Attleboro area congressman to bring former top USAID official to Trump address
U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss is bringing a former top official with the U.S. Agency for International Development to President Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Dr. Atul Gawande, former assistant administrator for global health at USAID, which is being gutted by the Trump administration, will be the Massachusetts congressman’s special guest at the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Auchincloss announced Monday.
The Democrat represents the 4th District in Congress, which includes the Attleboro area.
Gawande is a renowned surgeon, writer, and public health leader.
At USAID, he oversaw global health efforts, providing access to preventative treatment and care.
Prior to that, he was a practicing general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He was the founder and chair of Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation, and of Lifebox, a nonprofit organization working to make surgery safer globally.
Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has dismantled USAID and eliminated over 90% of 6,300 USAID awards, including health programs that help millions battling diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV.
“The global vaccination efforts of Dr. Gawande and the public health officials at USAID have saved millions of lives and prevented unnecessary suffering,” Auchincloss said in a new release. “For the first time since 2003, a child in the U.S. has died from measles. Trump’s dismantling of USAID and his promotion of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — who refuses to unequivocally recommend the measles vaccine — as our nation’s top health officer is reversing decades of progress in eradicating the world’s deadliest diseases.”
“The experience of USAID shows what doing surgery with a chainsaw on the US government looks like. It is a bloodbath,” Gawande said. “The dismantling of USAID is costing tens of thousands of American jobs, massive loss of life, and mismanagement of billions of taxpayer dollars — the exact opposite of addressing fraud, waste, and abuse. The American people deserve to hear an explanation for why he’s firing public servants who keep America secure and cutting programs that save lives.”
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, announced that Doug Kowalewski of Wellesley will be her guest at the State of the Union address.
Kowalewski is a former National Science Foundation employee who, after 3 1/2 years at the agency, was fired unexpectedly in Elon Musk’s and the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) gutting of the federal workforce.
“I’m bringing Doug to force Trump to confront the federal workers he fired — the people who make this country run,” Warren said. “The National Science Foundation is the engine that powers our nation’s basic scientific research, and by taking a sledgehammer to this agency, Trump and Musk are gutting our research and innovation pipeline and our local economy in Massachusetts. That isn’t efficient — it’s cruel, short-sighted, and it’s costing American jobs and devastating millions of families.”
At Warren’s recent town hall in Framingham, Kowalewski shared the story of his unexpected firing from the agency along with 167 of his colleagues. At the NSF, he was a program director for Partnerships and Innovation, helping bring in millions in funding to the federal government. The NSF provides a quarter of federal support for basic research at colleges and universities across the country.
By: Stephen Peterson
Source: The Sun Chronicle