In a move that defies both logic and morality, the Trump administration ordered nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food aid to be incinerated—enough to feed approximately 1.5 million children for an entire week. Instead of delivering this life-saving nourishment to vulnerable populations abroad, the food will soon be reduced to ash. The food, originally intended for children in crisis zones like Afghanistan and Pakistan, is set to expire—and rather than expedite its delivery, the administration has chosen destruction.

Hana Kiros writing for The Atlantic:

Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash.

And it gets worse.

Despite the administration’s repeated promises to continue food aid, and Rubio’s testimony that he would not allow existing food to go to waste, even more food could soon expire. Hundreds of thousands of boxes of emergency food pastes, also already purchased, are currently collecting dust in American warehouses. According to USAID inventory lists from January, more than 60,000 metric tons of food—much of it grown in America, and all already purchased by the U.S. government—were then sitting in warehouses across the world. That included 36,000 pounds of peas, oil, and cereal, which were stored in Djibouti and intended for distribution in Sudan and other countries in the Horn of Africa. A former senior official at USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance told me that, by the time she’d left her job earlier this month, very little of the food seemed to have moved; one of the current USAID employees I spoke with confirmed her impression, though he noted that, in recent weeks, small shipments have begun leaving the Djibouti warehouse.

The food was ready. The need is desperate. The infrastructure existed. But the will to help? Gone.

This isn’t just about policy. It’s about who we are as a country. Are we the kind of people who let food rot — or worse, burn it — while children starve? Every box of food destroyed is a child who could have eaten. Every ration torched is a symbol of just how far we’ve strayed.