Chapter 2: PEPFARCE

In my many decades on this earth, I’ve never felt like there was enough time in the day to sit through a U.S. House of Representatives Committee hearing. Or to write a blog, for that matter. Until Donald Trump. And Elon Musk. And Mike Lawler.

Until Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, posted this on February 3rd: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is a $40B+ agency employing 10K+ people around the globe to provide humanitarian and life-saving aid. I didn’t have a deep understanding of USAID’s programs when I saw Musk’s post, but surely feeding an organization like this into a wood chipper in one weekend was going to cause widespread and needless suffering. Didn’t Congress have some responsibility to oversee the wholesale destruction of the agency it created in 1961? To at least consider a humane transition period for life-saving aid?

So I wrote my Congressman, Mike Lawler, who happens to sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), the committee that supposedly oversees USAID. I wanted to know his position. I wrote every day for a week and a half, and called his office, without response.

Then I saw that HFAC had scheduled a hearing on USAID for February 13th. And for the first time in my life, I added the date and time for a House committee hearing to my calendar. I will never forget what I watched that day. And I will never again accept what I hear from Mike Lawler at face value.

Prelude to a Farce

The first chill in my spine was when I pulled up HFAC’s home page. Just looking at Chairman Brian Mast’s expression and the banner: “THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE UNITED STATES HAS BEGUN” told me that this hearing would not be edifying. I was further discouraged by the title of the hearing, “The USAID Betrayal,” suggesting that the hearing would be about as informative as a witch trial after the witch has been burned.

By the way, these hearings don’t happen very often. As of today, HFAC has held just one full committee hearing this year. On “The USAID Betrayal.”

After reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (which I word-checked to ensure no changes), HFAC’s chairman, Brian Mast, kicked it off with this statement: “The purpose of today’s hearing is to discuss the misuse of public trust through USAID’s ‘woke’ programming.” Oh, boy.

Then on to the first witness. No surprise, a senior research fellow from The Heritage Foundation, the far-right “think tank” that brought us Project 2025. As soon as he began, some activists sitting right behind him activated, chanting: “Restore AIDS funding now. PEPFAR saves lives.”

As they were physically removed, Chairman Mast smirked and said, “I guess these guys don’t watch the news. They didn’t realize that PEPFAR was one of the many programs that did prove to be life-saving, so the funding was restored. Somebody better give them a link to, uh, I don’t know, maybe FOX News or something like that.” I suspect that those protestors were better-informed on PEPFAR than either Chairman Mast or FOX News.

All of them were better-informed than me. What is PEPFAR? The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was launched in 2003 by George W. Bush. It claims to be “the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history – saving 26 million lives.” The program’s website amazingly remains intact, although there have been no press releases or reports issued since December.

PEPFAR is a program that Mike Lawler loves to talk about, praising its effectiveness and all the lives saved. And no need to worry, as he told Joe Scarborough the day before the hearing, because “Secretary Rubio did grant a waiver [from Trump’s freeze on foreign aid] for life-saving programs like PEPFAR, which obviously is critical on the continent of Africa, saving tens of millions of lives . . . .”

So back to those protestors. They didn’t even need to watch FOX News. They could have watched MSNBC and been reassured by Mike Lawler that the GOP recognized the value of PEPFAR and had granted it a waiver. But perhaps those protestors knew better.

The very day of the hearing, Reuters reported: “Trump’s dismantling of USAID strands oxygen, HIV drugs in transit.”

As summarized by the health policy research organization KFF on February 20th: “Although PEPFAR was able to secure a limited waiver on February 1 to allow some services to continue, communication about the waiver has been slow or unclear and the payment system remained unavailable. In addition, the waiver was limited to care and treatment only, as well as PMTCT and PrEP for pregnant and breastfeeding women; no other prevention services, including PrEP for those at risk of HIV infection or already on PrEP, were allowed. Even where the waiver might have been communicated to implementers, the capacity to deliver services has already been negatively affected with thousands of aid workers having already lost their jobs.”

And yesterday’s story from Politico: “Global AIDS program teetering after Trump admin’s shock-and-awe.”

To go deeper on this topic, see the UNAIDS site: “Impact of US funding cuts on the global AIDS response.”

But why go deeper when you can watch Mike Lawler on MSNBC and be reassured that PEPFAR and US foreign aid policy are in good hands.

Mike Lawler: “Secretary Rubio did grant a waiver.”

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In our next chapter: fact-checking Mike Lawler’s performance at the February 13th hearing. A masterful lesson in misinformation, which built in stridency and volume to the rousing conclusion: “That is why this nonsense needs to end.”