Some Aid Workers Turn To Sex Work Amid USAID Cuts

部分援助工作者因美国国际开发署削减资金而转行卖淫

What A Day

2026-08-28

18 分钟
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Yesterday, we heard from former USAID administrator Dr. Atul Gawande about the lives lost because of the gutting of the United States Agency for International Development. On today's show, we focus on people in Nepal and their experiences before and after the cuts to foreign assistance. In Nepal, USAID helped fund organizations whose efforts centered on fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS. And some of those organizations employed transgender aid workers, who are living in a country where existing outside the gender binary is generally forbidden. But after the cuts to USAID, many of these trans women have resorted to sex work – putting themselves at risk for the same disease they worked so hard to stop. To learn more about their stories, we spoke with Kristen Gelineau, a global investigative reporter for the Associated Press who visited Nepal in the spring. And in headlines, hundreds of people have been killed in flash floods that swept through the Nepal-China border, President Donald Trump announced Lake Ontario will now be known as Lake America, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt gets ready to leave the White House.Show Notes: Check out Kristen's work – tinyurl.com/ybc78uka Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com
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  • Nepal has a very conservative culture.

  • So legal work for openly transgender people is virtually non-existent.

  • And so what happened was when these workers lost their jobs,

  • they spent months trying to find other sources of employment only to be rejected

  • when they showed up in person because of their gender identity.

  • So out of desperation, around 100 of them across Nepal have now turned to sex work to survive,

  • which means they're now walking the streets alongside the very people they spent years trying to help.

  • I'm Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show noticing a theme here.

  • See, last month, Georgia Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins got a lot of questions about his son-in-law,

  • a white nationalist online influencer.

  • And today, Collins got more questions, this time about a former staffer who described himself as a, quote,

  • twink fascist and posted photos of himself wearing Ku Klux Klan robes on Twitter.

  • In response to The Washington Post, the staffer said he was being, quote, satirical.

  • So maybe Mike Collins just loves...

  • Satire?

  • On today's show, we talk to the Associated Press' Kristen Jeleneau

  • about how cuts to USAID have impacted both aid workers and recipients of aid in Nepal.

  • Before we get into what the virtual end of USAID has wrought, here's what we're following today, Thursday, August 27th.

  • What's your reaction to the Americans missing in Nepal?

  • Oh, it's terrible.