by | Mar 26, 2025 | The Hill
The Trump administration plans to end U.S. funding for Gavi, a global program that purchases shots to help vaccinate children in developing countries against some of the world’s deadliest diseases.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance is a public-private partnership that helps vaccinate more than half the world’s children. Since its launch in 2000, the program has helped more than 1.1 billion children.
Gavi supports vaccines against 20 infectious diseases, including COVID-19, HPV, Ebola, malaria and rabies.
The termination of the $2.6 billion contract for Gavi was among a nearly
of ended international aid programs previously funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and provided to Congress recently by a whistleblower.
Democrats say the list originated from the desk of Peter Marocco, one of the leading figures dismantling USAID alongside Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
The U.S. is the third largest contributor to Gavi and second largest government contributor, providing 12 percent of its budget. The largest private donor was the Gates Foundation.
According to an analysis by health policy research group KFF, U.S. contributions have grown over the past 10 years from $175 million in fiscal year 2014 to $300 million in FY 2024, which is the highest amount appropriated to Gavi thus far.
But the loss of U.S. funding will likely be a significant setback for the organization. In a statement, Gavi said that U.S. support for its operations is “vital.”
“With U.S. support, we can save over 8 million lives over the next 5 years and give millions of children a better chance at a healthy, prosperous future,” the organization said in a statement on X.
“For 25 years, the USA and Gavi have had the strongest of partnerships. Without its help, we could not have halved child mortality, saved 18 million lives or helped 19 countries transition from our support (some becoming donors themselves). We hope this partnership can continue,” the statement continued.
Gavi helps low-income countries afford lifesaving vaccines. The organization keeps global stockpiles for vaccines against diseases such as Ebola and cholera and then deploys them during pandemics.
Gavi says it negotiates vaccines at prices that are affordable for the poorest countries and shares the costs on a sliding scale. As a country’s income level rises, it pays more.
U.S. watchdog group Public Citizen said the administration’s decision to cut funding for Gavi could be illegal.
“Congress has authority over foreign assistance funding. The administration’s attempt to unilaterally walk away from its Gavi commitment raises serious legal questions and should be challenged,” Liza Barrie, the group’s director for global vaccines access, said in a statement. “Lawmakers must stand up for the rule of law, and for the belief that the value of a child’s life is not determined by geography.”
by | Mar 26, 2025 | The Hill
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Wednesday said “very sensitive information” was discussed during a Trump administration group chat on Signal that included a journalist, but the long-time ally of President Trump said he sees the snafu as a “lessons learned” episode.
“[R]ecent revelations about the content of the texts — while not discussing war plans per se — do in fact detail very sensitive information about a planned and ongoing military operation,” Graham said in a statement. “Lessons learned.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and a longtime foreign affairs correspondent,
that he had been inadvertently included in correspondence through Signal, an
, where Vice President Vance, National Security adviser Mike Waltz, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others discussed plans for an attack on Houthi targets in Yemen hours before it took place on March 15.
The White House has
the officials involved in the mishap.
But the news has raised questions about the decision to use an outside app to communicate sensitive details about the airstrike as it was being planned, highlighted by Goldberg’s addition to the group chat among top officials in the administration.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have voiced concern about the communication mishap, though
, like Graham, have not followe Democrats in calling for the removal of specific members of the Trump administration over it.
Graham, a military veteran, has
issues during his four terms in the Senate. He is
next year.
He stressed Wednesday he stands by “all members” of President Trump’s national security team.
by | Mar 26, 2025 | The Hill
The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg said on Wednesday the White House is playing “some sort of weird semantic game” by focusing on his use of “attack plans” instead of “war plans” in
about the Signal group chat in which top Trump officials discussed plans to strike Houthi rebels — apparently without realizing Goldberg was in the chat.
The top editor on Wednesday published follow-up reporting, headlined, “Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal.” The story followed
, headlined, “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt zeroed in on the different wording and suggested The Atlantic was backtracking on its initial claim that “war plans” were inadvertently shared with a journalist.
“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans,’” Leavitt wrote in a post on the social platform X, with a screenshot of the headline of the Wednesday article.
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” she added.
Goldberg dismissed the suggestion that the variation in word choice signaled any sort of concession.
“I don’t even know what that means. I mean, the plain language in the text is-, what are they arguing? That an attack is different than a war?” Goldberg said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, when asked to respond to Leavitt’s post.
“They put operational details of a forthcoming attack on a terrorist organization into Signal, into a Signal chat that included phone numbers that they didn’t recognize. I don’t even understand what that means,” he continued.
“They’re talking about attacking and killing terrorists using various weapons systems, so she’s just playing at some sort of weird semantic game. I don’t understand,” Goldberg added.
Goldberg published group chat messages on Wednesday with additional detail about the timing of the attack and the weapons that would be used.
Goldberg
those detailed messages, citing concerns about disclosing classified U.S. intelligence, but after Trump officials repeatedly blasted the reporting and claimed classified information was
in the chat, the outlet said it wanted to make the messages public to let people decide for themselves.
“The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” Goldberg and colleague Shane Harris wrote.
Hegseth has
sharing classified information in the group chat in comments to reporters, and during an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the information in the Signal group was not classified.
“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared,” the journalists from The Atlantic said.
by | Mar 26, 2025 | The Hill
Former Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s messages in a Signal group chat about the Houthi attack have left her “absolutely floored.”
“Pete Hegseth put the sequencing of the entire operation & types of aircraft that would be used to conduct these strikes all before the operation took place. He put the lives of our fighter pilots at risk,”
Wednesday on X.
“Details like this are classified,” she added. “I am absolutely floored.”
In her post, Singh included a screenshot of a message Hegseth sent in a Signal group chat over the weekend,
The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who was added to the text chain.
The incident has sparked widespread shock about the top Trump administration officials
about its plans for the Houthi attack.
In the fallout, Hegseth claimed that war plans
in the Signal group, prompting The Atlantic to release more of the screenshots from the chat.
The published chat shows details about the attack that Goldberg’s original article did not contain, including a specific timeline of the strike and weapons used.
The Atlantic said it was releasing the messages because the Trump administration
no classified information was shared over the app.
Singh, who served under the Biden administration, said she believes there will be
from the revelations shared by Goldberg.
Democrats have quickly criticized the administration, with many calling for investigations into the incident and for Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz, who initiated the chat, to resign.
by | Mar 26, 2025 | The Hill
President Trump has named L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative media critic and pro-Israel commentator, to be the U.S. ambassador to South Africa.
According to an action
, the Senate received Bozell’s nomination on Monday. He will have to be confirmed by the upper chamber.
The nomination comes at a time when relations are strained between the U.S. and South Africa.
The Trump administration has criticized the country for its relationship with Iran and criticism of the Israeli government. It has also
South African ambassador to the United States Ebrahim Rasool and labeled him persona non grata.
Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” after he criticized Trump. The South African diplomat had accused the president of leading a “white supremacist movement” at home and abroad.
Bozell was previously nominated to lead the U.S. global media agency, but the nomination was withdrawn on Monday and his name was then submitted to be the ambassador to South Africa,
.
Bozell is the founder and president of the Media Research Center, a watchdog organization that looks to highlight alleged liberal bias from media outlets, the Times reported.
The outlet noted that Bozell’s son, Leo Brent Bozell IV, was convicted and sentenced in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He was later pardoned by Trump.
