone with a 1981 DeLorean would buy one. 

If “Hill Valley” rings a bell for people of a certain age, that’s the point. That’s the name of the city Marty McFly and his family called home in “Back to the Future,” and the film is the theme Veridian has chosen to go with as it builds out the 200-acre residential development with 750 home sites. 

Of the approximately 40 streets that are to crisscross the project, about 15 of them are obvious references to the 1985 classic. 

Madison Plan Commission (above and below)

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Hill Valley subdivision.  (1/29/2025)

July 2025 site visit. 

September 2025 site visit

January 2026 site visit