Why Were Americans Funding Jobs For Transgender Workers In Nepal?
Authored by David Manney via PJ Media,
Former HIV outreach worker and biological male Rubi Lama lost a job he'd held for nine years when U.S. funding vanished from a health program in Nepal. He tested people, counseled those at risk, and helped sex workers avoid infection.
Months later, unable to find other work, he joined them along a highway outside Hetauda.
An Associated Press social media post about transgender aid workers in Nepal turning to sex work after losing their jobs due to U.S. foreign aid cuts sparked a wave of conservative backlash, with critics arguing the video made the case for defunding USAID rather than saving it.
The AP post said that in Nepal, where "a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options," around 100 LGBTQ aid workers left jobless by U.S. funding cuts had turned to sex work to survive. An accompanying video focused on Rubi Lama, a former HIV outreach worker who said USAID-funded programs had provided free condoms, lubricant and HIV-prevention medication before the cuts.
"When USAID funding was there, condoms were free, lubricant was also distributed ... for free," Lama said in the video, adding that HIV treatments, including PrEP, were also available without cost. "But, now it is gone."
His story is painful on a human scale; it also raises a question many Americans are asking: why was the United States expected to keep paying his salary?
Lama worked for Friends Hetauda, part of a network connected to the Blue Diamond Society. The society received 85% of its funding from USAID, operated 20 clinics, and employed 350 people.
For nine years, Lama - who is transgender - had devoted her life to conducting HIV outreach in Nepal's marginalized communities, including the LGBTQ+ sex workers who wait by this highway each night. But after the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, Lama and more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide found themselves out of a job.
In impoverished Nepal, where a conservative culture leaves openly transgender people with few legal job options, the impact on aid workers' lives was particularly crushing. Starving and scared, Lama and around 100 other LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless by the funding cuts have turned to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.
When the money stopped, 262 employees lost their jobs, and the organization says 35% to 45% of those former workers later entered sex work.
The clinics provided HIV tests, condoms, counseling, antiretroviral drugs, and PrEP. More than 1,200 clients reportedly lost access to PrEP after the shutdown. Those are real health services, and the people affected aren't punchlines.
The political reaction followed a familiar script: President Donald Trump cut foreign aid, vulnerable workers suffered, and American taxpayers were cast as villains for refusing to continue the arrangement.
Trump's Executive Order:
Section 1. Purpose. The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of United States that no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.
Sec. 3. (a) 90-day pause in United States foreign development assistance for assessment of programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy. All department and agency heads with responsibility for United States foreign development assistance programs shall immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of development assistance funds to foreign countries and implementing non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors pending reviews of such programs for programmatic efficiency and consistency with United States foreign policy, to be conducted within 90 days of this order. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) shall enforce this pause through its apportionment authority.
Critics spoke as though Washington had fired public employees in Ohio rather than ended overseas grants in Nepal.
Foreign aid can serve American interests; HIV prevention can reduce disease, improve stability, and protect people who travel across borders. Compassion also has limits when one country becomes the permanent source of salaries and program funding for organizations half a world away.
Nepal has a national government; it has health agencies, wealthy residents, international charities, and neighboring countries with their own interest in regional health.
USAID later told partners to pause new funding obligations and issue stop-work orders or suspensions for existing awards, while critics have said the review led to major disruptions, staff reductions and the cancellation of critical foreign-assistance awards.
But Federalist editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway argued the AP post exposed misplaced priorities, particularly among the media, saying the outlet presented U.S. tax dollars flowing to a "trans Nepalese job protection program" as though it was a good use of public money.
"The AP announces that your hard-earned tax dollars were flowing to a trans Nepalese job protection program as if that was an even remotely good use of your money," Hemingway wrote in a post on X. "AP is sick Democrat propaganda."
"How dare Elon cut USAID funds to the Nepalese trans sex worker community," quipped Republican activist Jack Posobiec.
Where were they when an organization depended on Washington for 85% of its budget?
President Trump ordered a review of foreign assistance on Jan. 20, 2025, requiring programs to prove they were efficient and aligned with U.S. foreign policy.
The order didn't ban all aid; it required justification before the money kept flowing.
The old system trained foreign groups to build programs around American checks, and when the checks stopped, the collapse was immediate. A model that leaves hundreds of employees with no local funding, no transition plan, and no replacement support was never sustainable.
American families face medical bills, housing costs, layoffs, and taxes of their own. They can care about Rubi Lama without accepting lifelong responsibility for his paycheck. They can support targeted HIV treatment without giving every foreign NGO a permanent claim on the U.S. Treasury.
The outrage over Nepal makes President Trump's case for him. Foreign aid should have a clear purpose, measurable results, shared costs, and an exit plan.
Sympathy can't replace accountability.