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On the same week as his 55th birthday, almost-trillionaire Elon Musk attempted to defend himself after representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) accused him of sentencing millions of children “to death” by dismantling USAID program.
A heated Musk threatened to sue Khanna for defamation, arguing he “should be in prison” — yet there’s extensive documentation of the humanitarian crisis the near-total collapse of US foreign aid has wrought. As detailed in a 2025 study, the impact of Musk’s decision to dissolve USAID has been devastating, from dwindling emergency food assistance to soaring cases of malaria and HIV/AIDS.
“I said the cuts DOGE made to USAID are potentially a death sentence for an estimated 4.5 million children around the world,” Khanna wrote in a Substack post. “It comes straight from the first comprehensive analysis of its kind into what American foreign aid actually does,” he added, referring to the 2025 study.
Musk did not take kindly to the missive, arguing that “they cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died” in a Sunday tweet. “Not a single name!”
But his wish was Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s command.
In response to Musk’s attempt to downplay his primary role in the burgeoning humanitarian crisis, Kristof listed off numerous people, including young children, who have perished as a result of severed foreign aid.
Musk “says that no one can name a person who died from his aid cuts,” he wrote. “In fact, I’ve met the kids who are dying, and I’ve talked to the families who lost children. In my columns, I’ve cited many, many names of people who have died because of Musk’s aid cuts.”
Kristof cited a “23-year-old woman who died in childbirth” and a one-year-old who died of malaria in Liberia, as well as an eight-year-old, named Achol Deng died in South Sudan after “Musk cut funding for the health care worker who provided her medicines” for HIV/AIDS.
“I could go on and on,” the journalist wrote. “In almost every village you go to in South Sudan, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone or other countries I reported in, you find people dying because of aid cuts.”
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