The AP Blames President Trump's USAID Cuts for Lesotho's Healthcare Struggles

Amy Curtis | October 16, 2025 2:30 PM

As part of President Trump's "America First" agenda, his administration worked to dismantle USAID and its billions of dollars of wasteful and unnecessary spending. For years, American taxpayers were footing the bill for insane programs across the globe.

On July 1, USAID was officially shut down. The Left claimed the cuts caused 300,000 deaths, including a woman in Thailand and kids in Sudan.

Earlier this month, Amy Klobuchar blamed these cuts for the death of a girl in the Congo, after locals couldn't transport malaria drugs seven miles.

The Associated Press is chiming in, too, and blaming the USAID cuts for problems with Lesotho's healthcare system.

The tiny African nation of Lesotho had victories in its HIV fight. Then, the US aid cuts came. Now Lesotho’s care system is crumbling. Clinics shut down, workers were let go, and patients stopped treatment. Experts are sounding alarms. https://t.co/evVi6qmsph
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 16, 2025

Here's more:

This Lesotho was unimaginable months ago, residents, health workers and experts say. The small landlocked nation in southern Africa long had the world’s second-highest rate of HIV infections. But over years, with nearly $1 billion in aid from the United States, Lesotho patched together a health network efficient enough to slow the spread of the epidemic, one of the deadliest in modern history.
Then On Jan. 20, the first day of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order freezing foreign aid. Within weeks, Trump had slashed overseas assistance and dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development. Confusion followed in nearly all the 130 countries with USAID-supported programs. Nine months later in Lesotho, there’s still little clarity.
With the single stroke of a distant president's pen, much of a system credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives was dismantled.