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This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Two weeks after the inauguration of Donald Trump,

the new president's chief campaign funder, his consulieri, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk,

tweeted in a tone of glee. We spent the weekend feeding U.S. aid into a wood chipper.

Musk was, of course, referring to the Agency for International Development, an agency

that has saved millions of lives. If the power of the United States means something

positive around the world, the efforts of thousands of foreign aid workers in U.S.

aid, doctors, nurses, logistics experts of all kinds have a lot to do with that.

But Musk and Trump see it otherwise, and they have decimated the agency.

Into the woodchipper, it has gone.

Now the courts have blocked aspects of the federal purge of

USAID, but the damage can't easily be undone. Atul Gawande was a senior leader of USA during the Biden

administration. He ran critical health programs all over the world. Gawanda is a surgeon, an author,

and my longtime colleague writing

for the New Yorker. He's been watching in absolute horror as the agency has been summarily

pulped. We spoke last week. Atul, President Biden appointed you as the assistant administrator for global health at USAID,

and you stepped down on Trump's inauguration day.

And he immediately began targeting USAID with an executive order that halted all foreign aid.

Did you know, or did you intuit that Trump would act the way he has?

No idea.

Previous Trump administration, they had embraced what they themselves called the normals.

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