From senior staff writer Emily Belz: A friend excitedly texted me over the weekend that Bono was quoting one of my articles on The Joe Rogan Experience. The U2 singer has long been an advocate for global health through his ONE campaign, and he spent part of his interview making the case for ongoing US aid.
 
“There’s reforms I imagine that might have been necessary—have the reforms!” Bono said to Rogan. “But to destroy, to vandalize—it felt like with glee—these life support systems … I was reading today in Christianity Today … they were talking about one of these organizations; they are dealing with malnourished kids. And they are having the conversation now: We don’t have the funds, we have to choose which child we have to pull off the IVs. It seems to me—I don’t know if evil is too strong of a word. But what we know about pure evil is it rejoices in the squandering of human life, particularly children. It actually rejoices in it.”
 
This year, I’ve covered the breakdown of supply chains in Africa and the closure of hospitals and the chaotic canceling of contracts. Our Latin America editor Franco Iacomini has covered impacts like the clean-water systems stuck in a warehouse in Honduras and the closure of a Christian ministry for migrants in Costa Rica.

We plan to continue to focus our reporting resources on these cuts as they hit the world’s most vulnerable populations and the Christian organizations that serve them.