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By Brett Murphy, ProPublica and Anna Maria Barry-Jester, ProPublica | On Friday morning, the staffers at a half dozen U.S.-funded medical facilities in Sudan who care for severely malnourished children had a choice to make: Defy President Donald Trump’s order to immediately stop their operations or let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.
They chose the children.
In spite of the order, they will keep their facilities open for as long as they can, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation. The people requested anonymity for fear that the administration might target their group for reprisals. Trump’s order also meant they would stop receiving new, previously approved funds to cover salaries, IV bags and other supplies. They said it’s a matter of days, not weeks, before they run out.
American-funded aid organizations around the globe—charged with providing lifesaving care for the most desperate and vulnerable populations imaginable—have for days been forced to completely halt their operations, turn away patients and lay off staff following a series of sudden stop-work demands from the Trump administration. Despite an announcement earlier this week ostensibly allowing lifesaving operations to continue, those earlier orders have not been rescinded.
Many groups doing such lifesaving work either don’t know the right way to request an exemption to the order, known as a waiver, or have no sense of where their request stands. They’ve received little information from the U.S. government, where, in recent days, humanitarian officials have been summarily ousted or prohibited from communicating with the aid organizations.
Trump’s rapid assault on the international aid system is quickly becoming the most consequential and far-reaching shift in U.S. humanitarian policy since the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, aid groups and government officials warned.
Among the programs that remain grounded as of Friday: emergency medical care for displaced Palestinians and Yemenis fleeing war, heat and electricity for Ukrainian refugees and HIV treatment and mpox surveillance in Africa.
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