Former President Bill Clinton opened the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative Wednesday with a list of things that worry him.
“It would be irresponsible, almost jarring, for us to take off and not acknowledge the traumatic rise in political violence that we’ve seen in our country,” Clinton said about the shooting deaths of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. “We’re pulling further and further away from one another.”
Clinton said he worried about the dismantling of domestic and foreign assistance programs, “the war on science and public health,” cuts to education, trade wars, and being “at risk of losing our freedom of speech.”
“We’re trying to do everything we can to provide a counterweight to a lot of the negative things that have taken place in the last several months,” Clinton said of the two-day conference, which shifted its format to create working groups to tackle many of the issues he outlined.
The conference’s biggest announcement on Wednesday was a partnership between the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Unitaid, and Wits RHI that will provide Gilead Sciences’ HIV prevention drug lenacapavir in 120 low- and middle-income countries for $40 a person each year, starting in 2027. The Gates Foundation announced a similar agreement with the Indian manufacturer Hetero Labs.
Clinton said the move was partially in response to foreign aid cuts from President Donald Trump’s administration, which he said could lead to more than 6 million more HIV cases and potentially 4 million more deaths in Africa. In July, GOP leaders stopped an additional cut of $400 million to PEPFAR, a program combating HIV/AIDS credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under then-President George W. Bush.
Points of Light Chairman Neil Bush said PEPFAR and the way it has helped so many in Africa has always been a point of family pride. And though he hasn’t talked to his brother, former President George W. Bush, about the new program announced at the Clinton Global Initiative, Neil Bush said he sees it as a way philanthropy can help fill in gaps.
“It seems like America’s withdrawal from the world is having terrible ramifications, in my personal view,” he said, adding that Points of Light hopes to increase the help it provides through its ambitious plan to double the number of volunteers in America in the next 10 years.
Activist and philanthropist Abigail Disney urged Clinton Global Initiative attendees to be more aggressive in their giving and encouraged them to support cultural movements instead of programs.
“I don’t care where you are on the political spectrum — there is mistrust, there’s fear and there is anger, and we should all be very alarmed,” Disney said. “And I hang around big philanthropies these days and I don’t see any alarm. I don’t think that’s because they’re not alarmed. I think that’s because they’re afraid. Everybody’s afraid.”
However, President Clinton said that the Clinton Global Initiative, which launched in 2005, has always looked to create solutions.
“If we hold our heads high, keep our eyes and ears open and deal with others with an outstretched hand and not a clenched fist, we’ve got a chance to keep hope alive,” he said. “We have the chance to make a meaningful difference in other people’s lives.”
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