Authored by David Manney via PJ Media,
Former HIV outreach worker and biological male Rubi Lama lost a job he'd held for nine years when U.S. funding vanished from a health program in Nepal. He tested people, counseled those at risk, and helped sex workers avoid infection.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce CenetaMonths later, unable to find other work, he joined them along a highway outside Hetauda.
An Associated Press social media post about transgender aid workers in Nepal turning to sex work after losing their jobs due to U.S. foreign aid cuts sparked a wave of conservative backlash, with critics arguing the video made the case for defunding USAID rather than saving it.
The AP post said that in Nepal, where "a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options," around 100 LGBTQ aid workers left jobless by U.S. funding cuts had turned to sex work to survive. An accompanying video focused on Rubi Lama, a former HIV outreach worker who said USAID-funded programs had provided free condoms, lubricant and HIV-prevention medication before the cuts.
"When USAID funding was there, condoms were free, lubricant was also distributed ... for free," Lama said in the video, adding that HIV treatments, including PrEP, were also available without cost. "But, now it is gone."
His story is painful on a human scale; it also raises a question many Americans are asking: why was the United States expected to keep paying his salary?
Lama worked for Friends Hetauda, part of a network connected to the Blue Diamond Society. The society received 85% of its funding from USAID, operated 20 clinics, and employed 350 people.
For nine years, Lama - who is transgender - had devoted her life to conducting HIV outreach in Nepal's marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ sex workers who wait by this highway each night. But after the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, Lama and more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide found themselves out of a job.
In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers' lives was particularly crushing. Starving and scared, Lama and around 100 other LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.
When the money stopped, 262 employees lost their jobs, and the organization says 35% to 45% of those former workers later entered sex work.
The clinics provided HIV tests, condoms, counseling, antiretroviral drugs, and PrEP. More than 1,200 clients reportedly lost access to PrEP after the shutdown. Those are real health services, and the people affected aren't punchlines.
The political reaction followed a familiar script: President Donald Trump cut foreign aid, vulnerable workers suffered, and American taxpayers were cast as villains for refusing to continue the arrangement.
Trump's Executive Order:
Section 1. Purpose. The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.
Sec. 3. (a) 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy. All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.
Critics spoke as though Washington had fired public employees in Ohio rather than ended overseas grants in Nepal.
Foreign aid can serve American interests; HIV prevention can reduce disease, improve stability, and protect people who travel across borders. Compassion also has limits when one country becomes the permanent source of salaries and program funding for organizations half a world away.
Nepal has a national government; it has health agencies, wealthy residents, international charities, and neighboring countries with their own interest in regional health.
USAID later told partners to pause new funding obligations and issue stop-work orders or suspensions for existing awards, while critics have said the review led to major disruptions, staff reductions and the cancellation of critical foreign-assistance awards.
But Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway argued the AP post exposed misplaced priorities, particularly among the media, saying the outlet presented U.S. tax dollars flowing to a "trans Nepalese job protection program" as though it was a good use of public money.
"The AP announces that your hard-earned tax dollars were flowing to a trans Nepalese job protection program as if that was an even remotely good use of your money," Hemingway wrote in a post on X. "AP is sick Democrat propaganda."
"How dare Elon cut USAID funds to the Nepalese trans sex worker community," quipped Republican activist Jack Posobiec.
Where were they when an organization depended on Washington for 85% of its budget?
President Trump ordered a review of foreign assistance on Jan. 20, 2025, requiring programs to prove they were efficient and aligned with U.S. foreign policy.
The order didn't ban all aid; it required justification before the money kept flowing.
The old system trained foreign groups to build programs around American checks, and when the checks stopped, the collapse was immediate. A model that leaves hundreds of employees with no local funding, no transition plan, and no replacement support was never sustainable.
American families face medical bills, housing costs, layoffs, and taxes of their own. They can care about Rubi Lama without accepting lifelong responsibility for his paycheck. They can support targeted HIV treatment without giving every foreign NGO a permanent claim on the U.S. Treasury.
The outrage over Nepal makes President Trump's case for him. Foreign aid should have a clear purpose, measurable results, shared costs, and an exit plan.
Sympathy can't replace accountability.
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 17:40It's always fun watching the party that cherishes identity politics being torn apart by identity politics.
That's once again the case, as the Democratic National Committee endeavors to lay out its sequence of primaries for the 2028 presidential race. As a DNC panel convenes in Washington this week, there's substantial momentum behind the idea of taking the coveted "first in the nation" spot away from 25% black South Carolina, and handing it over to 31% Hispanic Nevada. Party sources tell the New York Times that the black vs brown infighting over the possibility is getting increasingly nasty.
If the switch happens, South Carolina's tenure in the top slot will have only lasted one election cycle. After a decades-long tradition that had both Republicans and Democrats kicking off their presidential primary balloting in Iowa and New Hampshire, the Biden team maneuvered the DNC into putting South Carolina first in 2024, after the state's black voters played an outsize role in helping Biden win the 2020 nomination. The move was made easier by the fact that, when it was setting the 2024 calendar, the Democratic Party still had a strong, post-2020 case of Black Lives Matter fever, and was fixated on pandering to blacks at every turn.
Christale Spain, who became South Carolina Democrats' first black party chair in 2023, says putting Nevada first would be disrespectful to blacks (Meg Kinnard/AP)“If Nevada gets elevated over South Carolina, it would be because of their Latino vote,” South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain told the New York Times. “So you would then be telling black voters that you matter less than brown voters. And I refuse to believe that our party wants to send any type of message like that.” Of course, a corollary of Spain's assertion is that putting Nevada second tells brown voters that they matter less than black voters.
It's increasingly apparent that America's Latino population is a critical swing vote. Factor in Nevada's status as one of the swing states, and it's easy to see why Democrats are rethinking the batting order -- especially when South Carolina is a solid red state that hasn't given its electoral votes to a Democrat since Jimmy Carter won 56% of the vote in 1976.
Nevada Democratic Party chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno says putting her swing state first would be a smart strategic moveIn an interesting twist to this colorful controversy, the indignant black female South Carolina chair is facing off with the determined black female chair of the Nevada Democrats. “I’m a Black mama whose children are Black and Latino, Native American," Daniele Monroe-Moreno told the Times. Nevada is about 11% black, slightly lagging blacks' 13% share of the US population.
Reverend Al Sharpton -- yes, he's still alive, though not all that relevant -- is among those decrying the idea that South Carolina might be told to give up its seat at the front of the metaphoric primary bus. "Pushing South Carolina to the back of the line would be a slap in the face to the very voters who’ve kept this party alive," he said on Thursday.
The 2024 Electoral College map: Nevada was part of Trump's sweep of all seven swing states, but the state went to Biden in 2020Some black leftists are ridiculing the uproar. "I'm sorry, this is absurd," tweeted Briahna Joy Gray, former press secretary for the 2020 Bernie Sanders Campaign, adding:
"Democrats do not respect the Black vote because they don't have to -- Black Americans vote blue no matter who. The *most* Black voters ever get are rhetorical gestures like promises to pass the George Floyd Act (which never happened) or Junteenth (hooray). By contrast, Latinos are swing voters & consequently will be courted. Moreover, NV is a winnable state for Dems -- SC is not -- so it makes sense to prioritize it."
Other states are making a dark-horse bid to go first, including substantially-Latino (49%) New Mexico and substantially-black (19%) Virginia. Democrats may put off a final decision until after the midterms, to avoid throwing cold water on the voter enthusiasm of whatever states end up losing the race to go first.
Gray questioned the sincerity of black South Carolina pols who are expressing outrage over the prospect of losing their slot: "The scramble to keep SC as the first state to vote in the primary is 100% about SC local politicians trying to preserve their newfound endorsement power & influence. It bears no relationship to the interests of Black Americans in SC or anywhere else."
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 17:20Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,
The Ebola outbreak spreading in Africa has killed more than 1,000 people, authorities said on July 23.
A doctor provides care to a patient with Ebola virus disease at an Ebola treatment center in Bunia, Congo, on July 13, 2026. Benediction Murhabazi /AFP via Getty ImagesThe number of confirmed deaths from Ebola in Congo in recent months hit 1,033, Congolese authorities said.
Forty percent of the confirmed 2,536 patients have died.
Another 506 people have recovered, and 738 are currently in isolation or being treated in hospitals, according to officials in the central African country.
"Health teams are pursuing surveillance operations, case management, and contact tracing to contain the spread of the disease," Congo's Ministry of Communications said.
Teams have been able to track the contacts of 77 percent of patients in a bid to control the outbreak, much lower than the 90 percent threshold suggested as ideal by the World Health Organization.
The only other deaths confirmed in the outbreak are two in Uganda, which has not recorded any new cases in several weeks.
The outbreak was detected in Congo in mid-May, although it is believed to have started weeks or even months earlier. It is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of ebolavirus for which there are no approved treatments or vaccines.
"These are people dying. They are dying because we don't have vaccines, we don't have medicine, we don't have funding," Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a summit in Ghana on Wednesday.
The Africa CDC and other entities have been seeking and have received tens of millions in funding from the United States and other countries to combat the outbreak, but say they need more funds and resources.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters earlier in July that the outbreak was "continuing to outpace the response" and that the response plan needed more than $400 million in additional funds.
Ebola was first identified in 1976 after an outbreak in modern-day Congo. The deadliest Ebola outbreak on record ran for two years starting in 2014 in West Africa, causing 28,610 cases and killing 11,308 people.
That outbreak was caused by the Zaire ebolavirus.
The current outbreak is growing at a much faster rate than that outbreak did, according to Kaseya.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists said in modeling projections released in June that absent "large-scale and sustained public health interventions," the outbreak centered in Congo could become as large as the 2014-2016 outbreak.
"Rapid identification of cases, contact tracing, isolation and treatment of persons with [Ebola], community engagement, and use of safe and dignified burial for persons who die from [Ebola] are necessary to control the outbreak," they said.
Tyler Durden Fri, 07/24/2026 - 17:00