CNN highlighted President Trump’s foreign-aid cuts following the deadly landslide, even while acknowledging the canceled program probably could not have warned residents about the catastrophe.
By Lucretia Hughes
WASHINGTON — You have got to be kidding me.
More than 1,200 people are dead, thousands remain missing and entire communities have been destroyed following a catastrophic landslide and flash flood in Nepal. Yet portions of the American media have already found a familiar person to place in the middle of the story: President Donald Trump.
CNN published a report highlighting the Trump administration’s 2025 decision to end funding for a U.S.-backed natural-hazards program in Nepal. The report placed that decision beside the recent death toll, creating the unmistakable impression that Trump’s foreign-aid policies were somehow connected to the loss of life.
There is one major problem with that narrative.
CNN’s own report acknowledged that the canceled program “probably would not have been able to provide an early warning” for the flood that devastated Nepal.
That admission should have ended any attempt to connect Trump directly to the disaster.
The catastrophe began Aug. 26 when a massive slope failure involving a glacier occurred inside Langtang National Park near Nepal’s border with China. The collapse unleashed a fast-moving wall of ice, water, rock and mud through the Lende Khola and Trishuli River valleys.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the debris flow traveled approximately 100 kilometers, or 62 miles. The initial collapse generated seismic energy equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.
Federal scientists have not yet determined whether the initial failure was technically a landslide that incorporated part of a glacier or a direct glacial collapse.
What is clear is that Trump did not cause a mountain to collapse in Nepal.
The landslide destroyed communities, roads, border facilities and hydropower infrastructure. Nepalese officials estimate that approximately 20,000 homes will have to be rebuilt. At least 7,500 homes were completely destroyed.
By Friday, more than 1,250 people had been confirmed dead in Nepal, with thousands more missing. China reported additional deaths and disappearances in neighboring Tibet. Nepalese officials estimated the disaster caused approximately $2.56 billion in property and infrastructure damage.
Those facts describe an enormous natural catastrophe. They do not establish that an American foreign-aid decision caused it.
The program at the center of the media coverage was SERVIR-Hindu Kush Himalaya, a partnership involving NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.
The initiative used satellite data and geospatial technology to monitor floods, landslides, glaciers, water supplies, forest fires and other environmental hazards across the Himalayan region.
The regional SERVIR website states that the initiative formally concluded in January 2025, although some of the tools and services developed through the program remained available.
Birendra Bajracharya, the program’s former director, told CNN that his team received a stop-work notice near the end of January 2025. He said the contract had originally been expected to continue through 2026.
The canceled work reportedly included efforts to improve awareness of landslide risks associated with extreme rainfall and technology that could detect movement on unstable slopes.
Those tools could have strengthened Nepal’s long-term disaster planning. That is a legitimate policy issue worthy of discussion.
But this particular disaster was not described as an ordinary rainfall-triggered landslide. It involved the sudden collapse of a glacier and surrounding rock — a rare event that experts admitted the SERVIR program was not equipped to predict.
CNN’s report said glacial breakup events are so rare that researchers cannot simply install alarms capable of predicting when they will occur.
The program might have helped scientists map vulnerable areas, prepare downstream communities or assess the damage more quickly. Those possibilities are different from claiming it could have prevented the landslide or issued a timely warning that would have saved the victims.
There is currently no evidence that continuing the American-funded program would have prevented this catastrophe.
The State Department told CNN that the funding decision occurred before USAID’s formal reorganization. Officials also said the United States continued supporting flood mitigation in Nepal through a World Meteorological Organization grant and a separate agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology.
That agreement covers flood warnings, disaster-response training and improvements to forecasting data.
Nepal also had sensors and monitoring stations in the affected region before the disaster. Officials told Reuters that some stations were not being extensively monitored and were swept away by the flood.
The flood struck a border crossing at approximately 8:32 a.m., while the public warning was not issued until 9:13 a.m. Nepal is now planning to install new seismic sensors, cameras and satellite communications equipment along the Chinese border.
Officials acknowledged that even an improved system might provide only a few minutes of warning during a similar glacial collapse.
Nepal had also asked China for better real-time information about glacier movements and upstream water levels before the disaster. That raises additional questions about regional communication, preparedness and the responsibilities of the countries directly affected.
None of those complexities fit comfortably inside a headline designed to connect Trump to the tragedy.
The president called the destruction in Nepal “a terrible thing” and offered the country whatever assistance it needed. The United States initially announced $500,000 in emergency funding before increasing its contribution to $3.6 million.
State Department officials said the money would help provide food assistance to 10,000 households and pay for blankets, mosquito nets, shelter materials and other emergency supplies.
Critics described the initial contribution as inadequate and argued that dismantling USAID weakened America’s ability to respond. That is a fair subject for political debate.
It is not proof that Trump bears responsibility for the landslide.
America cannot become the automatic financier, emergency manager and warning-system operator for every country on Earth. Foreign-aid programs should be examined to determine whether they are effective, necessary and in the interest of American taxpayers.
If SERVIR’s Nepal operation was so essential that its absence supposedly endangered thousands of people, Nepal’s government, neighboring China, international organizations and other wealthy nations had more than a year to finance or replace it.
Where was their responsibility?
The media can examine whether canceling the program was wise. It can investigate whether another organization should have continued the work. It can ask whether the United States should provide more humanitarian assistance.
What it should not do is arrange the facts to suggest that Trump’s budget decisions produced a natural catastrophe that the canceled program admittedly could not have predicted.
This is about more than defending one president. It is about demanding honest journalism.
A tragedy of this magnitude should begin with the victims, the rescue workers and the families waiting for news about missing loved ones. It should not be treated as another opportunity to manufacture a political attack against Donald Trump.
The people of Nepal deserve compassion, assistance and truthful reporting.
They do not deserve to have their suffering turned into another misleading chapter of America’s never-ending anti-Trump media narrative.
Original article
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