Business
Column: Trump and Musk crippled our most important global aid agency. The consequences are grim
It’s probably too soon to claim Elon Musk has babies’ blood on his hands for effectively shuttering America’s most consequential foreign aid agency. But trust me: He will.
On Musk’s orders, the work of the United States Agency for International Development has come to a screeching halt. Thousands of its administrators, workers and contractors have been thrown out of work, its programs suspended for who-knows-how-long and its website no longer functioning.
“We’re shutting it down,” Musk said Monday. “You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
My guess is that Musk, the unelected, unappointed billionaire bureaucrat in charge of slashing federal spending, and his boss, President Trump, are betting that most Americans won’t care about stuff that goes on overseas. Voters were in an isolationist mood when they gave Trump a second term. And most of us have only a glancing knowledge of USAID, which delivers humanitarian aid to developing nations beleaguered by conflict, disease and natural disaster across the globe. With a budget of around $40 billion, USAID is also the world’s largest provider of food assistance — which, to put in terms even Musk might grok, means it saves the lives of malnourished babies.
But — surprise — Americans do care. On Wednesday, pro-USAID demonstrations took place at state capitols around the country. In Washington, D.C., where USAID is headquartered and many of its workers and contractors live, thousands turned out to protest Musk’s abrupt, potentially illegal move.
Detractors may wonder what the agency does, but a better question is what doesn’t it do?
Founded during the Kennedy administration to counter Soviet influence, USAID has helped Ukraine in its fight against Russia, worked to ensure that elections are free and fair and, collaborating with partners in 100 countries around the world, alleviated poverty, hunger, illness and desperation. It funds independent foreign media and civil society activists, advancing global freedom and security. And nearly all of that has abruptly stopped.
The New York Times reported that the Trump administration’s stop-work order to all USAID-funded organizations leaves thousands of people “with experimental drugs and devices in their bodies with no access to monitoring or care.”
Like any massive agency, USAID suffers from a degree of waste, fraud and abuse. The agency’s inspector general also recently laid out his concerns about a frustrating lack of United Nations cooperation with USAID and recommended changes.
But despite problems that should be addressed, USAID is the very embodiment of American soft power. It’s quite simply the most persuasive peaceful tool we have to improve people’s lives, spread democratic ideals and counter China’s growing influence in Africa and South America.
Which is why, as you can imagine, autocrats around the world are thrilled to see it dismantled.
“Wrapped into the billions the U.S. spends annually on foreign aid — more than any other nation — are hundreds of grants for grassroots groups dedicated to fighting for democracy in authoritarian countries around the world,” the Associated Press reported. Favorable reactions to the agency’s shuttering came from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Russia, the AP noted: “Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on X that he hopes the ‘notorious Deep State doesn’t swallow’ Musk for pulling the plug on the agency.”
Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint for the second Trump administration, devotes a whole chapter to USAID, accusing the Biden administration of allowing the agency to promote “a radical ideology” and a “divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systematic racism.” And yet despite such absurd hyperbole, Project 2025 admits that the agency is crucial “to counter Communist China’s strategy of world domination.”
Musk called USAID an “evil” “criminal organization.” Trump chimed in that it’s run by “a bunch of radical lunatics.”
That is crazy. But it’s not surprising, because — with apologies to “Stranger Things” — we’re all living in the Upside Down right now.
“The idea that this is a criminal enterprise? Please,” said Peter Kerndt, a public health physician who recently spent five years in Mozambique working for a USAID contractor on a project to curb the spread of tuberculosis. His work involved tracing, identifying and treating those infected with the deadly disease. On Jan. 28, he was abruptly fired.
“It’s like a punch to the gut,” said Kerndt, who worked for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health for 29 years before leaving for USAID. “My God, Musk doesn’t know the work that is being done. I think the richest man in the world has an agenda.”
Ya think?
Sen. Chris Murphy advanced a plausible theory Tuesday night in a video posted to Instagram. Musk, whose business relies on government contracts, is simply out to “pad his pockets,” the Connecticut Democrat said. He noted that Musk makes half his Teslas in China, which is also his biggest foreign market.
“He’s in a row right now with China because China is not allowing him to market his self-driving vehicle, and they are trying to give advantage to their domestic self-driving product,” Murphy said. “How do you get in quick favor with the Chinese government? You dismantle the agency that is the biggest thorn in the side of China.”
The USAID inspector general was also investigating how Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite terminals, purchased with agency funds, were used in Ukraine’s war with Russia, though details are sparse. Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote that Musk once cut off the Ukrainian military’s access to Starlink to thwart a submarine drone attack against Russia. That is simply too much power for one individual to wield.
MAGA Republicans can yelp all they want about “woke” agendas being exported by USAID, but the bottom line is the agency does incredibly important, lifesaving work.
I asked Dr. Kerndt why Americans should care about the work he does to prevent and cure tuberculosis, which is often fatal if untreated and for which there is no vaccine.
“Tuberculosis affects young, healthy people,” he told me. “It’s a catastrophic cost to those individuals, to the breadwinners, to the families. It sinks them further into poverty. It’s something we can prevent for pennies on the dollar. And it’s a source of immeasurable respect for the U.S.”
Throwing that good work away to appease a childish billionaire will leave a lasting moral stain on this country.
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
Early in April, Ruben Hallali got an unusual alert on his phone: The evening temperature at Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport had jumped about 6 degrees Fahrenheit in seconds.
Mr. Hallali, the chief executive of the weather risk company Sereno, had set up notifications for extreme weather swings. Then, nine days later, it happened again.
“It was an isolated jump, at one single station, early in the evening,” said Mr. Hallali, who added that he noticed another strange coincidence about the spikes: The timing was just right for somebody to reap a windfall on the betting site Polymarket.
He wasn’t the only one who sensed a problem. Météo-France, the country’s national meteorological service, filed a complaint last week with the police and local prosecutors, saying it had evidence that a weather sensor at Charles de Gaulle, the country’s largest airport, may have been tampered with.
The temperature swings, experts said, coincided with a period of unusual activity on Polymarket, one of the leading online prediction markets, which allow users to wager on the outcome of virtually anything.
One increasingly popular area is weather betting, where speculators can make real-time wagers on temperature readings, rainfall totals, the number of Atlantic hurricanes in a year and much more — with payouts in the thousands of dollars and higher.
As the stakes rise, so has the temptation to tamper with the instruments used to generate weather readings in hopes of engineering a lucrative outcome. Experts warn that this could have dangerous ripple effects, like degrading the information that underpins safe air travel.
Temperature data is used in a host of calculations at airports, helping determine correct takeoff distance, climb rate and whether crews need to apply frost treatment to planes. It’s crucial to airport safety, Mr. Hallali said.
“The Charles de Gaulle incident is not an isolated curiosity,” Mr. Hallali said. “It is what happens when financial incentives meet fragile data infrastructure.”
On April 6, the temperature reading at Charles de Gaulle jumped from 64 degrees Fahrenheit to 70 degrees at 7 p.m., before slowly falling over the next hour, according to data from Météo-France.
On April 15, the recorded temperature climbed even more sharply, from 61 degrees at 9 p.m. to 72 at 9:30 p.m., then dropping back to 61 a half-hour later.
In both instances, the spikes set the high temperature for the day, the metric on which some Polymarket wagers rest.
Laurent Becler, a spokesman for Météo-France, said the service contacted the police after noticing the discrepancies in temperature data. He declined to comment further on the case, saying it was under investigation.
Mr. Hallali said that after the first instance, experts and commenters on the French weather forum Infoclimat began to search answers. Theories were floated, including user error. But after the second spike, commenters zeroed in on the unusual Polymarket wagers, which totaled nearly $1.4 million over the two days, according to the company’s data.
The sums bet on April 6 and 15 were hundreds of thousands of dollars higher than on typical days this month.
It is not the first time that strange bets on prediction markets have raised accusations of insider trading.
On Thursday, a U.S. Army special forces soldier who helped capture President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in January was charged with using classified information to bet on outcomes related to Venezuela, making more than $400,000 on Polymarket. Late last year, another trader on the site made roughly $300,000 betting on last-minute pardons from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. before he left office.
Polymarket did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While the site used to tie some bets to temperature readings at Charles de Gaulle, this week, after Météo-France filed its complaint, the platform began using temperatures taken at another airport near the city, Paris-Le Bourget, according to recent bets on the site.
Representatives for Charles de Gaulle airport declined to comment beyond saying that the case was under investigation. The airport police also declined to comment. The Bobigny Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is handling the case, declined to answer questions about the investigation but said that no complaint had been filed against Polymarket.
As to how the instruments could have been tampered with, a number of theories have been offered online, including by use of a hair dryer or a lighter. Mr. Hallali said that the precision of the spike on April 15 suggested the use of a calibrated portable heating device, although he declined to speculate about what kind.
“Markets are expanding into every domain where an outcome can be observed, measured, and settled,” he said. “As these markets multiply, so does the surface area for manipulation.”
As the war in Iran strangles the flow of oil around the globe, California’s jet fuel reservoirs are running low.
The state — which refines much of its own fuel in El Segundo and elsewhere but still relies on crude oil imports — has seen its jet fuel stock decline by more than 25% from last year’s peak to a level not seen since 2023, according to data from the California Energy Commission.
The supply is shrinking as a global shortage is already affecting travelers’ summer plans with canceled flights and higher fares. It could even affect plans for people coming to Los Angeles for the 2026 World Cup, which starts in June, said Mike Duignan, a hospitality expert and professor at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University.
“People don’t know exactly how this is going to escalate,” he said. “There’s a huge black cloud over the sea for the World Cup and the travel slump that we’re seeing is all linked to this oil shortage.”
As fuel supplies shrink, flight prices are rising. Airlines are adding baggage surcharges to cover fuel costs. Several routes leaving from smaller California hubs, including Sacramento and Burbank, have already been canceled.
Air Canada has suspended flights for this summer, cutting routes from JFK to Toronto and Montreal.
“Jet fuel prices have doubled since the start of the Iran conflict, affecting some lower profitability routes and flights which now are no longer economically feasible,” the airline said in a statement last week.
Europe had just more than a month’s supply of jet fuel left last week, the International Energy Agency said. In an effort to cut costs, the German airline Lufthansa slashed 20,000 flights from its summer schedule this week.
Without a fresh oil supply flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, the situation is unlikely to improve, experts said. The oil reserves countries and companies have in storage are helping fill shortfalls, but the squeezed supply chain could still wreak economic havoc.
“When there’s a shortage somewhere, everything is affected,” said Alan Fyall, an associate dean of the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality Management. “Airlines are being cautious, and I would say that is a very wise strategy at the moment.”
California’s jet fuel stock reached its lowest levels in two and a half years at 2.6 million barrels last week, down from a peak of more than 3.5 million barrels last year.
The California Energy Commission, which tracks fuel inventory, said the state’s current jet fuel stock is sill sufficient.
“Current production and inventory levels of jet fuel are within historical ranges,” a spokesperson said. “Although supply is tight, no structural deficit has emerged yet. The present tightness reflects short‑term global market stress. As long as refinery operations remain stable, California is positioned to meet regional jet fuel needs.”
Europe has been affected more directly because it relies on the Middle East for the vast majority of its crude oil and many refined products, experts said. California gets crude oil from the Middle East but also from Canada, Argentina and Guyana.
The state has the capacity to refine around 200,000 barrels of jet fuel per day, most of it from refineries in El Segundo and Richmond.
The amount of crude oil originating in the state has been declining since the early 2000s, as state regulations and drilling costs have led to more imports.
California has become particularly vulnerable to supply-chain shocks like the war in Iran, says Chevron, one of the companies that provides jet fuel in the state.
“The conflict in the Mideast Gulf has exposed the danger of California’s decision to offshore energy production,” said Ross Allen, a Chevron spokesperson. “Taxes, red tape and burdensome regulations cost the state nearly 18% of its refinery capacity in just the past year, and we urge policymakers to protect the remaining manufacturing capacity.”
In 2025, 61% of crude oil supply to California’s refineries came from foreign sources, according to the California Energy Commission. Around 23% came from inside the state, down from 35% five years ago.
The state’s refining capacity has also been declining, said Jesus David, senior vice president of Energy at IIR Energy. The West Coast region’s refining capacity has decreased from 2.9 million to 2.3 million barrels a day since 2019, he said.
“California’s had issues prior to the war,” David said. “Nothing new has been built over the past 30 years, and California has closed a lot of capacity.”
The result is higher prices for both gasoline and jet fuel in the state. Jet fuel at LAX costs close to $15 per gallon this week, compared with almost $10 at Denver International Airport and $11 at Newark International Airport.
Gasoline prices have also been hit hard by the global conflict. Average gas prices in California are close to $6 a gallon, around $2 higher than the national average.
The West Coast is a “fuel island” because it’s not connected by pipelines to the rest of the country, United Airlines chief executive Scott Kirby said in an interview last month. That means oil and refined products have to be brought in by ships.
“Fuel price is more susceptible to supply weakness on the West Coast than anywhere else in the country,” Kirby said.
Some airlines might not survive the turmoil if oil prices don’t level out soon, he said. Spirit Airlines, a budget carrier based in Florida, is reportedly facing imminent liquidation if it isn’t bailed out by the Trump administration.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
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