Rising Conflict in DRC, Sudan, Other African Countries Linked to Trump's Gutting of USAID: Study

The decades-old U.S. humanitarian aid agency USAID was largely dismantled in the early days of President Trump's second term by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The authors of a new study in the journal Science conclude, The abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa's most USAID-dependent regions."

We are joined by Austin Wright, one of the study's authors and a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago. What we found is that that shutdown had these large effects," says Wright. These are often double-digit percentage increases in the incidence, severity and lethality of violence across Africa in the affected regions."