Sebastian Junger On Near-Death Experiences

His personal story and findings have altered his previous atheism.

Sebastian is an author, journalist, and war correspondent. He’s been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a special correspondent at ABC News, and his debut documentary, Restrepo, was nominated for an Oscar. He’s the author of many bestsellers, including The Perfect Storm, War, Tribe, and Freedom. His latest: In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife. It’s a fascinating account of his own brush with death — and how it changed his understanding of the universe and its mysteries.

A brilliant writer and indefatigable reporter, he’s also a Cape Cod neighbor. For two clips of our convo — the universal features of near-death experiences, and the mysteries of quantum physics — see our YouTube page.

Other topics: growing up near Boston; his New Age mom and physicist dad; becoming a war correspondent and witnessing death; losing his photojournalist friend Tim Hetherington; Sebastian’s atheism and rationalism; his vivid account of nearly dying from an aneurysm in the woods of Cape Cod; the novel way a doctor saved him at the last second; visions of his dead father beckoning him to the other side; his vivid dreams over the following months; the “derealization” of believing you’re dead; how NDEs defy natural selection; the telepathy of some NDEs; how centrifuges can reproduce NDEs; the disciples’ visions of Jesus after death; the book Proof of Heaven; the Big Bang; consciousness; panpsychism; stories vs. explanations — and why humans need both; Dostoevsky and his mock execution; how NDEs are similar to psychedelics; Michael Pollan; Pascal; Larkin’s “Aubade”; and the last trimester of life.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jon Rauch on the tribalism of white evangelicals, Ross Douthat on the supernatural, Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Yoni Appelbaum on how America stopped building things, Chris Caldwell on political upheaval in Europe, Nick Denton on the evolution of new media, and the great and powerful Mike White, of White Lotus fame. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

A listener praises the “wonderful talk with John Gray” we had last week:

Two very clever men. Much of the discussion went over my head, but it was so interesting and soothing — like listening to Bach’s preludes and fugues. That said, I still can’t believe you voted for Harris.

Another writes, “I bought a Dish subscription just to listen to John Gray.” Here’s a clip from the convo:

A dissent over an omission:

Unless I missed something, you and John Gray spent an hour-and-a-half discussing civilization without once mentioning climate change. The scientific consensus on the danger has been clear since at least 1989, when the IPCC issued its first report, but liberalism and all the other isms have utterly failed to address it. Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hit 425 parts per million last year (compared to 350 ppm in 1989, 315 ppm in 1959, and pre-industrial 280 ppm) with no serious abatement, much less reversal.

Somewhat related, several things seemed to be missing from your discussion of declining birth rates in much of the world. Yes, it’s disruptive, but it may be a necessity for civilization to endure. If “commodious living” (to quote Hobbes) means standards of living comparable to developed countries today, it would require the carrying capacity of several more Earths to sustain the current 8.2 billion population — much less the projected 9.7 billion in 2050.

As to the God stuff, it’s interesting historically but less and less relevant to today’s challenges. Personally, I’ve gone from Episcopalian to Quaker to atheist to now a form of Gaia-ism — that is, faith in Mother Earth. The Quakers like to say that God speaks with a quiet voice, but I think that Mother Earth is speaking louder every day, and we need to listen.

I’m a strong believer in renewable energy — but John and I did indirectly address climate change. If the human population starts to decline rapidly, especially in wealthy carbon-emitting countries — and it looks like it will — it will slow climate change a little. Here’s another listener on birth rates:

Like you, I feel more intelligent having listened to John Gray. Fascinating pod!

I have two comments on the discussion of the worldwide decline in fertility:

1. It wasn’t entirely clear, but it appeared you both think that Africa is an exception. It is not. Fertility rates are generally still quite high in Africa, which is misleading; they are declining from an even higher level.
2. Being an American, I observe best what has been happening in the United States. No question in my mind that radical individualism in the US is a factor for declining fertility, and I find it highly plausible that it’s also a factor elsewhere in the West. But as you correctly note, the decline in fertility is worldwide. With respect, I think the West occupies too much of your field of vision. Is radical individualism a compelling explanation for the decline of fertility in Nigeria? In Papua New Guinea? In Iran? In Nepal? In Paraguay? The same explanation for such different countries? That hardly seems plausible.

More pushback from a listener:

I’m not quite sure where you got the notion that McKinley and Trump are similar on the issue of war and America’s role. McKinley was the president who presided over the Spanish-American War, the annexation of the Philippines, the annexation of Hawaii, and the planning for the Panama Canal. All of this was designed to create a two-ocean navy that could project global power, so it wasn’t limited to our hemisphere.

McKinley was quite interventionist in ways that America never had been before, and Teddy Roosevelt continued this. By the time McKinley was assassinated, he had changed America from a local hemispheric power limited by the Monroe Doctrine to a global power that was willing to intervene in areas from the Russo-Japanese War to the First World War.

Another listener invokes a few prior guests:

I enjoyed your most recent discussion with John Gray, and I encourage you to follow through on his recommendation of reading C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. It has been my favorite of his writings, and it’s remarkably prescient, given the subsequent advances in biology and the resulting “transhumanist” movement popular among the tech titans.

In essence, Lewis’ book is a defence of the concept of value, an argument for its centrality, and an argument against the possibility of deriving it from the void. Most serious thinkers run into the problem of value, and many then feel they must make a choice. There is, of course, the pure scientific skeptic who dismisses the concept completely, as in the famous quote, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless” (from the final pages of Steven Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes).

Close to this are rationalists such as Richard Feynman or Richard Dawkins who want to celebrate the beauty they see in Nature but are content — out of scientific humility — not to inquire into their sense of value. In your episode with Dawkins, he put this sense down to him being a “cultural Anglican,” but he did not want to ascribe to this anything deeper than culture, or perhaps convention.

Next, perhaps rarest, you have a rationalist such as Sam Harris, who is willing to face the problem head on (The Moral Landscape) by conceding reality to value, but arguing that this concept can be derived and limned by reason. Somewhat adjacent to Harris, but definitely in disagreement, are those more sympathetic to religion as perhaps embodying “metaphorical truth.” These would include atheists such as Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, and perhaps others, such as Jordan Peterson, who resist being pinned down.

Finally, there is the religious view — historically the most prevalent — to which most are born, but to which some are driven by thought or feeling. C.S. Lewis himself describes this path as being “surprised by joy,” while a more recent chronicle of the journey is given by Paul Kingsnorth in the Free Press.

There are of course many different routes, but your essay on Ayaan Hirsi Ali suggests you believe rationality alone may be an imperfect guide. Having been a scientist through my professional life, I find myself perhaps closest to Bret & Heather’s view of the subject. I do, however, think that the question of value is central to most of our concerns, and I appreciate your willingness to engage seriously and sympathetically on the matter with modern thinkers of such varying perspective, but uniform eloquence.

We’ll keep it up. Two quick recs for guests:

The John Gray conversation was among your very best. Please consider inviting on Lisa Selin Davis and Benjamin Ryan, who both cover trans issues. Here’s Lisa in conversation with Ruy Teixeira:

On my column last week, here’s a dissent from “a 50-something trans woman who also lived through the ‘80s”:

I’ve read you for many years, and I’ve generally found you thoughtful (I admit, though, that I found you completely naive during most of the Bush years). But I really think you’ve jumped the shark on trans issues. I trust you know full well that trans women are not “waving their dicks and balls around in intimate spaces,” and shame on you for perpetuating that kind of ridiculousness. You are better than that.

And what of trans men? Mainstream media and MAGA excludes them because they do not fit the fear mongering that all trans women are Buffalo Bill just lurking in his van waiting for another young woman to abduct and murder. But what’s your excuse? Forcing biological women to use restrooms with trans men who look like the bears I used to hang out with at The Studd in San Francisco does nothing to make those “intimate spaces” safe for women. (Not that trans men are dangerous, but the point is that if biological women don’t want “men” in their bathrooms or locker rooms, this sure as hell isn’t achieving that.) That’s the exact effect of Trump’s order and the bathroom bans adopted all around the country.

And while I share much of your concern about extreme left overreach, the truth remains that trans people — particularly trans women — are some of the most maligned, abused, assaulted, and murdered members of our society. If you honestly don’t think there is a war on them in this country, then you have completely lost the plot.

Trump’s executive order is step one of a bureaucratic genocide. The entire point is to make life so difficult for trans people that they will have three choices: 1) detransition and disappear back into the closet; 2) kill themselves (likely the most preferred by people like Stephen Miller); or 3) for those who refuse doors 1 & 2, they will eventually fall victim to charges of “fraud” through misrepresenting their sex in government documents, in which case they will be held in jail, where they will be forcibly detransitioned (and in places like Florida, also subject to what can only be described as conversion therapy).

Do you really, honestly believe that this is a return to “sanity”? Should trans women be forced into male prisons, filled with actual convicted rapists and murderers, forced to shower with them in close proximity in open shower bays? That is exactly what Trump’s order requires. And of course, that’s the point of the order. Cruelty and abuse is the point. Don’t want to go to jail and be raped and forcibly detransitioned? Then you better detransition on your own before we catch you.

If that’s not a war on trans women, it’s hard to imagine what would qualify as one in your book. As a former prosecutor, I’ve been inside of a lot of jails and prisons; they are horrifically unsafe places even for people who have the skills (and testosterone) to defend themselves.

During your odd turf war of a gripe about the LGBTQ+ world no longer being the exclusive province of gays and lesbians, you state that gay men “have almost nothing in common” with trans people. While I understand what you mean by that (sexual orientation and gender identity are totally different things; I agree), the one thing you quite clearly have in common is being on the receiving end of a concerted and prolonged societal attack. Given that you’ve lived through this movie before, I would expect a deeper critique of the sequel that’s now playing out against trans people. Hint: it’s a war movie.

Rail all you want against intersectionality and all the nonsense postmodern genderqueer stuff — it irritates the shit out of me too — but don’t forget about what unites us all in the process.

Where to start? Let’s start with Bostock, the landmark decision in 2020 to include transgender people under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Trans activists never, ever mention that. The trans activist whom the WaPo has hired to cover these issues, Casey Parks, wrote a piece this week with the subhead, “The Trump administration’s early moves are the culmination of a nearly decade-old campaign to roll back transgender rights.” You know who wrote the Bostock decision? Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

Parks almost never mentions Bostock — it is merely a buried aside deep down in her survey of GOP anti-LGBTQIA2S+ moves of the last ten years. She also actually wrote a piece last November as a guide to “gender care” for minors — and barely refers to the Cass Review or any of the surveys that have found no good evidence behind these experiments. She repeats the lie that puberty blockers are fully reversible and only used as a pause. Ninety-eight percent of kids whose puberty is blocked go on to cross-sex hormones. She dismisses the impact on bone density as entirely reversible and minor. Here’s how she refers to the Cass Review, endorsed by the current Labour government: “a British report that right-wing leaders have cited in statehouses and amicus briefs.” She is a joke as a reporter.

Is Bostock a “war on trans women?” Please. It’s the biggest breakthrough on trans rights in history.

Then let’s remember that Lia Thomas, according to teammates, did indeed brandish his lady dick in full view of others. And, apparently, he’s very well hung. I used to take the assurances of so many that abuse of this kind never happens. Then I keep hearing of instances where it has. It’s not “beneath me” to note facts.

As for trans men, I don’t see anyone trying to prevent them from competing in sports against other men (as long as they are physically safe from injury). But, no, I don’t want to see a vagina in the locker room, thank you. And I don’t want to be told I’m a bigot because I have less-than-zero interest in having sex with a biological woman who has cut off her breasts and injected herself with testosterone. The reason for that is that I am gay. And trans activists refuse to honor or acknowledge that. They are busy trying to destroy “gay” and “lesbians” as a category in our own right. Even gay hookup apps like Grindr now cater to straight men who want trannies. We have to tolerate straight homophobes in our spaces — because gay has been trend into LGBTQIA+++.

Another dissent:

You wrote, “But there should be no biological men competing with women in sports; no violation of women’s privacy by having biological men waving their dicks and balls around in intimate spaces; and an end to the grotesque practice of allowing biological men with sex offenses into women’s jails.” I agree with that. But earlier in the same column you wrote about “the Oscars giving an unpopular film 13 nominations just so they can give a Best Actress award to a biological man.” You are referring to Karla Sofia Gascon, a biological male who identifies as a female and who was nominated for Best Actress for the movie Emelia Perez.

I have trouble seeing what you believe is the appropriate way to treat Ms. Gascon. An acting competition is not a sporting event, where biological differences count. It’s not a private space like a locker room or a prison where sex should trump gender. You call for trans people to be treated with dignity, but your comment about her does not appear to do that. Do you think Ms. Gascon should not be considered in the actress category? She was nominated based on votes by fellow actors, not some DEI rule.

My point was simply that she was nominated because she is trans and Hollywood types always want to preen as woke. From a long-time reader who’s had enough:

Trump’s first week is not “exhilarating”; it’s fucking terrifying.

I’m done with reading your oh-so-contrarian hot takes. As a father of a trans daughter (who is an adult, by the way, not that you care), I find that your crass “commentary” betrays not only a lack of knowledge but also a preference to substitute outrage mongering over learning. I guess grift pays better, but I would be horrified if my daughter opened my email and saw that I was consuming what you’re scribbling.

I used to pay for the Daily Dish. I even won a VFYW book. I guess that’s why I ended up on this mailing list. I respected massively how you were persuadable by your readers back then. With the Weekly Dish, though, not a week has gone by where I’ve seen anything like that. Quite the opposite. But even getting the weekly emails now is just a painful reminder of what you once were and how far you’ve fallen.

I’m sure you’ll be fine. There’s lots of money in attacking loony lefties — sorry, I mean political correctness — sorry, I mean woke — sorry, I mean DEI. Enjoy your well-paid position inside your epistemic closure. Meanwhile, those of us outside will be looking after vulnerable people in real danger from real hate.

Every week, over the years, we have run countless emails taking me to task on everything, including trans stuff. Just look at this page right now. And why on earth are you “fucking terrified” with respect to a trans adult? Tell me. You don’t provide specifics because there aren’t any. And no, I don’t count removing “X” from passports discriminatory. The relevant category printed on the page is “sex”. It is not “gender”. You can add gender if you want. But “X” as a sex is simply meaningless. It should never have been agreed to — because it is yet another sneaky way for the transqueers to conflate sex with gender and make gender the only relevant marker.

Yet another dissent:

I’ve always enjoyed your no-sacred-cows approach to culture and politics. You cut to the chase, often challenging my assumptions, which is exactly what I need. But I think you lost it with your latest column, “Undoing Joe Biden’s Left Extremism.” I was taken aback by your giddiness (“exhilaration” was your term) at some of Trump’s new directives. I won’t get into all your points, but let me address your stance on DEI — a subject I’ve covered extensively as a business of law journalist for over 20 years.

You wrote that Biden’s policy represented a “direct and proud embrace of systemic race and sex discrimination by the federal government,” which “was accompanied by a massive shift in the private sector toward illegal race and sex discrimination in hiring, firing, and promotion.” Your premise seems to be that the quest for equality in the workplace has gone too far, that women and minorities have been enjoying unfair advantages over those who are presumably more deserving (white men?).

Wow. That would be news to women and people of color. Last I checked, women comprise just over 10% and Black men 1.6% of CEOs in the Fortune 500. In major law firms, women make up less than 25% of equity partners, even though they’ve constituted over 50% of law students since 2016 (and close to 50% since the 1990s). As for Black partners in Big Law, that number is 2.5%. If DEI has made a difference, it’s a small dent.

Equally baffling is your belief that Trump’s killing of DEI will result in the restoration of meritocracy across America. Where is that belief coming from — magical thinking? Surely, you don’t believe folks like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, and RFK Jr (just to name a few) represent the triumph of merit in a corrupt system that favors the unqualified? Or is cronyism not considered an unfair advantage?

But what I find alarming is that you seem to relish in the idea of DEI vigilantism. You wrote, “Not only will the Trump EOs end the systemic racism in the federal government and its contractors, his people are also aware of attempts to foil color-blindness by their own woke bureaucrats, and will be vigilant. More importantly, the new administration will deploy the DOJ to restore equality of opportunity in the private sector.”

At this point, I was beginning to wonder what potions you’ve been imbibing. You want co-workers in the government to rat on each other? And you trust Trump’s DOJ — which he is now rapidly filling with sycophants and loyalists — “to restore equality of opportunity in the private sector”? Seriously?

To make myself clear, I am not a diehard DEI enthusiast. Though I believe in the goals of DEI (how can anyone be anti-diversity?), I know it needs revamping. Its rhetoric and methods are clunky and annoying. (I speak as someone who’s been censored by the DEI police.) I don’t doubt there’s been instances of excesses. And yes, there’s an indoctrination aspect to it — though, from what I’ve witnessed, people don’t really pay attention to it. But to call it “authoritarian brainwashing, accompanied by blatant race discrimination,” isn’t that a tad over the top?

I think we all know that DEI is not the ultimate culprit in our government, the private sector, or anywhere else. So why has it become a rallying cry? I can’t help but wonder if your antipathy towards DEI reflects a wider resentment in certain quarters. (It seems the ones celebrating the demise of DEI most loudly have been white men.) If it is, then the gulf between the genders and races is wider than I realize.

Please, Andrew, tell me you didn’t mean it.

I meant every single word. And I’d ask of you: why do you oppose enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? That’s what DEI is: the inversion of that Act. You repeat stats that you infer prove active discrimination against women and minorities by private entities. But we don’t have proof of that at all. And even if this were true, your cure is more discrimination — but against different groups. You also seem to agree that the DEI racket has gotten out of control. But you don’t want anything to be done about it. I’d have much preferred a sane Democrat or a moderate Republican to have done this. But in office, they all backed DEI — which is why voters were forced to vote for Trump if they wanted to end it.

This next dissenter zooms out:

It seems you have forgotten what the circumstances were in our country (and much of the world) in January 2021, when Biden took office. Covid deaths were at record levels that month. The economy was in free fall. Trump’s January 6 mob had just done its best to deny the peaceful transfer of power; we all watched as the Capitol was overrun and legislators ran for their lives. Unbelievably, more than a hundred members of Congress still did not vote to confirm Biden that night.

Biden took over and immediately began to solve some of these problems. He pushed for the population to get vaccinated. (Operation Warp Speed was possibly the only success of Trump’s term.) Biden signed the stimulus package, which saved many small businesses and kept many out of bankruptcy or worse. (It’s easy in hindsight to say it was too much, leading to inflation, but not so easy to pick the right amount at the time.) His Inflation Reduction Act and Chips Act have helped, often in red states where he will never get any credit. The IRA also has boosted green energy sources.

Do you give Biden any credit for any of this?

I agree that his initial border policies were disastrous. The DEI policies were overdone. However, discrimination against blacks and other people of color continues unabated in housing, lending, hiring, etc. Do you think anything should be done to address this discrimination?

Trump so completely mismanaged the Covid crisis that many tens of thousands, or maybe millions died — all because of his ego. Then January 6 happened. Since then, I cannot give him any regard of any kind.

Not all of Trump’s cabinet picks are terrible, but they include a few people who are actively dangerous to our country (see the confirmation of Hegseth today) — and it seems the Republican Party will just roll over and let him do whatever he likes. Birthright citizenship seems destined to be decided by Trump’s Supreme Court. It’s clearly defined in the 14th Amendment, but I have no confidence in this court honoring that definition. Another pandemic (bird flu) is a distinct possibility, but we will never know, as the CDC and NIH are now prohibited from communicating with the public. Finally, this administration will end any possibility of combating climate change in any meaningful way, so we will continue to experience catastrophe after catastrophe, each more devastating than the last.

So enjoy your liberation from “wokeness”. Is it worth it?

We can’t get everything we want. Balancing the end of race discrimination and a return to the rule of law in immigration against the excesses of Trump and some of his nutty acolytes is going to be tough. But Harris was a true believer in open borders and even stronger DEI. I voted for her despite this. So forgive me some exhilaration that what I wanted Trump to do he has done.

As for Biden, I gave him credit where it is due. But one reason the IRA is stalled is because it was loaded up with equity garbage. And Biden’s core mission was to prevent Trump coming back. He failed on that core task and deserves to be shunned for ever because of it. Fuck him.

From a lawyer on birthright citizenship:

Conspicuously absent from your column is Trump’s plainly unconstitutional order trying to eliminate birthright citizenship by directing his administration not to issue documents to US-born children of foreign parents. Regardless of one’s policy views, birthright citizenship is written into the first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment with unmistakable clarity. The wordplay of Trump’s lawyers around “subject to the jurisdiction [of the United States]” was rejected in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), which is still good law. Their wordplay is also bad faith, since children born here are required to comply with US, state, and local law and can be fined, imprisoned, ticketed, etc. if they do not — meaning that as a factual and legal matter, they are subject to US jurisdiction in all ways.

The judge who just issued an injunction against Trump’s EO — John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee I was lucky enough to have as a professor in law school — was correct when he labeled the action “blatantly unconstitutional.” Washington’s AG also correctly noted that denying citizenship to these children is denying them the “right to have rights,” because they are not going to be automatically recognized as citizens of the nation(s) their parents are from. Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes a right to a nationality, because it’s our national citizenship that in most cases gives legal heft to our rights. So this order risks creating a class of stateless persons numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Dead against it. And pretty sure it won’t survive.

Not all emails were dissents this week:

I just read “Undoing Biden’s Left-Extremism,” and what a relief it is to hear someone so eloquently put into words so many of the beliefs that have been brewing in my confused unconscious over the past four (eight?) years. I was fired by a prominent design studio who explained why they hadn’t hired into a particular position by stating, “We’re not considering white Anglo-Saxon men for this position.” I found it outrageous, and yet most of my close friends shrugged it off as just the cost of doing business.

So I, too, am grateful for a return to sanity as it relates to all three of: gender ideology, DEI, and immigration. Your column has given me more courage to say so publicly. Thank you!

From another reader seeking sanity:

Thought you might find this op-ed interesting, written by Gary Francione. I know a little bit about his work and worldview because he’s a longtime professor at Rutgers Law School (I’m an alum), and he has spent his career in legal academia articulating the “abolitionist” theory of animal rights, which demands veganism. That is to say, he’s not exactly a right-wing nut.

Yet his op-ed — in the New York Post, of all places — describes his total break with the Democratic Party over the trans-extremism that the party now manifests. Money quote:

An employee who is a good employee and deserves a promotion should not be denied that promotion because he believes he is a woman any more than an employee who is Catholic should be denied the promotion because he believes priests engage in transubstantiation and turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Both the Catholic and the trans-identified person can choose to believe as they wish. Both can present themselves in a way that reflects their beliefs. But neither can compel us to accept their metaphysical beliefs.

All I can say is that if the Democrats are losing Gary Francione … just, wow.

I, like you, have been surprised by the amount of relief I have felt since November. I’ve been a Dem voter forever — despite having a more conservative overall philosophy — because the GOP has been so toxic and disingenuous for as long as I can remember; and also because, pre-Trump, the GOP was opposed to the continued existence of a safety net. For me, it was the anti-Western, antisemitic vitriol on the left, and the Dems’ clear unwillingness to confront it, that drove me away from my usual lesser-evil assumption about the Dems. I wonder if they have any idea how many people they are losing. Even after November, I don’t get the sense they even care.

This next reader isn’t enjoying the new regime:

I work in international foreign assistance, largely in food security. In funding assistance programs, the US has made commitments to some of the most vulnerable people around the world. But last week, the Trump administration ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign assistance disbursements, followed by a stop-work order issued by State to almost all programs — with the exception of aid to Israel and Egypt and (thank heaven for small mercies) emergency food assistance.

The stop-work order includes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), established by George W. Bush, which operates in over 50 countries and has saved over 25 million lives. Per today’s NYT, this means that HIV-positive people are being turned away from appointments, and organizations are told they may not disburse the medications they already have in stock.

Nobody knows how long the stop-work order will remain in place. The administration is pausing aid while they review programs to ensure they have eliminated DEIA [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility] and are sufficiently America First. But what constitutes DEIA? Many humanitarian and development programs explicitly attempt to identify the most vulnerable communities for assistance, whether they be ethnic minorities such as the Rohingya, girls in danger of underage marriage, etc. Is that DEIA?

Should organizations keep staff on board so they can continue working with these groups if the stop-work is lifted? Or let them all go because they may not be reimbursed for such DEIA activities? There is little clarity. USAID had planned a stop-work Q&A session with partners, but it has been canceled due to the stop-work order.

Elections have consequences, and foreign aid changes in theme from one administration to the next, but stopping everything in its tracks is unprecedented. These actions will cost lives. They may also bankrupt service organizations in developing countries that had counted on commitments from USAID to hire staff and pay their bills.

I’m relieved that some of this has been scaled back — and HIV medications are back on track in PEPFAR. But I also have to say: what did you expect “America First” to mean? Vibes? Papers? Essays?

The following reader is worried about his firm going bankrupt, and he titles his email, “20 Years of HIV/AIDS Work is Gone”:

I have read and followed your work since the early days of the blogosphere, and today I’m writing to you to share what’s happening right now inside the federal government. I’m a father of two, and together with my wife, we own a consulting firm that focuses on economic development and partnerships around the world. Our largest client, by far, is USAID. We built this business doing the heavy lift of US foreign policy for decades — for GOP and Dem administrations alike. We employ about 100 people in the US and another 100 around the world.

Since the inauguration, the new Trump administration has implemented a brilliant strategy to gut the federal government of anything or anyone it does not consider in support of Trump. It is a quiet coup. Let me explain what is going on.

At first, Trump’s EO on pausing all foreign aid seemed annoying, but fairly innocuous. Other incoming administrations, of both parties, have taken similar steps, so it’s perfectly normal for an administration to want to review its portfolio.

Then, on Friday, Marco Rubio issued a Stop Work Order (SWO) for essentially all foreign assistance. SWOs are usually used when a contractor or grantee is suspected of committing fraud or is performing badly. As such, the rules around it are designed solely to protect the government. We are expected to idle all of our employees but still pay them. Eventually, we might be able to bill the government again, or we might not. We have no idea. Worse, Trump appointees have turned off USAID’s accounting system (GLAAS), so it’s highly likely we will not be paid for work we’ve already invoiced for. When will we get paid? Trump has a long track record of stiffing his vendors, so we will likely have to go to court.

For our company, it’s devastating. We’re going to lay off nearly all our staff around the world. It will be a miracle if we avoid bankruptcy — 20 years of building down the drain with the stroke of a pen. Our business failed not because we screwed up or because of a change in market. Our business failed because the federal government refused to abide by the one iron clad rule of business relations: paying your vendors.

What is far, far worse, however, is what is happening in Africa with HIV/AIDS programs. Africa’s entire infrastructure for managing and treating the HIV/AIDS epidemic is essentially built and largely maintained by US foreign assistance. In the short-term, this means millions of people, as of yesterday, no longer have access to ARVs or any other treatments. If the SWO stays in place for more than a couple of weeks, most of the local and international organizations that manage the supply chain, fund the clinics, and provide warehouses and logistics will have to shut their doors.

This system was built painstakingly over 20 years at incredible expense to the US taxpayer. It is not designed to be turned off like a TV set, because foreign-assistance organizations do not carry a lot of cash reserves. They will completely collapse, putting millions of lives at risk.

“Incredible expense.” I understand why we essentially finance many African countries’ public health programs. But Trump obviously doesn’t and neither do most of his voters.

Another reader confesses:

I feel guilty saying this, but I’m actually enjoying the Trump disruption. He’s upending the sclerotic system of opaque, uncontrolled spending in government. (We spent $15 million in condoms for Afghanistan??) I know disruption is dangerous, but so is complacency.

Here’s another reader concerned with federal spending:

Andrew, you’re wrong regarding active-duty government security details for former officials like Bolton and Pompeo. In the US, former government officials, except presidents, return to private life. By now, Ambassador Bolton and Secretary Pompeo have been former officials for an entire presidential term — longer than either served in Trump’s first administration.

This boondoggle, especially with active-duty federal government personnel, has got to stop. Secret Service and State Department Diplomatic Security are overstretched enough protecting current officials. If Congress really cared, they would agree to funding of former officials’ private security — subject to threat assessment and means test. I’m no fan of Trump, but I am glad he’s drawn the line, even if not necessarily for the right reasons.

Another quotes me:

This week, for example, Scott Bessent was nominated to be the highest-ranking openly gay official in US history: Treasury Secretary. He was there with his husband and kids in the Congressional hearing: a staggering leap for gay visibility and cred. Now go to Out.com or The Advocate and look at their news round-ups. Not a word about him.

Trump’s second term is also notable for having the first female Chief of Staff and the first Latino Secretary of State. And, along with Bessent, I don’t think those milestones are garnering as much media attention as they would under a Democratic president!

You think? All the narrative that’s fit to print. One more dissent for the week:

Right after the election and your gushing endorsement of Donald Trump (essentially hailing him as the second coming of Barack Obama), I wrote you to “congratulate you on finally having come out of the closet — as a DJT fanboy.” That email did not make it into your Dissents, which is fine, but it was on target, as your most recent column shows: After DJT’s week-one orgy of executive promiscuity (which your headline monstrously misconstrues as “nothing more” than “undoing Biden’s left-extremism”), you orgasmically share that you feel “exhilarated.”

That should be embarrassment enough. But no! You proceed to embarrass yourself further by invoking “common sense” as justification for literally everything Trump has done on “the central [for you] questions of immigration and identity politics.” I can’t think of a lazier, more vacuous intellectual hack. Don’t you remember that, in the heyday of our fight for marriage equality, the notion that marriage is between a man and a woman was held to be beyond debate as simply a matter of “common sense”? (See, e.g., “Donald Dwyer Jr.: Same-sex marriage defies common sense”)

Yeah: no one is allowed to say one good thing about a new administration enacting policies you support, even though you voted for Harris. I explained what I supported and what I didn’t. Unforgivable. In fact, a “gushing endorsement” of Trump — even as I noted in the first paragraph where I differed and called him a thug. A debating tactic where you take a phrase I used to refer to enforcing immigration law and seeing the difference between men and women and try to find one instance when an opponent invoked common sense as well — I can’t think of a lazier, more vacuous intellectual hack.

One more email for the week:

Thank you for your heartening words regarding the TIA+ cult and its attempts to erase us as gay men. I have written to numerous newspapers, including reporters I work with, to STOP using the term “LGBTQ community” … only to be met by silence. I am merely proposing they use “LGBT communities” to reflect reality — nothing radical.

I think we should stop using LGBT altogether. It’s an ideologically constructed lie.

Thanks as always for the dissents and other emails, and you can always sound off via dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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