On December 27th, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates traveled to Mar Lago for dinner with Donald J. Trump. Some people around him were surprised he decided to go, but Gates wants to talk to people who listen.
The dinner lasted three hours and Trump appeared to be enjoying himself, someone nearby said. They spoke about polio – the interests of both men – and Gates left saying he was “candidly impressed” by the president-elect's interest in global health.
Or, he told the Wall Street Journal. His comments he repeatedly said to some friends did not age well. Less than a month after Mar-a-Lago's dinner, Trump took office and quickly went to work beating the global health infrastructure that supported Gates' foundation work.
The Gates Foundation, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next week, plans to celebrate its achievements, including helping to cut global child mortality rates in half since 2000. But the foundation, which gives $9 billion each year, faces a serious threat to both its work and its future.
Two days after Trump freezes all foreign aid in the US, Elon Musk began to dismantle the US International Development Agency, which provides aid from around the world, including vaccines, treatments and technologies created in labs bankrolled by the Gates Foundation.
At the same time, the Trump administration has been campaigning for retaliation against the system, a university, a large law firm. The charity was on the edge, assuming they would become the next target of his rage. They are concerned that the president will use his law enforcement to paralyze charities through investigations. And they fear a challenge to a tax-free position. This is a threat Trump explicitly put on Harvard when he refused to meet his demands.
At the Risk Aversion Gates Foundation, officials asked aides not to place anything on emails and other written material, especially anything Trump officials could take away from context. Some employees have shut down public social media accounts and moved much of that work to telegram or signal encryption apps. (Foundation spokesman Alex Reed said employees were always encouraged to be aware of communication.)
The careful partnership Gates tried to start at Mar-a-Lago has sparked a blaze, but he continues his point. He met with the White House Chief of Staff, several Cabinet Secretaries, National Security Council and members of Congress.
“This is a very broad champion we are trying to enlist,” said Mark Suzman, the foundation's chief executive, in an interview.
Gates had hoped to find an alliance with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a vocal champion in the past in combating malaria and child poverty. But Rubio, who oversees foreign aid, has refused to meet or speak with Gates since the election, the foundation said.
This article is based on interviews with Gates, current and former Gates Foundation employees and two dozen fellow friends and advisors.
The change in Washington's approach says that Gates has left him at sea, according to current foundation employees and others who spoke to him. People who know him describe Gates as sometimes a obstacle and data-driven, saying he struggled to align the way he sees the world with the obvious new rules of the game.
“In my experience, Bill is a rational thinker who wants to optimize for saved lives. So this chaotic world where people act unexpectedly and revenge is at odds with it.” “In this completely foreign environment, shells are shocked and there is a double environment.”
A harsh blow and a calm response
The Seattle-based foundation was launched by Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates. They ran together until they divorced in 2021. It has a donation of $75 billion, the nation's largest charity effort. It employs over 2,000 people and has offices around developing countries that rival the power of the government they run.
That alone cannot work on its own. Rather than directly delivering services, they fund the development of strategies and technology, and work with governments, aid agencies and the private sector to spread them.
The dismantling of the USAID was the first gut punch, but not the last. Deep cuts continued at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. Both were major funders of global health. Most US-funded global healthcare architecture has been fundamentally reduced or destroyed.
Gates' priorities, the programme, has been wiped out for decades. Malaria vaccine research. Delivery of treatment food packets developed by the Foundation for malnourished children. and the African programme to provide HIV prevention techniques that the foundation invented.
One particularly tough hit was the Trump administration's decision to end support for Gavi, an organization that helps the poorest countries buy childhood vaccinations. Gates was Gavi's co-creator, and sometimes his foundation was its biggest funder.
News that the US could withdraw from Gavi has produced the foundation's most sharp response since the Trump administration began cutting foreign aid. On X, CEO Suzuman said he was “deeply disturbed” by the news, “if it was.” According to those involved, the language of that post suggesting the disastrous consequences of the cut was discussed in advance by the advisor.
The foundation has always been measured in its official statements, but since Trump won the election, it has worked as politically neutral as possible, people nearby say. Some employees and allies have expressed dissatisfaction that Gates and the organization, who lead many of the world's global health activities, are being thwarted by reactions to what employees see as catastrophic levels of reduction. Apart from the X post, Suzman has issued several careful statements relating to the actions of the Trump administration, including the values ​​of the World Health Organization and reproductive healthcare.
I hate the White House
For those currently in Trump's inner circle, the Gates Foundation was a popular punching bag. When Vice President JD Vance ran for the Senate in 2021, he called the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation and Harvard University donations “cancer in American society.” Trump's powerful policy adviser, Stephen Miller, attacked the foundation's focus on racial equity and fundraising on “the most hatred, toxic, Marxist ideology.”
And then there's Musk. The world's wealthiest man has signed a gift pledge, a once-running philanthropic commitment by Gate. He currently untook Gates on X and is called the hypocrisy of climate charity because he believes Gates has shortened stock in Tesla, the electric car maker run by Musk.
As head of such a large and influential foundation, Gates is greeted by the world as heads of state may be, and he holds himself back as enthusiastically apolitical. That changed in 2024 when he made a $50 million donation to support Kamala Harris' presidential election.
After Trump was elected, Gates tried to compensate him. In a private conversation, those who heard him say Trump recalls the tech billionaire who was spun him, and, as Trump says, named Gates when he wanted to be his friend.
Still, the administration is overseen, explaining the bonds of the Gates Foundation, and its relationship with a liberal donor network called Arabella Advisors.
Suzman told friends he believed the Trump administration would target the foundation in a variety of ways, primarily by stripping its tax-free status, the two who spoke with him said.
The foundation's work is not partisan, Suzman said in an interview. “What we are working on is to save children from preventable death, try to stop infections, and provide opportunities for the poorest and most vulnerable people.
Federal law prohibits presidents from using the Internal Revenue Service to punish their enemies, but outside of conservative groups it tests waters. Edward Blum, who has built a challenging, positive action career, filed a complaint with the IRS against the Gates Foundation. He argued that the fellowship program for students of color made foundations “unusual racism” “incompetent for tax-free status.”
In fact, the foundation changed its fellowship admissions policy several months ago, spokeswoman Reid said.
However, the foundation did not publish the changes until they were asked to comment on a Blum opinion piece released by the Wall Street Journal. The way it came out looked like a cave and was portrayed like that in right-wing media.
Charity leaders were also nervous about the January executive order, directing the Attorney General to identify agencies that include “a foundation of over $500 million assets” that can be researched on diversity, equity and inclusive programs.
The Gates Foundation, like other companies and institutions, is taking steps to highlight the work of DEI. He fired several members of the Diversity Team and retired from the titles of Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer. When it was released in February, Gates said DEI's initiatives have sometimes “going too far.”
The failure of imagination
The potential consequences of the significant disruption of the foundation's work are immeasurable. For example, the United States has withdrawn from the World Health Organization. For example, the foundation is currently the largest funder of the body. Since the upheaval began in January, hundreds of scientists, aid groups and government ministers have turned to the foundation for panicked demands for help in maintaining research and programs. It is increasingly seen as the last actor with both resources and commitment to help.
Suzuman said the foundation's priority advocacy effort is the preservation of US funds for Gavi and the Global Fund to combat AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, the leading organizations funded by government, charities and the private sector. He also said that Africa and Asian countries committed the first $30 million in order to assess the holes left by the USAID reductions and to plan to rebuild essential services.
But Suzman acknowledged that the foundation must adapt as the world's biggest aid agency was doing its best and other high-income countries were also reducing aid.
In planning the election session, foundation leaders have thrown out various ways Trump can change global aid. When the idea of ​​a gutted USAID was proposed, it was dismissed as too sensational, said two people with knowledge of those sessions. Instead, the foundation's plans focused on the US withdrawal from WHO and reducing support for birth control and other reproductive health care.
Suzman said the foundation tried to predict what the new government would bring, but did not foresee the scale of the change. A senior foundation strategist confessed that his former colleague had a failure in his imagination.
At this month's TED meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Gates' foundation handed over a lapel button decorated with the buzzwords of his philanthropy. But it feels inconsistent with the landscape the foundations face: “optimism.”
