'500,000 children have died': Sen. Jeff Merkley slams Marco Rubio over USAID shutdown
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), on Tuesday, rebuked Secretary of State Marco Rubio's claim that no one died due to the sudden shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In a Senate hearing, Merkley claimed that many studies suggest over 500,000 children have died due to the shuttering of various aid programmes that the agency ran and urged Rubio to reflect on the issue and work to rebuild those programs that helped in addressing serious diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV, nutrition, and Ebola, which recently re-emerged in Central Africa.
During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Merkley criticized comments made by Rubio about the shuttering of the USAID programs. "You've expressed that no one died as a result of the sudden shutdown of aid," the Congressman said. "But I want to note that experts at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Boston University School of Public Health estimate that more than 500,000 children have died as a result of that sudden shutdown," he added. He then went on to describe that if Rubio were to talk a walk across the U.S., the number would translate to "one dead child roughly every 30 feet." He then urged the State Secretary to reassess and rebuild the programs to address the deadly diseases.
The comments come a year after the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk, shut down USAID, which was set up in the early 1960s to administer humanitarian aid programmes on behalf of the US government. As per Oxfam, much of USAID's budget was spent on health programmes, including offering polio vaccinations in countries where the disease still circulates and helping to stop the spread of viruses. The agency also played a critical role in tackling poverty, hunger, and inequality worldwide.
At the very start of his second term, Trump made major cuts to the agency, starting with putting all programs on hold for a 90-day review. What followed was massive cuts, layoffs, and the ultimate shutdown of USAID in July 2025. The sudden shutdown had a profound impact on humanitarian efforts, with a Center for Global Development analysis suggesting that the cuts may have led to between 500,000 and 1,000,000 lives lost in 2025 compared to previous years. According to models from Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, the end of USAID "has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children."
Furthermore, the decline in future spending is projected to lead to 670,000 and 1,600,000 lives lost annually. One of the agency's programs, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which saved over 25 million lives, prevented millions of HIV infections, and supported countries in HIV epidemic control since 2003, was also shut down, potentially leaving over 20 million people, including 500,000 children at risk without adequate HIV treatment and services, according to a New York Times report.
Experts further argue that the recent outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which is tearing through northeast Democratic Republic of the Congo, could have been prevented or slowed with USAID support. According to The Guardian, the World Health Organization says over 170 deaths are thought to be linked to this outbreak, with nearly 750 suspected cases so far, warning that the scale of the epidemic in DRC is much larger.
