The Daily Populous Sunday June 14th, 2026 evening edition
Authored by commondreams.org and submitted by phillygirllovesbagel

Elon Musk's vault to trillionaire status following the public debut of his rocket company SpaceX came on the heels of an analysis showing the devastating impact of his destruction of the US Agency for International Development on millions of people in countries facing or on the brink of famine.

The analysis, authored by Council on Foreign Relations expert and longtime aid worker Sam Vigersky, noted that Musk's targeting of USAID during his tenure as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resulted in the transfer of the Food for Peace program to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), an agency "without international humanitarian or disaster-response expertise."

Vigersky found that the USDA this year chose just seven countries to receive American grain under the Food for Peace program: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, El Salvador, and Rwanda. The latter two countries, Vigersky noted, "do not meet an emergency threshold" for assistance.

"Meanwhile, the country facing the largest hunger crisis in the world—Sudan—did not make the list. Now in its third consecutive year of famine, Sudan received nothing. In fact, more than 40% of Sudan’s community kitchens, a lifeline for the displaced, have closed in the past six months as funding dried up, according to Islamic Relief," Vigersky reported. "Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Yemen were also passed over. Millions of people in those countries live one step from famine, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the UN-backed monitoring system that uses a standardized five-point scale (five being famine) to measure the severity of food insecurity."

Experts assessing the global impact of USAID's decimation at the hands of billionaire US President Donald Trump and the world's first trillionaire, who bragged publicly about "feeding USAID into the wood chipper," estimate that hundreds of thousands of people have already died as a result of the large-scale loss of humanitarian assistance—and millions more will die in the coming years if swift action is not taken to restore aid.

"The impacts of the cuts were immediate and tragic," Nicholas Enrich, a former USAID employee who became a whistleblower, wrote in The Boston Globe on Friday. "Health clinics and emergency ambulance services shuttered overnight. Clinical trials were deserted. Thousands of healthcare workers lost their jobs. Lifesaving food and medicine was left to expire in warehouses. According to conservative estimates, in the year since USAID was dismantled, 750,000 people have died as a result of the cuts. For the first time in a generation, more children died in one year — 2025—than in the previous year."

Oxfam has estimated that a 10% tax on Musk's $1 trillion fortune would generate enough revenue to end extreme poverty worldwide for a year.

Capable-Computer-729 on June 14th, 2026 at 12:45 UTC »

We have a IRL supervillain.

we_are_sex_bobomb on June 14th, 2026 at 12:44 UTC »

He is a private naturalized citizen and should not have even had the power to do that. It was given to him illegally by twice impeached rapist President Donald J Trump.

Also tax the rich and stop making stock trading a massive tax haven for these parasites. Musk is a “trillionaire” because his legalized gambling with fake money convinces other people to lend him real money and giving him real power to control our lives. It’s a giant scam and he’s a fraudster but there are and will be more like him if we don’t button down this shit.

hitbythebus on June 14th, 2026 at 12:30 UTC »

Remember the “for pennies a day, you can feed a” commercials? This man has $125 for every person on earth.