Elon Musk and Marco Rubio killed children and dared you to name the dead.

Abdullahi Ibrahim. Purity Wamboi. Ibrahim Garba. Ten. Sixteen. Eight.

The drugs were free. Then they were not. The health workers were paid. Then they were not paid.

Rubio said no children were dying on his watch.

They were dying.

In March 2025, the Trump administration shut down the United States Agency for International Development through the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk. Musk announced the closure by saying he was “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” The shutdown was abrupt. There was no transition. Supply chains broke overnight. Clinics across sub-Saharan Africa that had depended on USAID funding for drugs, staff, and health-worker salaries lost their support without warning.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before Congress in May 2025 about the termination of USAID. He said: “No children are dying on my watch.”

NPR, working with photojournalists from The Everyday Projects, identified three children Musk said could not be named.

Abdullahi Ibrahim, age 10, died of a fatal asthma attack in Sabon Gari, Nigeria, after his family’s clinic ran out of the USAID-supplied drugs that had kept his condition manageable. A nurse at the clinic confirmed that the costs had been offset by USAID. Abdullahi’s father, Ibrahim Musa, told NPR: “If there was still help coming from USAID, I’m very sure my child would still be alive today.”

Purity Wamboi, age 16, died of tuberculosis in Nairobi, Kenya, after the community health promoters who might have caught the disease early lost their USAID-funded salaries. A family friend and health promoter, Tabitha Mugweru, told NPR: “If [USAID] did not withdraw their support, maybe Purity could be alive today.” Mugweru held Purity when she died in the back seat of an Uber.

Ibrahim Garba, age 8, died of typhoid in central Nigeria after his family could not afford the antibiotics that had been free on their first clinic visit. USAID had been paying. Then it stopped. His father, Yakubu Garba, told NPR: “He would just look at me and tell me, ‘Baba, I am tired.’”

On June 28 and 29, 2026, Musk wrote on X that deaths in Africa had gone down after USAID was cut, and that critics “cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!”

Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease modeler at Boston University, estimates that more than 700,000 people have died over the course of one year from the abrupt stopping of USAID, including more than half a million children, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa.

Earlier reporting had traced how the cuts were reshaping HIV/AIDS efforts across the continent. An ex-USAID official described how the Ebola response was blocked as the agency was dismantled. The pattern is not isolated. The three children NPR named are the ones whose parents and nurses could be reached, photographed, and quoted. The model says there are hundreds of thousands more.

NPR reached out to the State Department for comment on these three children. The department did not address the specifics of their deaths. It pointed to 32 bilateral health memorandums of understanding. The Kenya MOU totals $2.5 billion over five years; the Nigeria MOU totals $2.1 billion from the U.S. alongside roughly $3 billion from Nigeria. These represent 22% and 23% decreases, respectively, in U.S. government health contributions compared with earlier USAID levels. Nichols said: “It’s one thing to turn something off. It is something entirely different to turn something back on again.”

The bilateral agreements came too late for Abdullahi Ibrahim, Purity Wamboi, and Ibrahim Garba.

Elon, you posted on June 28 that the critics cannot name a single dead child. Here are three names. I will say them again so you cannot pretend you did not hear.

Abdullahi Ibrahim.

Purity Wamboi.

Ibrahim Garba.

Abdullahi was ten. His father drove a motorcycle for a living in Sabon Gari, Nigeria. When the boy had an asthma attack — and he had them often, gasping awake in the dark — his parents would sandwich him between them on the motorcycle and race to the clinic. The drugs were free. The inhalers were free. A nurse confirmed that USAID had been covering the costs. “Because of that support,” his father says, “people like us who don’t have much could still get treatment.” Then the support stopped. The last time Abdullahi had an attack, the clinic told his parents the drugs were no longer free. His father says the boy told him: “Daddy, I can’t breathe well.” He was just lying there, helpless.

Elon, your throat does not close when you breathe. You do not wake gasping. The ten-year-old boy woke gasping every night for five years, and the thing that kept him breathing was the thing you put into the wood chipper. There is a tightness behind your sternum tonight that was not there before you read this. It is the breath you took from him, lodged in the place where your own breath passes. You cannot cough it out. It belongs to you now.

Purity was sixteen. She loved to read. She helped her mother wash clothes. She kept her cough and her chest pain to herself because she knew her mother did not have money for a doctor. The community health promoters who might have caught the tuberculosis early — who once fanned out across Kenya visiting families in their homes — had been paid with USAID funds. When the funding stopped, most of them stopped working. A friend named Tabitha Mugweru, a health promoter, says they could have reached Purity earlier during a home visit. The TB was diagnosed late. It had consumed a portion of her lungs by the time anyone named it. She began shaking. Her eyes went wide and turned white. The family called an Uber. Mugweru held her in the back seat. “Purity died when I was holding her,” she told NPR.

Marco, your chest is clear tonight. You breathe in the dark and the air comes clean and you do not think about the girl who shook in the back of a hired car while her lungs filled with what the delay had done. You stood before Congress and said: “No children are dying on my watch.” The watch was empty, Marco. Purity was shaking in the Uber while you held the prop to your wrist and swore it told the time. There is a metallic taste in your mouth when you say her name. You did not have it before you read this. It is the taste of the testimony you gave under oath while she was dying. You cannot wash it out. It does not leave.

Ibrahim was eight. He was cheerful. His father says he likely picked up typhoid from the drinking water. On his first visit to the local clinic, the antibiotics and rehydration were free. USAID was paying. He got better. He did not finish the course — the family’s stress made it hard to keep the schedule. The typhoid came back and knocked him flat. When his family returned to the clinic, the drugs were no longer free. They could not pay. They took him home and tried an herbal remedy and prayed. His father says: “He would just look at me and tell me, ‘Baba, I am tired.’” He died four days later. The nurse who knew the family saw the father afterward. “He just looked broken,” she says.

Elon, picture one of your children on the mat where Ibrahim lay. The fever is the same. The weakness is the same. The words are the same: “I am tired.” The difference is that you would pay. You would burn the wood chipper to the ground to keep that child breathing. Ibrahim’s father would have paid too. He did not have it. You made sure he did not have it. The not-having was your efficiency. The death was your efficiency. The four days of praying over a boy who was already dying — that was your efficiency too.

There is an ache in your hands tonight, Elon. The wood chipper was the instrument. The boy was the product. Your hands operated the instrument. The ache is the boy’s. It does not leave.

While you slept in Washington, Elon, Ibrahim Garba lay on a mat in central Nigeria and told his father he was tired. While you prepared your testimony, Marco, the community health workers in Nairobi were closing their logbooks because the money had stopped. While you tweeted that no one could name the dead, Abdullahi Ibrahim’s father was walking past the clinic that would not give his son the drugs. You were awake at the same hours. Two of you were dying or were already dead. One of you was posting.

You are small men with large hands on the levers. The wood chipper is a machine. The testimony is words. The children were breathing and then they were not breathing and the thing that stopped their breathing was the thing you did and then denied and then mocked.

These are names you can say now. When someone tells you the dead cannot be named, say them. Abdullahi Ibrahim. Purity Wamboi. Ibrahim Garba. When someone says no children are dying, hold up these three. The names are load-bearing. They carry the weight of what was done.

“Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.”

Ezekiel 34:2–4

The shepherds fed themselves. The flock died. The prophet knew them by type three thousand years before NPR found the names.

Abdullahi Ibrahim. Purity Wamboi. Ibrahim Garba.

The shepherds did not feed them.