Above, I am presenting you with a picture of Dr. Ibrahim Adam Somow, director general of the state health ministry in Somalia. You can see more pictures below. The pictures in this edition of my blog come from an article in the October 25, 2025, edition of The New York Times, "America’s Retreat From Aid Is Devastating Somalia’s Health System."
Before our current president took office, the United States of America, operating through the United States Agency for International Development, was providing monies to provide health care in Somalia (and, of course, in other places, too). That aid was abruptly terminated right after our current president took office. As The Times' article puts it: "The Trump administration dismantled the agency and ended vast swaths of foreign assistance to the world’s poorest countries, [and] much of the food aid and health care for children across Somalia were abruptly cut off (emphasis added)."
Did you, or any of our elected representatives in Congress, vote to terminate aid to Somalia, and to cut off help for poor children, so that they would die?
The answer is, "no." The elimination of aid was ordered, on a unilateral basis, by our current president. The termination of aid to the poorest of the poor, throughout the world, was immediate, and the effects of the elimination of this aid have been drastic, as The Times correctly says. Thousands upon thousands of young children have died, and they would have lived, except for our current president's individual action.
The aid and assistance programs terminated by our current president were voted upon by the United States Congress, with funding provided in the nation's budget. Our current president is in contempt of the United States Constitution, which gives him the role of "executing" the programs that our representatives in Congress establish, and doesn't give him the power to make unilateral decisions about what our nation will do, with very few and very narrow exceptions. Despite what the Constitution says, our current president took unilateral action to impose his own, personal ideas about what should be a priority for our nation. Helping poor children, in Somalia and elsewhere, is definitely NOT a priority for our current president.
If the action our current president took with respect to aid to Somalia reminds you of our current president's action in bulldozing down a part of the White House (as mentioned in this blog yesterday), you are "getting" the picture of what's happening. A majority of our elected representatives in Congress have, in essence, abdicated their office and have stood aside as one person imposess his personal priorities on the nation. Does he feel like blowing fishing boats out of the sea, perhaps to prevent some drug smuggling? Well, U.S. armed forces blast away, killing people who are not given a chance to show that they are not, in fact, drug smugglers. That's the president's personal decision, just like his personal decision to let poor children die in Somalia (and elsewhere).
Let's not forget that when our president decides that poor children in Somalia should die, WE get blamed. Yes, the United States of America gets blamed for what the nation does, since we claim, and the world has come to believe, that we have a "representative government," which truly represents what the citizens of this nation want.
If we do have such a government, then it is "America" that has voted to let those children die.
Take a look at the pictures below. If we want to present ourselves as having a "representative" government, then we need to start working to make sure that our government actually represents us (represents "we, the people," I mean).
Take a look at these pictures:
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