The Handbasket:” Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did ‘just abortions,’ asked for ‘Barney-style’ slides before gutting agency, per new book. One of the first acts by the second Trump administration was the complete gutting of the US Agency for International Development, a workforce of more than 10,000 people that had administered humanitarian aid and public health support to nations around the world since 1961. Thousands of jobs were immediately slashed by Elon Musk’s para-governmental Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and political appointees took over posts previously held by career civil servants. An agency once charged with fighting poverty, curbing the spread of infectious diseases, and promoting education and democracy abroad had been effectively thrown in the woodchipper. It was during those critical early days that Nicholas Enrich, then-USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health (GH), witnessed firsthand the carelessness and callousness with which the Trump administration destroyed the agency, ultimately leading to him becoming a government whistleblower. As a result, he was placed on administrative leave for sharing Trump officials’ decision to deny the continuation of life-saving aid, and the lies they told to justify it.  Enrich’s new book “Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID” [published on April 14, 2026], and The Handbasket is proud to share an exclusive excerpt. It shows the scary lack of public health expertise among the Trump team—which included Ken Jackson, who was part of the US Institute of Peace raid—their fundamental ignorance to USAID’s mission—”I assumed it was just, you know, abortions”—and the life or death decisions they forced people like Enrich to make in the name of supposed efficiency. This excerpt details a meeting that took place on February 5, 2025, during which Enrich and his colleagues Nida Parks and Ramona Godbole met with newly-installed Trump officials at the former USAID headquarters to explain their bureau’s critical functions…”