Within weeks of President Trump stepping into office, key health and environmental resources that doctors and farmers rely on started disappearing from federal websites. Trump was also quick to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID), cutting off funding — as well as the flow of data that people around the world use to prevent famine and issue warnings ahead of natural disasters.
“As we all watched the websites being pulled down, as we all watched data disappearing, we were all concerned — because that’s truth. There’s truth in data,” says a former contractor who was granted anonymity to speak freely without fear of repercussions. “Now it’s more easy just to say something and force it as the truth. But there’s no way to back it up.”
The US collects a vast amount of weather and climate data, an essential resource for humanitarian efforts around the globe. It guides efforts to predict where droughts and crop failures might lead to food shortages, where people are at risk from flash flooding, and how to prepare for the Atlantic hurricane season. Even if these systems eventually get back up and running, erratic changes under the Trump administration are already stalling lifesaving work.
Devastating famine in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s was estimated to kill a million people in Ethiopia alone. It spurred the development of a Famine Early Warning System called FEWS NET. The warning system compiles data on weather, agriculture, and food markets to predict where famine might be looming, in the hopes of getting aid there in time to prevent a worst-case scenario.
In some parts of the world — including Sudan, where more than half the population is estimated to face acute food insecurity brought on by conflict and climate change — FEWS NET was the only international operation producing famine reports frequently enough to keep up with a constantly evolving situation.
“Without that, the policymakers are going to be operating on outdated information. That’s what leads to misallocation of resources. That means lives get lost,” says Tanya Boudreau, a former chief of party for FEWS NET. Across the world, aid workers need to be able to anticipate future conditions, she says. “When people begin to starve, it’s just way too late to get the food aid into the places where it’s needed.”
The famine early warning system went dark after the Trump administration issued a sweeping stop-work order for humanitarian aid one week after inauguration. It’s still in limbo, despite receiving limited support to get parts of it back up and running. Essentially, it’s gotten some funding to start crunching the numbers again — but hasn’t been given the greenlight to share that data the way it used to via a public website and data warehouse.
From the start of his term, Trump came down fast and heavy on USAID, an agency that has led humanitarian missions since 1961 — including FEWS NET, emergency response efforts, HIV treatment and prevention programs, and more. One of the first executive orders the president signed upon stepping back into office was to freeze foreign aid funding, claiming it is “not aligned with American interests.”
“When people begin to starve, it’s just way too late to get the food aid into the places where it’s needed.”
By March, the Trump administration had axed more than 80 percent of the agency’s programs.
The State Department, now tasked with overseeing any remaining USAID programs, offered a waiver in January for programs deemed “life-saving.” FEWS NET qualified, but that wasn’t enough to bring the program back.
Chemonics International, a contractor that manages the early warning system, didn’t receive payments for previous work it completed between October and January, according to a former official with knowledge on the matter who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive subjects. US-based staff who worked on the program from Washington, DC were still furloughed, while field staff on the ground in more than 20 countries were terminated without funds available to bring them back. The Trump administration finally released payments for previous work in April, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty about whether they’ll continue to receive funding and whether it’ll be enough to get FEWS NET working like it did previously.
The system was the result of collaborations between multiple federal agencies that collect a wide range of data by satellite. It includes the Water Requirement Satisfaction Index from the US Geological Survey to figure out where crops might not be getting enough water, for example. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also contributes to the effort through the National Weather Service and Climate Prediction Center.
Experts told The Verge they were concerned about whether those partnerships could be in jeopardy as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer to NOAA and other arms of the federal government. A FEWS NET contract that provided famine forecasters with modeling tools to understand household and market vulnerabilities was terminated. That will likely lead to less detailed local analyses, according to the former official.
The Trump administration also has yet to rescind termination notices for another crucial component of FEWS NET: a data hub that shared the famine forecasts and underlying data used to create them online. Unless that changes, Chemonics will have to find another way to get the information to people — perhaps having to develop a new website with more limited functions or reverting to emailing PDFs to people on mailing lists.
Until 2019, FEWS NET’s forecasts were shared primarily as PDFs. The development of the data hub allowed anyone — whether they were government officials, aid workers, researchers, or just curious members of the public — to explore the information used to produce FEWS NET’s more formal reports so that they could conduct their own analysis according to their local situation and needs. It also gave them access to decades of data they might otherwise not have had if they weren’t subscribed to the mailing list over all those years.
USAID at the time was prioritizing “democratization of data,” according to the contractor The Verge spoke to with knowledge of the program. Now, with the FEWS NET data warehouse and website still down, “there’s no way for anybody to access this data any longer. It’s gone,” the person says. “Every single day, I feel like it brings us a step backwards.”
Even if a more limited version of the program continues, the turmoil over the past few months will cast its shadow over future famine forecasts. “This is the only time in the last 40 years where we’ve had a gap in coverage. That gap in historical record is one that will last forever,” Boudreau says. “That is a shame because the ability to continue to tell the story of what is happening in these critically food insecure areas of the world is one that depends on having last month’s data.”
In an email to The Verge, a spokesperson for the State Department said that the waiver it granted for “life-saving” work does not reflect the agency’s final determination of whether or not a particular program should continue; that it was only designed to keep certain programs alive while it conducts a broader review.
Hurricane season looms without warning systems in place
When it comes to flash floods, it’s typically only possible to get good predictions within 6 to 12 hours in advance. That’s why emergency responders need the most current data to act fast. It usually isn’t enough time to save property, one unfortunate reason why the global Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS) relies on government and nonprofit funding, according to Konstantine Georgakakos, an adjunct professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who also serves on the board of the Hydrologic Research Center that designed the system.
“There’s no profit involved here. It’s just saving lives,” he says.
Much of the world lacks equipment on the ground, networks of gauges to measure rainfall that are capable of making observations with the speed and resolution needed to warn nearby communities of dangerous flash floods. Compared to measurements taken for drought, for example, rain gauges used to plan for flash floods need to operate at a finer scale and with lower latency to get useful information to people in time.
Radar and satellite remote sensing has helped fill in the gaps since 2009 through a collaborative program called the Flash Flood Guidance System (FFGS). That data informs warning systems tailored to local conditions across more than 70 countries.
“There’s no profit involved here. It’s just saving lives.”
Prior to Trump stepping into office, FFGS was expanding to cover around 30 more countries, including areas of western and central Africa, as well as Pacific Island nations and islands in the southwest Indian Ocean including Madagascar. That work has stopped since it lost funding through USAID.
Existing local warning systems will continue to operate as long as they can without additional support. FFGS doesn’t have the funds to help countries with maintenance or troubleshooting problems. Nor can it replace any specialized hardware these systems rely on, which typically have a shelf life of five to eight years. Survival also depends on whether US forecasting agencies continue sharing weather data for these programs.
“They are at risk if the data stops or if there’s some other interruption that they face [without] actually getting the support to address it,” says Theresa Modrick Hansen, chief operating officer of the nonprofit Hydrologic Research Center that partnered on the Flash Flood Guidance System with US federal agencies and the World Meteorological Organization.
The system “has been an invaluable tool… ultimately saving lives and protecting livelihoods” according to a statement from the Pakistan Meteorological Department that Hansen’s organization shared with The Verge. “The potential loss of operational support and sustainability for FFGS systems worldwide is a significant setback for the global community,” the statement says. Pakistan suffered devastating flooding that inundated a third of the country in 2022, and faces rising flood risk with climate change.
Emergency responders are also scrambling to get ready for hurricane season now that USAID has lost funding. Since 1989, it has supported a program called the Regional Disaster Assistance Program (RDAP) across Latin America and the Caribbean. Ahead of hurricane season, that might include efforts to run drills with community members, purchase supplies for evacuation shelters, and make sure people with disabilities can access services. The Trump administration terminated RDAP this year, along with another collaborative program with NOAA to strengthen local forecasting.
“There’s a huge amount of anxiety, especially as we look to the hurricane season about the capacity and the preparedness this year,” says one federal worker whom The Verge granted anonymity because of the risk of reprisal.
Investments in early warning systems and preparedness have saved tens of thousands of lives during disasters over the years, not to mention the economic benefits of preventing deaths. The United Nations has a lofty goal of making early warning systems available to every person on the planet by 2027, selling it as a “proven, efficient, and cost-effective way to save lives and jobs, land and infrastructure.”
There’s a lot of self-interest when it comes to US aid for disaster preparedness, too. Floods, famines, and other disasters can destabilize regions, foment conflict, and push people to migrate. Plus, it generally costs a lot less to prevent damage and death than to cope with the fallout of doing nothing to stop it. So even within the Trump administration’s “America first” agenda of slashing spending and curbing migration to the US, early warning systems come with benefits.
“If you see a country in crisis where there’s a food emergency, you’ll see people come across the border,” says Andrew Natsios, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M and head of USAID during the George W. Bush administration. “The problem is the American people don’t know all the things that aid does because it’s happening on another side of the world. All of this stuff has a profound effect on us directly.”
Are you a current or former USAID employee? Reach out securely with tips to Justine Calma via Signal at bqe210.91.