WASHINGTON: Nearly a week after an earthquake killed more than 2,200 people in Afghanistan and left tens of thousands homeless, the United States has not taken the first step to authorize emergency aid, and it was unclear if it plans to help at all, two former senior US officials and a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
The lack of response by Washington to one of Afghanistan’s deadliest quakes in years underscores how President Donald Trump has forfeited decades of US leadership of global disaster relief with his deep foreign aid cuts and closure of the main US foreign assistance agency, said the source and the former officials.
The US Agency for International Development was officially shuttered on Tuesday.
The State Department on Monday extended its “heartfelt condolences” to Afghanistan in an X post.
As of Friday, however, the State Department had not approved a declaration of humanitarian need, the first step in authorizing US emergency relief, said the former officials, both of whom worked at USAID, and the third source, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Such a declaration is usually issued within 24 hours of a major disaster.
The sources said State Department officials had considered recommendations for US disaster aid for Afghanistan. One former senior official said the White House also has considered the issue, but decided against reversing a policy of ending aid to Afghanistan. When asked if the US would provide any emergency aid to Afghanistan following the magnitude 6 quake on Sunday, which was followed by powerful aftershocks on Thursday and Friday, a State Department spokesperson said: “We have nothing further to announce at this time.”
The United States was, until this year, the largest aid donor to Afghanistan, where it fought a 20-year war that ended with a chaotic US withdrawal and the Taliban’s seizure of Kabul in 2021. But in April, the Trump administration ended virtually all aid — totaling $562 million — to Afghanistan, citing a US watchdog report that humanitarian groups receiving US funds had paid $10.9 million in taxes, fees, and duties to the Taliban.
Asked whether the US would provide emergency relief for earthquake survivors, a White House official said, “President Trump has been consistent in ensuring aid does not land in the hands of the Taliban regime, which continues to wrongfully detain US citizens.”
’STUCK IN STORAGE’
United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said the Afghan earthquake was “the latest crisis to expose the cost of shrinking resources on vital humanitarian work.”
“Massive funding cuts have already brought essential health and nutrition services for millions to a halt; grounded aircraft, which are often the only lifeline to remote communities; and forced aid agencies to reduce their footprint,” he said in a statement on Thursday.
The Trump administration also has yet to respond to a request by the International Rescue Committee humanitarian organization to send $105,000 worth of US-funded medical supplies following the first earthquake.
The materials include stethoscopes, first aid supplies, stretchers, and other essentials, said Kelly Razzouk, vice president of policy and advocacy for the IRC.
“The stocks are stuck in storage,” said Razzouk, who served on former US President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. “In recent memory, I can’t remember a time when the US did not respond to a crisis like this.”
The IRC needs Washington’s permission to send the equipment to Afghanistan because it had been funded by an unrelated US grant that the Trump administration had since canceled.
“Beyond the loss of life, we have also seen basic infrastructure and livelihoods destroyed,” Stephen Rodriguez, the representative in Afghanistan for the UN Development Programme, told reporters on Friday.
He said donations of money, goods, and services have come from Britain, South Korea, Australia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkiye, and other countries.
“Far more is needed.”
US yet to approve any help following Afghanistan earthquake, sources say
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US yet to approve any help following Afghanistan earthquake, sources say
- Trump administration ended virtually all aid to Afghanistan in April
- UN aid chief says quake latest crisis to expose impact of funding cuts on humanitarian work
Sleepy. Divisive. A fan of young Trump: A look at the new plaques on the Presidential Walk of Fame
- “The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has affixed partisan plaques to the portraits of all US commanders in chief, himself included, on his Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House, describing Joe Biden as “sleepy,” Barack Obama as “divisive” and Ronald Reagan as a fan of a young Trump.
The additions, first seen publicly Wednesday, mark Trump’s latest effort to remake the White House in his own image, while flouting the protocols of how presidents treat their predecessors and doubling down on his determination to reshape how US history is told.
“The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each President and the legacy they left behind,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement describing the installation in the colonnade that runs from the West Wing to the residence. “As a student of history, many were written directly by the President himself.”
Indeed, the Trumpian flourishes include the president’s typical bombastic language and haphazard capitalization. They also highlight Trump’s fraught relationships with his more recent predecessors.
An introductory plaque tells passersby that the exhibit was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle.”
Besides the Walk of Fame and its new plaques, Trump has adorned the Oval Office in gold and razed the East Wing in preparation for a massive ballroom. Separately, his administration has pushed for an examination of how Smithsonian exhibits present the nation’s history, and he is playing a strong hand in how the federal government will recognize the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
Here’s a look at how Trump’s colonnade exhibit tells the presidential story.
Joe Biden
Joe Biden is still the only president in the display not to be recognized with a gilded portrait. Instead, Trump chose an autopen, reflecting his mockery of Biden’s age and assertions that Biden was not up to the job.
Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election and dropped out of the 2024 election before their pending rematch, is introduced as “Sleepy Joe” and “by far, the worst President in American History” who “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.”
Two plaques blast Biden for inflation and his energy and immigration policy, among other things. The text also blames Biden for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and asserts falsely that Biden was elected fraudulently.
Biden’s post-White House office had no comment on his plaque.
Barack Obama
The 44th president is described as “a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History.”
The plaque calls Obama’s signature domestic achievement “the highly ineffective ‘Unaffordable Care Act.”
And it notes that Trump nixed other major Obama achievements: “the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal ... and ”the one-side Paris Climate Accords.”
An aide to Obama also declined comment.
George W. Bush
George W. Bush, who notably did not speak to Trump when they were last together at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, appears to win approval for creating the Department of Homeland Security and leading the nation after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But the plaque decries that Bush “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”
An aide to Bush didn’t return a message seeking comment.
Bill Clinton
The 42nd president, once a friend of Trump’s, gets faint praise for major crime legislation, an overhaul of the social safety net and balanced budgets.
But his plaque notes Clinton secured those achievements with a Republican Congress, the help of the 1990s “tech boom” and “despite the scandals that plagued his Presidency.”
Clinton’s recognition describes the North American Free Trade Agreement, another of his major achievements, as “bad for the United States” and something Trump would “terminate” during his first presidency. (Trump actually renegotiated some terms with Mexico and Canada but did not scrap the fundamental deal.)
His plaque ends with the line: “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”
An aide to Clinton did not return a message seeking comment.
Other notable plaques
The broadsides dissipate the further back into history the plaques go.
Republican George H.W. Bush, who died during Trump’s first term, is recognized for his lengthy resume before becoming president, along with legislation including the Clean Air Act and Americans With Disabilities Act — despite Trump’s administration relaxing enforcement of both. The elder Bush’s plaque does not note that he, not Clinton, first pushed the major trade law that became NAFTA.
Lyndon Johnson’s plaque credits the Texas Democrat for securing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 (seminal laws that Trump’s administration interprets differently than previous administrations). It correctly notes that discontent over Vietnam led to LBJ not seeking reelection in 1968.
Democrat John F. Kennedy, the uncle of Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is credited as a World War II “war hero” who later used “stirring rhetoric” as president in opposition to communism.
Republican Richard Nixon’s plaque states plainly that the Watergate scandal led to his resignation.
While Trump spared most deceased presidents of harsh criticism, he jabbed at one of his regular targets, the media — this time across multiple centuries: Andrew Jackson’s plaque says the seventh president was “unjustifiably treated unfairly by the Press, but not as viciously and unfairly as President Abraham Lincoln and President Donald J. Trump would, in the future, be.”
Donald Trump
With two presidencies, Trump gets two displays. Each is full of praise and superlatives — “the Greatest Economy in the History of the World.” He calls his 2016 Electoral College margin of 304-227 a “landslide.”
Trump’s second-term plaque notes his popular vote victory — something he did not achieve in 2016 — and concludes with “THE BEST IS YET TO COME.”
Meanwhile, the introductory plaque presumes Trump’s addition will be a White House fixture once he is no longer president: “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament and tribute to the Greatness of America.”
