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poverty
Trump’s America First Agenda Threatens the Fight Against Global Poverty
As it retreats from multilateralism, the Trump administration is rejecting the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, which provide a blueprint to eradicate poverty and pursue inclusive and environmentally responsible economic development.
May 20, 2025
On March 4, 2025, Edward Heartney, a minister-counselor at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, remarked at the General Assembly that the Sustainable Development Goals “advance a program of soft global governance that is inconsistent with U.S. sovereignty” and interests.
This rejection of the SDGs aligns with President Donald Trump’s retreat from multilateralism and overall dissatisfaction with the U.N. For example, the Trump administration has moved to pull the United States out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Paris agreement on climate action, and the World Health Organization (WHO). In addition, the administration has frozen foreign aid, initiated a global trade war, and failed to pay its U.N. dues as of May 2025.
How can we remodel institutions and programs to be less dependent on American funds while also ensuring the continual engagement of the United States as a leader?
Although intended to prioritize the United States, these developments threaten progress on the SDGs, with negative implications for the global fight against poverty.
What are the Sustainable Development Goals?
The SDGs are a collection of 17 goals set for achievement by 2030, subdivided into targets and indicators. They form the core of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all U.N. member states in 2015. They provide a blueprint to eradicate poverty and pursue inclusive and environmentally responsible economic development under conditions of peace and partnership.
Contrary to Heartney’s claims on sovereignty, the 2030 Agenda is voluntary and non-binding. They are a framework, not a prescription. In fact, the SDGs have not received nearly enough policy and financial support as evidenced by their lack of progress. Although there has been progress in some areas, only 17% of SDG targets are on track to be achieved according to the 2024 SDG report.
How, though, does the America First agenda impact global poverty? While many linkages can be draw, SDGs 3, 5, and 13 provide some examples.
SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being
SDG 3 covers a wide range of health issues. There are strong correlations between a country’s income status and its performance on some SDG 3 indicators. For example, 2019 data places the cause of death by communicable diseases and maternal, prenatal, and nutrition conditions in low-income countries at 47%, versus only 6% for high-income countries.
Poor health is not only a symptom of poverty. It can compound cycles of poverty through inhibiting disabilities, crippling medical expenditures, and premature death. Meanwhile, the significance of American support for good health across the developing world cannot be overstated, and actions such as freezing foreign aid and cutting the UNAIDS budget are projected to cause the deaths of more than 200,000 people from AIDS and tuberculosis alone by the end of 2025.
However, on the positive side, in South Africa—the country with the highest number of people with HIV-AIDS—the government has committed to provide support for HIV-AIDS treatment in 2025 from the National Treasury, aiming to become a more self-sufficient country.
SDG 5: Gender Equality
There are positive links between improving girls’ and women’s access to health services, education, and economic opportunities and the overall living standards of a country. Hence, SDG 5 aims to end discrimination against girls and women and empower them with equal means. However, the Trump administration’s anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy risks undermining work and advocacy for SDG 5. While this anti-DEI policy promotes merit-based systems and unity on its face, the administration is also using this campaign to target gender-related programs.
Additionally, by February 20, 2025, the freeze on humanitarian assistance resulted in more than 900,000 women per week being denied contraception around the world. Family planning activities were also not part of a limited waiver to the freeze, aligning with the administration’s overall anti-family planning policies. However, support for civil society organizations working on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and volunteerism, can help plug gaps. For example, 200 U.N. Volunteers recently worked with the WHO in the Republic of the Congo to raise awareness about HIV-AIDS and to challenge related stigma via a social media campaign.
SDG 13: Climate Action
The Trump administration’s rejection of the Paris agreement also aligns with support of an “overdue course correction on… climate ideology, which pervade the SDGs,” in the words of Heartney. The Paris agreement—the preeminent international treaty to combat climate change—is essential to SDG 13. Without the participation of the United States, which is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world, the Paris agreement and SDG 13 are set to fail.
However, at this stage, climate action is not an “ideology” but a necessity, and the Green transition is not with its own economic opportunities that could advantage the United States.
Similar to the case of SDG 3, not only do low-income households experience the worst impacts of climate change, these impacts can compound poverty through property damage, income disruptions, displacement, and premature death. This further threatens progress on SDG 1.1 (extreme poverty), which has been one bright spot of success amid the ailing SDGs. For example, between 1990 and 2019, the prevalence of extreme poverty in developing Asia fell from 58% to 5%. Climate change, however, could push millions back into extreme poverty by 2030.
Fortunately, efforts like AMERICA IS ALL IN commit Americans to the Paris Agreement even as climate action is moving forward on other fronts. For example, Green bonds have seen rapid growth—rising from $40 billion in 2015 to more than $500 billion in 2023—with the United States being a top issuer in that period.
Looking Forward
In mid-July, New York will host the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), which will review five SDGs, including SDGs 3 and 5. The HLPF provides an opportunity to have important conversations about these issues, and to find solutions.
For example, although the SDGs need the participation of the United States, how can we remodel institutions and programs to be less dependent on American funds while also ensuring the continual engagement of the United States as a leader? The recently adopted Pact for the Future—while not without flaws—also offers an impetus for discussions on why multilateralism is retreating. Finally, it is important to continue leveraging the potential of SDG localization in light of insufficient national action and leadership.
When it comes to multilateral action, the Trump administration is about to prove that the United States is not, in fact, an indispensable nation.
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Rep. Derrick Van Orden Is My Local Villain in the Trump-GOP Cult. Who Is Yours?
A brave legislator would break with the Republican policy to put more money in the pockets of the rich while children go hungry, but not Van Orden.
May 19, 2025
U.S. Representative Derrick Van Orden campaigned for his Wisconsin 3rd Congressional District seat stressing his intention to cut government costs by targeting waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending. As a member of the House Agriculture Committee he had the opportunity to block the committee from, as instructed by the Trump Administration, cutting nearly $300 billion in spending from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). These proposed cuts will take food from the tables of the poorest families in this country to pay for tax cuts for the richest 1% of Americans as part of the Republican House Budget bill.
SNAP is a recurring target for Van Orden’s Republican Party. Van Orden has spoken as a defender of the program, even sharing his own story of his families reliance on SNAP benefits when he was a kid. He called the program “a hand up, not a hand out.” Yet last week, Derrick Van Orden, as he often does, made the wrong decision. Despite his insistence that he would defend the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, vital for so many low income families, he sided with the Trump administration to decimate a program that well over 40 million people rely on. These are people who, as Van Orden notes, just need a hand up.
Even as the president has grudgingly admitted that his tariffs will cause prices to rise, Van Orden conveniently failed to recall his gratitude for that “hand up” when he needed it. He could have done the right thing as a member of the Agriculture Committee by loudly and clearly stating that with rising food prices, cutting any funding from SNAP is morally wrong for those who depend on the program. It is also wrong for so many farmers who supply food for the program—about $30 billion wrong for those farmers and it’s wrong for the economy in general, as the Democrat members of the Ag Committee report that every $1 in SNAP funding puts $1.50 back into the economy.
To his credit, after pressure from constituents, Van Orden came out in opposition to the current plan to shift 25% of SNAP costs to state governments—this proposal would severely impact the poorest states, those with the most needy recipients, much harder than wealthier states. Van Orden instead proposed to focus on correcting “inefficiencies” within the SNAP program by tying the state’s share of SNAP payments to that state’s SNAP error rate.
However, these error rates or “inefficiencies” are false flags used by Van Orden and other Republicans to justify massive cuts. USDA policy changes counted the entire benefit amount as an error if there were any procedural mistakes, regardless of the household being eligible and receiving the correct benefits. SNAP already has a rigorous quality control system. Most over-payments are honest mistakes made by households or USDA, and quickly rectified. Hardly the massive fraud Republicans like Van Orden claim. Using these false numbers to justify massive cuts to a program thousands of Van Orden’s constituents rely on is deception, and will harm Wisconsin families.
There are families across Western Wisconsin in similar situations to that of Congressman Van Orden’s when he was a child; those who through no fault of their own need that hand up, just like he did. A $230 billion cut would decimate program services and put thousands of Wisconsinites into food insecurity. Any cuts to the program are direct cuts to the poorest families in our country.
It’s not just the recipients of SNAP that will be affected. Programs already cut by the Trump administration, cuts supported by Van Orden, have crippled family farms in Wisconsin. A program called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program refused to pay nearly 300 small farms in Wisconsin after Trump cut funding for their already-committed grants. SNAP benefits are often used to pay for this fresh, local produce, and cutting these benefits would further slash the already meager incomes of Wisconsin’s farmers and deny low-income Wisconsinites a valuable source of nutritious food.
Congressman Van Orden has again raised the cup of Republican Kool-Aid and convinced himself that cutting $300 billion from needy families is a good option for funding tax cuts for those high-income Americans who already have too much. He remembers the times when his family was in need, but that was then, this is now, and he is part of the Republican cult of Trump. A brave legislator would break with the Republican policy to put more money in the pockets of the rich while children go hungry, but not Van Orden.
The Republican budget bill, in addition to cuts in SNAP also included cuts to other safety net programs like Medicaid, failed to pass the House Budget committee on Friday because some members felt it did not make the cuts deep enough, it was not cruel enough.
But the Budget Committee showed its true colors on Sunday and passed the bill after making it more cruel for the nation's poor. And make no mistake, the full Republican-controlled House will pass a Budget bill and it will be cruel as can be, with even deeper cuts to the safety net programs so many low-income folks depend on. Van Orden will have a chance to side with his constituents and help those needing “a hand up” or side with his Republican cronies and fund tax cuts for the rich who want another “hand out.”
What will he do? What will your representative do?
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When We Stand Together…
Philanthropists and funders must show we are part of movements to protect the most vulnerable.
May 18, 2025
The last six months have been devastating for these United States. The government has kidnapped students, placing them in detention in states hundreds of miles away from their loved ones and schools. The government has openly questioned long-standing and hard-fought norms: the freedom of speech, the right to legal representation, and citizenship as a right of those of us born here. The government has handed over our most sacred information and resources to billionaires who became that way because the government invested in them and subsidized their fortunes. Now these same people want to pull up the ladder behind them, guaranteeing that nobody else can benefit from a government that supports its people.
I’ve been proud of my sector, philanthropy. We’ve approached this crisis front-footed and full-throated in our commitment to protect the freedom to give. It’s been a powerful testament that hundreds of my peers preemptively coordinated and called out our freedom to give, freedom of speech, and freedom to serve communities.
As we enter this next moment, when the boundaries that were once fixed are challenged not by proclamation or executive order, but through the allocation of our tax dollars, we have an opportunity to show that when we are part of movements that protect the most vulnerable among us, we protect ourselves. It is an invitation to remember that our government is not a natural representation of our best selves. Let’s be honest: The best parts of our government are a product of people, overwhelming the poorest and least powerful people, organizing against greed, exploitation, and exclusion. Free public education, Medicaid, and protection from racism and sexism are evidence of what government looks like when movements win for our most treasured resource: our people.
Our commitment to trust, discipline, and love is the best medicine for this moment. We need to transform spaces of dread into spaces where we can join together in solidarity to dream...
As we plan and resource efforts that focus on shielding our institutions from the upcoming budget reconciliation, I hope we remember this budget reconciliation fight is not simply an attack on philanthropy or the nonprofit sector. It is not simply a way to poke a thumb in our eye because we’ve supported community-based organizations that open their doors to all of us, community services providers that make housing and healthcare more affordable, and student groups that come together to fight genocide.
The current fight about our resources cannot be fought on their terms or with their words. Above and beyond increasing the tax rate on foundations, this budget reconciliation includes:
- Stripping $290 BILLION from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or, as it’s commonly called, “food stamps”), the largest cut in this program since its inception. SNAP provides millions of poor people with extra money to buy food to sustain their families. It is a lifeline to farmers and local businesses that provide this food. It is one way that our poor kids get fed at school.
- Cutting $715 BILLION from Medicaid, leaving millions of people uninsured and unable able access or afford critical health services. The forced labor requirements of this proposal alone create conditions where eligible recipients are forced off Medicaid or forced to make impossible choices between exploitation and care.
And let’s say these two lifesaving provisions are not front of mind for you or seem ancillary to your mission. There is this:
- The budget reconciliation includes a provision that gives the Executive Branch unprecedented power to strip nonprofits of their status without verification, an investigation, or due process. This administration has not signaled, but shouted its commitment to consolidate political power in the hands of billionaires, challenge hard-fought fundamental rights, and drastically alter those institutions that have long been the scaffolding of civil society in this nation, like nonprofit organizations. This would be a death nail to nonprofit organizations that educate community members about their rights, bring people together to demand dignity, and ensure we all understand that our government should protect and serve all of us, not just the most powerful.
There are a million metaphors describing the role of leaders at this moment; the most difficult for me to accept is the “oxygen mask guidance” used by airlines: protect yourself before you protect others. Philanthropy must do something different. Protect the most vulnerable among us who are being kidnapped, exploited, and starved by this administration. Come together with healthcare providers and labor unions fighting to protect Medicaid, food banks, and public schools working to protect SNAP, and legal service providers, like CUNY’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility, working to limit this administration’s overreach.
Our resolve to unite in this fight is the best antidote to these attacks. Our commitment to trust, discipline, and love is the best medicine for this moment. We need to transform spaces of dread into spaces where we can join together in solidarity to dream, build, and attend to the preservation and celebration of all life.
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