The New Yorker (October 27, 2025; p. 30-39) published a piece on Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. The OMB is one of the most powerful agencies in the executive branch. It vets executive orders before the President signs them, reviews regulations issued by other agencies, and issues workforce policies. “Most notably, every penny appropriated by Congress is dispensed by the OMB.”
At the [OMB staff] meeting in February according to people familiar with the events, Vought’s directive was simple: slash foreign assistance to the greatest extent possible. The U. S. government shouldn’t support overseas anti-malaria initiatives, he argued, because buying mosquito nets doesn’t make Americans safer or more prosperous.
Is distributing mosquito nets to poor people in poor countries supposed to make “Americans safer or more prosperous”? Or is it intended to help stop the spread of malaria which kills millions each year globally?
The conversation turned to the United States Institute of Peace, a government-funded nonprofit created under Ronald Reagan, which worked to prevent conflicts overseas; Vought asked what options existed to eliminate it. When he was told that the U.S.I.R was funded by Congress and legally independent, he replied, “We’ll see what we can do.” (A few days later, Trump signed an executive order that directed the O.M.B. to dismantle the organizations.)
As a follower of Jesus, I find this unsurprising but appalling. Unsurprising, because if the defining policy is “America first,” poor people dying of malaria in poor countries is not our concern unless the disease threatens us. And I find it appalling because I thought though America is far from perfect, we as a nation stood ready to do good in a broken world.
There are arguments on the other side. One is that we must not confuse personal virtues with characteristics of nations. People can be compassionate and loving, but how can those be applied to an entire country in the marketplace of nations? How do we respond to that? One way is to acknowledge the point but to argue that the President represents the people. The people should vote for a candidate that demonstrates and embraces virtues of loving compassion and promises to allow them to help shape her/his foreign policy. We are watching, in real time, how a President’s virtue—or in our case his wicked lack of virtue—shapes his foreign policy, foreign aid, and the reputation of America in the eyes of the world.
Photo credit: Photo by Masum Saieed (https://www.pexels.com/photo/peaceful-baby-sleeping-under-mosquito-netting-29942094/)
