The frenetic, hyper-chaotic first few months of the second Trump administration have long since faded in our rearview mirror, with the relatively slower slog of daily horrors taking its place. But many of the actions from those early days have led to catastrophic consequences.
This is clearly evident in decisions with obvious cause-and-effect outcomes. Massive cuts to the USAID program have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Tariffs and Trump’s war of choice with Iran have deepened an affordability crisis for all but the wealthiest of Americans. Militarized immigration and deportation efforts have led to ten people being shot dead by ICE agents, with dozens more dying in detention centers.
What is less evident, however, is the degradation of human lives caused by seemingly benign cuts to programs in the name of eliminating bureaucracy and “government waste.”
In May, The Guardian reported that staffing cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have led to a scaling back of its data collection activities. These activities are crucial for monitoring weather patterns. In an age of extreme climate patterns, these cuts have led to slower reporting times for destructive weather systems, particularly in the Midwest.
This summer, thousands in the United States have suffered from severe diarrhea as a result of an outbreak of the Cyclospora parasite. As historian Heather Cox Richardson noted in a recent newsletter, federal health agencies that once tracked infections from a half-dozen causes of foodborne illness, including Cyclospora, now monitor only Salmonella and E. coli. These changes are a result of cuts made in 2025 by Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
See No Evil
We have only scratched the surface of the long-term consequences of the previous year. And the evil genius of many of the cuts to important programs is that they are designed for us not to see or know the consequences until it is too late to do anything. A prime example of this is what has been the gold standard of the U.S. government’s efforts to address poverty over the past century—publicly funded nutrition programs.
Last year’s “Big Beautiful Bill” seismically altered the structure of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The SNAP program provides small monthly funds to low-income Americans, mostly children and older adults, to help supplement their monthly grocery purchases. The brilliance of SNAP isn’t just that it helps feed people, but also that it provides an economic boost to local communities, compounding its impact.
We know the immediate result of these cuts is that 11% of its participants have been removed from the program. But what about the long-term results?
We may never know.
In September of last year, the administration canceled the USDA’s annual Food Security Survey, which provides key data for measuring hunger in the U.S. The survey provided information on where best to allocate resources for vital child nutrition programs, such as the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs and the Summer Food Service Program, as well as the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program that provides vital assistance for children in the first year of life. Additionally, it has helped inform how to structure food relief for the elderly and disabled Americans.
The Upside to Ignorance
In 2018, writer Michael Lewis chronicled the effects of early Trump efforts to remake the federal government in his image in his book, The Fifth Risk. As has been well documented, much of what Trump attempted but failed to do in his first administration has been accomplished in his second. In the time between the two, his people have masterfully figured out how to remove any guardrails to power.
One of those guardrails was a bureaucracy that could be unwieldy and inefficient, but also saved lives by providing useful data on where to allocate resources.
“There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge,” Lewis wrote. “Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.”
Is there anyone more adept at “shrinking the world to a worldview” than white, evangelical Christians, most of whom have either cheered on or sat idly by while this administration has dismantled life-saving programs?
Their response is often, “taking care of people is the Church’s job, not the government’s.” So will they step up and fill in the gap?
It is undeniable that many evangelical institutions provide noble, large-scale disaster relief efforts both at home and abroad. But what has been decimated in the previous year is at a level that would require them to scale their efforts a hundredfold.
But they may be let off the hook with blissful ignorance.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.