As an Ebola outbreak spreads and renews global health concerns, scrutiny is mounting over the Trump administration’s public health policies, including cuts to disease surveillance and the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
DOGE cut Ebola prevention programs
The debate intensified after a 2025 video resurfaced showing Elon Musk, then head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), acknowledging that Ebola prevention programs had been briefly cut before being restored.
In an email to Newsweek, a State Department spokesperson defended the Trump administration’s approach, saying, “By bringing USAID global health functions under the new Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy at the State Department, our efforts are more aligned and effective. Funding and support to combat Ebola continue, working with allies and partners.”
Early in President Donald Trump’s second term, the administration froze new funding for most U.S. foreign assistance programs and USAID, disrupting humanitarian and development initiatives worldwide and leading to widespread layoffs. Months later, the agency was dissolved, with most programs canceled.
DOGE, which Musk led at the time, sought to slash $1 trillion in federal spending through broad staffing reductions and restructuring across federal agencies.
Damage control
In the resurfaced February 2025 video, Musk said, “One of the things we accidentally canceled, very briefly, was Ebola and Ebola prevention.”
“I think we all want Ebola prevention, so we restored Ebola prevention immediately, so there was no interruption,” he added.
Musk did not specify which programs were affected or how long they were disrupted.
Nicholas Enrich, former acting assistant director for Global Health at USAID, sharply criticized the Trump administration’s actions in his book, Into the Wood Chipper, writing that DOGE “came in to tear [USAID] apart.”
Enrich also told The Guardian, “I started to recognize how often and critically administration officials were lying about what was happening inside USAID … like Elon Musk going to the White House to say Ebola activities had been restarted on the same day that his DOGE team had canceled the contracts.”
Weakened Ebola surveillance efforts
Beyond USAID, the Trump administration also reduced staffing at agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Josh Michaud of the nonpartisan health policy organization KFF told Newsweek the cuts, combined with the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization, weakened Ebola surveillance efforts across Africa.
“This funding freeze led some [USAID-funded] partner organizations doing the surveillance and tracking work to cut staff, or cease operations entirely,” he said.
