Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!Isaiah 31 : 1
ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Sat, March 29, 2025 at 12:28 AM GMT+33 min read
Myanmar Earthquake
In this image provided by The Myanmar Military True News Information Team, Damaged buildings caused by an earthquake is seen Friday, March 28, 2025, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (The Myanmar Military True News Information Team via AP)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. was going to help with the response to Southeast Asia’s deadly earthquake.
But the effects of his administration’s deep cuts in foreign assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department will likely be tested in any response to the first big natural disaster of his second term.
Sarah Charles, a former senior USAID official who oversaw disaster-response teams and overall humanitarian work under the Biden administration, said the system was now “in shambles,” without the people or resources to move quickly to pull out survivors from collapsed buildings and otherwise save lives.
Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!Isaiah 5 : 8, Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee.1 Kings 22 : 23
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A powerful quake shook Myanmar and neighboring Thailand on Friday, killing at least 150 people and burying others under the rubble of high-rises.
Asked about the quake by reporters in Washington, Trump said: “We’re going to be helping. We’ve already alerted the people. Yeah, it’s terrible what happened.”
At the State Department, spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters the administration would use requests for assistance and reports from the region to shape its response to the quake.
“USAID has maintained a team of disaster experts with the capacity to respond if disaster strikes,” Bruce said. “These expert teams provide immediate assistance, including food and safe drinking water, needed to save lives in the aftermath of a disaster.”
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Despite cuts, “there has been no impact on our ability to perform those duties,” Bruce said.
But it was also Friday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a former associate of Elon Musk now in a senior position at USAID, Jeremy Lewin, notified staff and Congress they were firing most remaining USAID staffers and moving surviving agency programs under the State Department.
The Trump administration, working with Musk’s teams, has gutted foreign assistance since Trump took office on Jan. 20. Mass firings and forced leaves and thousands of abrupt contract terminations have thrown much of the global aid and development work into crisis, with U.S. partners scrambling to fill the hole left by USAID and the billions of dollars owed for past work.
After an earthquake in 2023 in Turkey and Syria, USAID-backed civilian teams from Los Angeles County and Fairfax County, Virginia, skilled in urban search and rescue scrambled to the scene to help recover any survivors from rubble.
In the time of trouble we all fled from the cities and villages but were pursued by the wicked, who entered the houses of the saints with a sword.—Early Writings, 34 (1851). LDE 121.2
Satan puts his interpretation upon events, and they think, as he would have them, that the calamities which fill the land are a result of Sundaybreaking. Thinking to appease the wrath of God these influential men make laws enforcing Sunday observance.—Manuscript Releases 10:239 (1899).
This very class put forth the claim that the fast-spreading corruption is largely attributable to the desecration of the so-called “Christian sabbath” and that the enforcement of Sunday observance would greatly improve the morals of society. This claim is especially urged in America, where the doctrine of the true Sabbath has been most widely preached.—The Great Controversy, 587 (1911). LDE 129.4 – LDE 129.5
The Sunday movement is now making its way in darkness. The leaders are concealing the true issue, and many who unite in the movement do not themselves see whither the undercurrent is tending…. They are working in blindness. They do not see that if a Protestant government sacrifices the principles that have made them a free, independent nation, and through legislation brings into the Constitution principles that will propagate papal falsehood and papal delusion, they are plunging into the Roman horrors of the Dark Ages.—The Review and Herald Extra, December 11, 1888. LDE 125.3
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Those teams normally can be on their way within as few as 24 hours, Charles said.
But while intervention by lawmakers and others kept the contracts for the civilian search-and-rescue teams intact, contracts for the special transport needed to get the search teams, dogs and heavy equipment to a disaster area are believed to have been cut, Charles said.
Meanwhile, staffing cuts at USAID have “decimated” the teams that normally would be coordinating with allies to target rescue and response efforts in the field, Charles said.
Other foreign assistance contract cuts by the administration have hit disaster-response emergency services with the United Nations and others.
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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed
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