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President Donald Trump's cuts to USAID could mean as many as 500,000 people die over the next 10 years, one expert predicted.

Al Jazeera cited health experts and aid organizations saying that ending many of the USAID programs that help those with HIV/AIDS "in many African countries could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths on the continent."

In South Africa alone, an official at the Desmond Tutu HIV Center told Al Jazeera that cuts to U.S. funding could cause 500,000 deaths over 10 years.

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Trump has ushered in massive government cuts, including international humanitarian aid that funds efforts to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and help those who already have the disease.

Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) through an executive order and assigned billionaire South African Elon Musk the task of making the cuts. As a result, thousands of government employees worldwide lost their jobs and health insurance.

Some USAID employees were U.S. workers in other countries who were working to stop the spread of disease, help feed starving children, and collect critical data.

Earlier this month, WIRED reported one of the programs the administration cut was funding for drugs that help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS from mother to baby.

“At a minimum, 300 babies that wouldn’t have had HIV, now do,” one USAID worker estimated.

"On Thursday came news that the Trump administration had decided to stop funding UNAIDS, the UN’s HIV/AIDS programme that serves communities around the world," the report also said.

UNAIDS funds work in 55 countries.

“We will see lives lost. In excess of half a million unnecessary deaths will occur because of the loss of the funding, and up to a half a million new infections," said Linda-Gail Bekker, chief operating officer of the Desmond Tutu HIV Center.

Read the full report here.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is meeting with Donald Trump at the White House Friday where the U.S. president is expected to claim victory for a rare minerals deal that will serve as "payback" for U.S. assistance to the war-torn nation. Trump has long sought to be reimbursed for providing Ukraine with weapons needed to push back the Russians, even thought the heads of state for Great Britain and France tried to explain this week that that's not how it's done.

In the Oval Office Thursday Trump asserted that European nations will "get their money back" from what they put into Ukraine's war effort, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that wasn't true: "Quite a bit of ours was gifted. It was given," Starmer said.

Earlier in the week, French President Emanuel Macron also corrected Trump's claims of payback: "To be frank," Macron said, "we paid 60% of the total effort...through guaranteed grants."

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Zelenskyy and Trump have traded barbs in recent days, with Trump calling the elected Ukrainian leader a "dictator" and Zelenskyy claiming Trump was living in a "disinformation space." But in a new analysis piece for CNN.com, Stephen Collinson wrote that "[Zelenskyy] has learned a critical lesson" in dealing with Trump: Give the U.S. president "the win."

And, so Zelenskyy is traveling to the U.S. to sign a modified deal that offers less than what Trump originally wanted, but still makes him look like the strongman he aspires to be.

"The first draft of the deal looked a lot like colonial-style pillage being forced upon a desperate nation; Zelenskyy refused to sign it, warning he couldn’t sell out his nation’s wealth," Collinson wrote.

"The latest version appears far less onerous for Ukraine," he continued. "There’s talk of a joint reconstruction fund but no mention of Trump’s initial claim for a $500 billion value — which was a perfect metaphor for a foreign policy vision that sees the world as a real estate deal."

Collinson explained, "[Zelenskyy] is styling the agreement as only a framework for a future pact — largely because he’s trying to leverage Ukraine’s mineral wealth for future US security guarantees he sees as vital to the survival of any eventual peace deal."

But "just because the rare earth minerals deal with Ukraine seems likely to fall short of the president’s expectations, it doesn’t mean that he won’t market it as an extraordinary victory for himself and Americans," Collinson wrote.

Read the CNN article right here.

Collapsing consumer sentiment, prices still increasing and the double-barrelled threat of tariffs and growing unemployment numbers have some Republicans on edge, reports Semafor.

GOP lawmakers' decision to remain quiet and give Donald Trump a honeymoon as he attempts to reshape the government is quickly coming to an end as the economy struggles and it appears the president's threat of tariffs may come true which will hit American's pocketbooks no matter what he claims.

According to Semafor's Eleanor Mueller, Burgess Everett, and Shelby Talcott, Trump is "running into harsh economic reality" since being sworn in with no quick fixes on the horizon and that has Republicans already looking at the 2026 midterms with dread.

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Noting "... his party will have to answer for the broader economic effects of his policies," the report continues, "Trump won’t have to face voters again, but congressional Republicans will next fall. They’re clearly conscious of the need to corral inflation while staving off recession."

According to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) who is already facing an uphill battle to be re-elected, "the tariff regimen has to be right, or it’s going to be inflationary" while warning it could "end up being a very, very difficult cycle for us.”

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) stated he is already hearing from concerned constituents about the coming tariffs, explaining, "They’re kind of trying to figure out what are the changes that Trump’s going to make now, and [whether] that could once again have an effect on their businesses.”

Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) also sounded the alarm, telling Semafor, "I’m not the biggest fan of depending on [tariffs] for revenue ... the cost to consumers is something we’re talking about, and we need to be mindful of that.”

The report notes that, with Republicans becoming more publicly critical of the Trump administration, the public fretting "may betray deeper fault lines to come."

You can read more here.

The Republican Party’s sweeping electoral victories that secured them a rare trifecta of the federal government could prove to be a double-edged sword that comes back to haunt them in 2026.

That’s according to a new report in Axios, which detailed the anxiety Republicans on Capitol Hill are beginning to sense in congressional districts across the nation as backlash to the Trump administration’s slashing of federal programs and personnel becomes painfully obvious.

And the early opposition just weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term could get in the way of their legislative plan, the report added.

"It could be trouble,” one moderate Republican told Axios when speaking about political concerns surrounding the party’s main legislative priorities. "We saw what happened in 2018," the lawmaker added about the midterm year where voter anger over the GOP’s legislative agenda helped fuel a Democratic resurgence that flipped more than 40 House seats, the publication said.

After hours of dramatic vote-wrangling, House Republicans passed their budget framework on Tuesday. But some Republicans in vulnerable districts quickly distanced themselves from the budget "win," seeing it more as a ticking "time bomb," according to Axios.

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"Last night's vote was just a procedural step to start federal budget negotiations and does NOT change any current laws," Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT), claimed in a CNN interview that the resolution made “zero mention of cutting Medicaid,” despite it mandating the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify $880 billion in cuts over the next decade, which would likely have to come from Medicaid.

The concerns come as GOP lawmakers have been berated at town halls across the country by constituents angry about the assault on the federal government ushered in by Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

“Most of the concern now is over ... DOGE," said a second House Republican who spoke anonymously to Axios, "but there's also, maybe not too far behind that, the message that they are trying to get across on reconciliation."

Democrats, meanwhile, are "eager to exploit Republicans' struggles as the process of crafting the final package begins," according to the report.

"Health care's gone for everyone ... we just won back the House," Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) is quoted as saying.

President Donald Trump's effort to overhaul the federal government now features a retired Navy captain and twice failed Congressional candidate who surmised that witches had "taken over" Monterey, California.

Hung Cao lost his 2022 bid for the House of Representatives in Virginia's 10th Congressional District, then lost his Senate campaign last year to incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

A staunch ally of Trump, Cao was rewarded Thursday with a top position in the Navy.

"I am pleased to announce that Hung Cao will be our next United States Under Secretary of the Navy," Trump said on his Truth Social account. "Hung is the embodiment of the American Dream. As a refugee to our Great Nation, Hung worked tirelessly to make proud the Country that gave his family a home. He went to our amazing United States Naval Academy, and later earned his Master’s Degree in Physics. Hung served in combat as a Special Operations Officer for twenty five years. With Hung’s experience both in combat, and in the Pentagon, he will get the job done."

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Cao has a long history of peddling conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods, many of which became the focus of attacks by Democrats in his failed campaigns. This includes accusations he denigrated NATO employees as "lazy" and compared abortion to the horrors of the Holocaust.

"The Nazis did this. They’ll take Jewish babies and just take the legs and just smash the babies and kill them. You think that can’t happen in this country?" he said at a campaign rally, according to The Washington Post.

Additionally, he said witches have taken hold in Monterey, California.

"There’s a place in Monterey, California called Lovers Point. The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it’s become, they took out the ‘Christ,’ it’s Lovers Point and it's really, Monterey is a very dark place now, with a lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community has really taken over and we can’t let that happen in Virginia,” Cao said.

The stark possibility of President Donald Trump potentially ignoring a court order sparked by his administration’s foreign aid freeze could explode into a full-on constitutional crisis — “and effectively end the republic,” Rachel Maddow said Thursday night as she delivered an ominous warning to viewers.

“They have been joking about this and making, you know, macho sounding bluffs about this for a long time now – particularly from the vice president – J.D. Vance,” Maddow said Thursday. “How is the Supreme Court going to deal with it now that it's real?”

The MSNBC host delved into possible scenarios in the opening minutes of her top-rated show that could develop depending on how the Supreme Court weighs in on the very real prospect that Trump could openly defy a court order – what she described as a “very scary issue.”

The high court, whose ultra-conservative majority was hand selected by Trump, is set to take up the case Friday at the request of government attorneys eager to find a way out of U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order to unfreeze funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.

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“Do they try to give him what he wants from the courts so that Trump doesn't break that glass? Doesn't, you know, smash through the brightest bright line that we have and effectively end the republic?” she pondered. “Do they appease him because they – ‘oh, he's so scary, we better not make him defy a court order – we better make sure all court orders go his way.’”

She continued to preview the impending Supreme Court showdown by imagining an alternate situation where the justices use the opportunity “to make clear to him that his powers as president actually don't allow him to defy the court.”

“Do they tell him that if he does try to defy the courts, he is effectively declaring war on the United States of America? We'll see,” she added.

Maddow told viewers to keep their “eyes wide open on that and take it with all the seriousness it deserves.”

Watch the clip below or at this link: