Loading summary
Transcript86 lines
- [00:00]
HelloFresh Ad
With HelloFresh you get farm fresh, pre proportioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. It's easy to find time to eat well with 50 wholesome, hassle free meals to choose from each week delivered to your door. Their lineup of prep and bake meals come together with minimal mess and only five minutes of prep, so your oven does most of the work. Not you. Get up to 10 free meals and a free high protein item for life@hellofresh.com hellofreshpodcast One item per box with active subscription free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. That's up to 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com hellofreshpodcast hellofresh America's 1 meal kit ready to optimize your.
- [00:57]
Factor Ad
Nutrition this year, Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can feel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. Lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto Meals based on a randomized controlled clinical trial with Factor Keto. Results will vary depending on diet and exercise. With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. Choose from preferences like Calorie, Smart, Protein plus or Keto. Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfasts, grab and go snacks and more add ons. Reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust and convenience that can't be beat. Eat smart with Factor get started@factormeals.com FactorPodcast and use code FactorPodcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's Code Factor Podcast at FactorMeals.com Factorpodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first bo.
- [01:56]
Sam Simon
Hey guys, welcome back. Sam Simon, the Bulwark Here I have a special guest, Jeremy Kneindyk, President of Refugees International, former top official at USAID during the Biden or Obama or both?
- [02:09]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Both.
- [02:10]
Sam Simon
Both. Okay. He's been around the block. Let's just put it that way. Germany's been instrumental for anyone who's been following this calamity and catastrophe that's happening at USAID amid a Torrent of misinformation and disinformation. Jeremy has corrected narratives. He's only one man, but he's done his part. What we're going to talk about today is what I consider from my reporting to be probably the most calamitous set of cuts that we've seen to date. And they took place last night. Thank you, Jeremy, for joining us. I really appreciate it.
- [02:47]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Thanks.
- [02:47]
Sam Simon
My. Let's talk about what happened last night. What happened last night? Do you want to explain?
- [02:53]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Yeah. So there has been a legal challenge now for the last few weeks by some of the organizations that work with usaid. So take a step back. The work that USAID does is almost always in partnership with nonprofit organizations and government contractors who actually do the kind of implement the programming on the ground. And of course, they need to get paid. And the way that they often get paid is they will do a program, and then when they've implemented a certain amount, they will come back and they will draw down money from the government payment system to reimburse them for the costs that they've incurred. When the Trump administration came in, they just turned that off and stopped paying those costs. So they began basically stiffing the contractors, which is a rich tradition for both Elon and Donald Trump.
- [03:42]
Sam Simon
I was going to say highly in character. They're very good at it, I'd agree.
- [03:46]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Symphetically.
- [03:47]
Sam Simon
Yeah, they're the best.
- [03:49]
Jeremy Kneindyk
You know, old habits. Right. So. So they began stiffing the contractors and to the tune of, you know, collectively billions of dollars.
- [03:58]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [03:59]
Jeremy Kneindyk
And for.
- [04:01]
Sam Simon
It was about $2 billion. Right?
- [04:03]
Jeremy Kneindyk
2 billion is the amount they're citing. Yeah, the amount that the government swore that they couldn't possibly pay in the, in the appeal. And so for, you know, many of these organizations, that's a very. That's an immediate existential financial crisis.
- [04:17]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [04:17]
Jeremy Kneindyk
You know, if they, because they, they basically spend their own reserves in order to kind of front, front load the.
- [04:22]
Sam Simon
Costs, and they assume, look at rebuild.
- [04:25]
Jeremy Kneindyk
If they don't get reimbursed, they're sunk. So, and to be clear, this is not just like a freeze on future programs, future work. This is a refusal to pay costs that were lawfully incurred during the Biden administration. You know, these are US Government debts, right.
- [04:42]
Sam Simon
Well, they're also contracts. Right. I mean, we signed. We said we would pay you for your services, or we will give you money and reimburse you, and they. And then just cancel the contract midstream. Now that that suit went up to the Supreme Court, it's still potentially going to be settled. But essentially John Roberts said, you know what, this month, this midnight deadline of Thursday, sorry, I guess it was Wednesday midnight, I can never really tell that that is not. We, we agree with the government that they just cannot meet these obligations. Putting aside that of course they could because they just need to bring the people back in place who can handle the contracts administration. But putting that aside, Roberts basically said you don't have to do this right away, but they may, they may eventually have to do this. Correct?
- [05:25]
Jeremy Kneindyk
They may. And I think the, you know, the best way to understand what, what Justice Roberts did is not even necessarily agree with the government so much as just to say this is brand new to us. We need to figure out what's going on.
- [05:35]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [05:36]
Jeremy Kneindyk
So give us two days to figure out what's going on and they, they're.
- [05:38]
Sam Simon
Going to figure it out by Friday according to what the Roberts or they're at least giving themselves till Friday to figure it out.
- [05:43]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Right. They have, they've asked for, they've asked for arguments by Friday and then they will see where they go from there.
- [05:48]
Sam Simon
And now secondarily to this as this is all happening, because this is one piece of it. We get news yesterday that huge amounts of additional contracts, awards, grants that the U.S. and State Department have put together for a variety of products across the globe that are unrelated to this $2 billion or tranche have now been canceled. Correct?
- [06:13]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Correct. I mean there was an absolute bloodbath yesterday. So what, so the guy named Pete Morocco at the State Department who is the, the, the director of the, the Foreign Assistance Budget Office and he has taken upon himself the authority to cancel all these things and he yesterday basically to get out ahead of the court. I mean, I think it's important to understand the timing here that what they did yesterday was go back to the court and say, well now we've canceled everything. There is no more freeze to lift because everything that, you know, we're not freezing anything anymore, it's all either canceled or back underway.
- [06:54]
Sam Simon
Right. So it's about 500 or so, 500 or so programs. We're still going to keep going, but you know, 5,000, we've canceled, we've canceled.
- [07:02]
Jeremy Kneindyk
The other 90 plus percent of the programs that USAID was funding. It's a, it's a really bald faced attempt to just circumvent a court order. And, and so it'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court makes of that. But in the, you know, in the meantime, the things they were canceling.
- [07:19]
Sam Simon
Yeah, let's get into that, because that, that's the most important thing. So what exactly? Because. Because I, you know, I woke up to, you know, dozens of signal messages freaked out people across the globe saying, holy. I think my, I think this PEPFAR contract I worked on in South Africa is just gone. You know, water in Congo and stuff. Like, run through your basic understanding and take however long you want, like get granular about what exactly we just lost last night.
- [07:46]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Well, and I think the important context here too is that, you know, Secretary Rubio had, has been saying for weeks that life saving programs would continue and would not be disrupted. So, you know, the PEPFAR programs that support HIV meds for 20 million people around the world, the humanitarian programs that provide food, water, shelter for people in disaster zones with, you know, all of that he had said that will not be touched. He issued a waiver. They had been giving waivers to different organizations saying, you know, these programs are waived from the freeze. They had yet to pay any of those organizations, by the way, but they had at least given the waivers. I have yet to talk to an organization in the last 24 hours that has not had a waived program now canceled. So the waivers, you know, we always suspected the waivers were basically a sort of bullshit diversion tactic. And this just confirms that. So the sorts of things that have been canceled, just, you know, that I have personally heard about. One of the things that I did, I used to run disaster response at USAID in the Obama administration. And so I was basically the. I was kind of the guy who would push the button to deploy the search and rescue teams after an earthquake. So if there were an earthquake in, for example, Nepal, a major earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 2015, we deployed US search and rescue teams, USAID contracts with the team from Fairfax county and the team from LA County. So these are incredible. The LA county team, of course, very specialized in earthquakes. Given where they're from, the Fairfax county team, very good at that. But also that is one of the key teams for major emergencies in the national capital area. We provided a lot of funding to those teams and we would deploy them when there was a disaster. The entire unit that deploys those teams has now been pushed out of the agency. And yesterday they canceled the contract with the LA county team. With the LA county search and rescue team, they canceled a contract for what's called Ready to Use Therapeutic Food, or more commonly called Plumpy Nut. This is an incredible product that is made of peanuts and dairy and some other nutrients. It's sort of like a peanut butter paste. It comes in little Sachets. And it can basically bring children back to life. It is highly nutritious and highly adapted to the nutritional needs of children suffering from severe malnutrition. And when this product was created, I think about 20 years ago, it revolutionized how we fight malnutrition globally. It meant that a kid who used to need to go into inpatient intensive malnutrition treatment over a protracted period could now just be sent home with plumpy nut, eat the plumpy nut under some supervision and basically recover from malnutrition. It is a miracle product. It is produced with peanuts grown on American farms and it's produced from an American manufacturer here. That contract was canceled yesterday. I have had colleagues from Refugees International in Syria over the past week talking to humanitarian organizations there. And they woke up yesterday morning too. One of them is still in the man. He woke up yesterday morning to this slew of cancellations. So things that are being canceled in Syria include programs that are providing clean water to hundreds of thousands of displaced people who remain in displacement camps within Syria, feeding programs, hospitals and clinics for displaced people inside Syria, mine clearance and UXO clearance in Syria. So, you know, if refugees are, there's 6 million refugees outside of Syria right now. For those people to be able to go home, they need to be able, you know, they need to know that their neighborhoods are not full of unexploded ordinances. The teams that were clearing those canceled. So obviously that's a risk, but it also, it's a risk kind of in the immediate term it's going to kill people, but it's also going to make it harder for refugees to go home, which puts more burden on the surrounding countries that are still hosting refugees. I talked to another organization today that had had health and water programs, is providing one of the largest networks of health clinics in Darfur. So Darfur, for those who probably aren't as in the weeds of this of Sudan as I am, Darfur is currently experiencing both a famine and a genocide in the midst of the Sudanese civil war. The only lifeline that people in Darfur have right now is through international humanitarian support. The US Is the largest single donor to all that provides the support to the largest network of NGO clinics. That was all just pulled down. And all of these are definitionally life saving programs. All of these are things that like very literally keep hundreds of thousands, even millions of people alive day in, day out. And that is what's being pulled down.
- [12:27]
Sam Simon
Why don't, why do people have trouble saying that? I mean, I know it Sounds crude, but it's true that Marco Rubio and Pete Marco just killed a bunch.
- [12:36]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Going to kill people. Yeah, people are already dying. I mean, people are already dying from the disruption to HIV treatment. They're dying from. Programs had already been disrupted because even before they were canceled, the funding was cut off. So, you know, I talked to an organization last week that was choosing with their own money, by the way. You know, with their own funding. Do we keep, do we keep running our nutrition centers in Darfur or do we keep running our anti malaria programs in Southeast Asia? Like, you know, it's a real, it's like a Sophie's Choice situation. Every organization has been in this choice situation.
- [13:11]
Sam Simon
The argument you get from critics is twofold. One is, well, you know, I'd rather spend our money here. We have needs here. And obviously I think that's, you know, what you're talking about. The Syrian refugee thing is just a classic example.
- [13:22]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Yeah.
- [13:23]
Sam Simon
The refugee crisis shows up on our doors. That's something we have to pay for. Right. But the other one is, well, can other countries and private philanthropists fill the void?
- [13:31]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Yeah.
- [13:32]
Sam Simon
And I'm curious about what you think about that as someone who, I mean, refugees international, obviously you guys recruit private philanthropy, but what is the, what is the current state of private philanthropy around these types of global health and global well being initiatives?
- [13:48]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Yeah, it's a great question. I mean the short answer is no, they can't fill that gap. You know, the US, The US is the largest donor in the world. And, and if you put. So you know, USAID's annual budget was like $40 billion a year. GATES foundation is by far the biggest philanthropic institution in the world. I think their budget is under 10 billion a year year. And that's already in the system. So it's not like they can just find four times that amount.
- [14:14]
Sam Simon
Just go find five more.
- [14:16]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Bill Gates, that's already baked in. Yeah, like, yeah, look like if, if, like, you know, if, if Elon and Jeff Bezos and some of these other fantastic decided to do what Bill Gates has done, maybe, you know, maybe they could do some of that. They've never been terribly charitable, but yeah, no, there's no way for other, for other donors to fill in, to fill in a gap like this, you know, in the humanitarian system, which is where I've spe of my career, the US usually provides about 40% of the global humanitarian financing. And the next biggest donor is about 10%, I think.
- [14:46]
Sam Simon
Well, that's why I was talking to someone last night who was freaked out like everyone else. And they noted that we had pulled our. Our grant to the UN AIDS Project. And, you know, it's just a global monitoring of the AIDS epidemic. It's like we just suddenly lost our eyes and ears.
- [15:00]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Right.
- [15:00]
Sam Simon
And they, And I was trying to get a sense of, like, how consequential was. And they pulled up the data and like, that's half of their funds.
- [15:07]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Yes, half.
- [15:08]
Sam Simon
Just. Just ripped away. And it's like. I don't mean to laugh because it's. It's obviously so tragic, but it's so dark, it's hard to conceive.
- [15:15]
Jeremy Kneindyk
It really is. And, and, and look, I. I wish more donors stepped up. I wish China put more into this system. I wish, you know, Russia and India and other, you know, large and increasingly wealthy countries put more into this system. But at the same time, this is what US Leadership.
- [15:31]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [15:32]
Jeremy Kneindyk
You know, US Leadership is showing that generosity and, but also understanding that is a convergence of our interests and our values. It's not to US interest to let the global AIDS epidemic get out of control.
- [15:41]
Sam Simon
No, of course not. Well, so the thing that I. That. And this is kind of what piqued our interest in talking to you. The administration's like, there is some cases. I'm not trying to overstate it, trust me. I'm not. Where the administration will be reactive to negative news and then come back and say, actually we're going to restore this. So yesterday. And I just think it's bullshit, but whatever. Yesterday, Elon Musk says, once we figured out that we had defunded Ebola, we wanted to refund Ebola. Which, yes, of course, I'm glad. But in the reality is they didn't. Like they had not. Or at least if they had, it was so piecemeal that it didn't make up for all the other cuts they had made. So talk about that, but then talk specifically about this idea. Can social and political pressure be applied to restore some of these cuts?
- [16:27]
Jeremy Kneindyk
I hope so. I hope social. I mean, political pressure, definitely. And we've seen some of that already. It's been very interesting to watch. Yeah, we've seen a bit. Not enough.
- [16:36]
Sam Simon
Okay, where have we seen it? Just out of curiosity.
- [16:39]
Jeremy Kneindyk
There have been. So there have been a number of Republican members of Congress who have weighed in about protecting specific programs, who have weighed in about.
- [16:47]
Sam Simon
Yeah, but that's like, so provincial. It's like Jeff Moran being like, oh, the food that's going to waste. It's like. Yeah, it's because it's from Kansas. You Know, it's like, yeah, but, hey.
- [16:55]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Look, it's something I think, you know, I. There's going to be a ton of damage. And I think that, you know, the. The essential thing now is to preserve enough of the core capacity and expertise of what the US Government has built up at USAID over many, many decades that it is not completely lost and that we have something to rebuild from again when there's an administration that's inclined to do so.
- [17:17]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [17:18]
Jeremy Kneindyk
But it will take that kind of pressure. And, yeah, I think where we have seen the administration backpedal is when they are under. When they're kind of taking some incoming politically over the stupidity and recklessness of some of what they've done. So, you know, the first. The first instance we saw of that was in the very first part of the aid freeze, when the programs that were supporting guards at some camps in northeast Syria that held a lot of members of ISIL and their families walked off the job because their funding had been cut.
- [17:52]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [17:53]
Jeremy Kneindyk
And oops, Whoops.
- [17:56]
Sam Simon
Yeah.
- [17:57]
Jeremy Kneindyk
And then they scrambled. And, you know, amazingly, even as they're telling the government, the courts that they can't possibly, possibly turn the funding back on, they managed to get the funding turned back on for that one.
- [18:05]
Sam Simon
Yeah.
- [18:06]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Because there was a ton of political pressure. And I think inside the administration, a bunch of the Syria experts were going, what the f are you doing?
- [18:12]
Sam Simon
Right.
- [18:13]
Jeremy Kneindyk
And they were not concerned. You know, this is just Pete Morocco shutting things down. This is not him, like, going to the Syria team and saying, hey, what happens if.
- [18:20]
Sam Simon
Well, yes, but there was also that story in the Post where it's like, Rubio wanted to sign off on a few things, and then it was the Doge brothers who were, like, checking off. It's like, actually, no, we're not going to. So maybe it's not just Pete Morocco, maybe it's like this weird Elon Tassel for us, too, but it's entirely either way. Yeah.
- [18:36]
Jeremy Kneindyk
There's no transparency about any of it. Right, right. Like, you just, you know, what you can say from the outside, it's clearly not working.
- [18:42]
Sam Simon
So I guess this then, where my piece this morning sort of left off, which is pepfar, it's not fully defunded. I don't want to overstate it. There's different funding sources into PEPFAR than just usaid, but USAID is a funding source into it. And we know for a fact that PEPFAR in South Africa lost its contracts last night. There are officials in South Africa worried that it's going to completely end the program because it's so critical. That's George W. Bush's crown jewel program.
- [19:09]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Yep.
- [19:09]
Sam Simon
George W. Bush has not said a peep. Have you guys? Or do you know of anyone reaching out to George W. Bush to say, hey, bud, you know, if there's ever a time it might be on this one.
- [19:22]
Jeremy Kneindyk
I, I don't personally know. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the folks are. But you know, a lot of the, I mean, that was such a different Republican Party.
- [19:31]
Sam Simon
I get it. But it doesn't matter. Like at some point it's not speaking out.
- [19:35]
Jeremy Kneindyk
He should be speaking out. And, and frankly, every president should be speaking out. The, the former USAID administrators and George, George Bush's USAID administrator, Andrew Natsios, who is a friend of mine and just a phenomenal guy. He's been very, very vocal. Yeah. And that, you know, it gets to like, this really is a sort of Trump and Elon thing. This is not even a Republican thing. I mean, they're all kind of bending the knee right now, but sure, look, when there have been hearings, there was a hearing in the House Foreign Affairs Committee a couple of weeks ago. You were not hearing too many Republicans apart from Chairman Brian Mast echoing the disinformation from Elon because they know better. They just aren't willing to stand up for it. And what we're facing now is ultimately, if Congress, you know, Congress could still step in and, and impose some, you know, impose some brakes on this. The courts are kind of a delaying tactic to create some time. Maybe Congress can do that. But ultimately, if Congress lets the administration do this and that, well, they're going.
- [20:34]
Sam Simon
To, they're going to vote on a funding bill in a couple of weeks.
- [20:37]
HelloFresh Ad
Right?
- [20:38]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Right.
- [20:39]
Sam Simon
Yeah, probably going to, it's probably going to be a cr, which is fund, which funds usaid. But I mean, USAID doesn't exist, so I don't really know how that works.
- [20:50]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Well, and this is where, this is where it becomes an impoundment question. And that is what they are angling for. And that's why they want to escalate this to the Supreme Court so rapidly. They are not, you know, they are not doing this just because they hate foreign aid, although I think that they do. I think. Well, I think Elon and Trump sincerely, very much do. But also, you know, for Russ vote, this is the softest target for the, for the impoundment fight.
- [21:14]
Sam Simon
Sure.
- [21:15]
Jeremy Kneindyk
So it is a way for them.
- [21:16]
Sam Simon
To take it's foreign policy, which has been more traditionally the President's purview and then has no, no real domestic constituency beyond people who watch this program. Yeah, exactly.
- [21:28]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Small but mighty. Yeah, that's right. And so I think that's what, that's why you're seeing them stonewall the court so much so just so like, blatantly. That's why they want to go straight to John Roberts with this. And, you know, they, they think they're going to win that. They think they're going to win that fight. And we'll, we'll see. But there, too, like, Congress is not standing up for its prerogatives. And the kind of, the larger story here is usaid. Even if you don't care a wit about foreign aid, USAID is a test case for what they now want to do across the government. So the first thing they did at USAID was push out a bunch of the lawyers, including the ethics lawyers. We're now seeing that they're now going, they're doing the same thing at dod. They're pushing out the jags. So this is kind of the template, what they piloted at USAID is the template for what they're now exporting across the federal government. So it's really, really important to hold the line on usaid, even if you're not particularly interested in foreign aid, because if they, if they get away with it here, then they're establishing precedents that they're going to try to get away with elsewhere.
- [22:32]
Sam Simon
Jeremy, you're a busy guy. I don't want to keep you too much longer. So thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Stay in touch as these things progress, okay?
- [22:41]
Jeremy Kneindyk
Absolutely. Thanks.
- [22:42]
Sam Simon
All right.