Astral Codex Ten

Rubio

5 min read

Rubio

Article

Rubio is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 27, 2025 and May 29, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “people are theorizing that maybe Trump/Rubio ordered it restarted”; “Cowen/Rubio’s claim that ‘only 12% goes [directly] to recipients’ is false”; “because Rubio and Trump falsely attributed many cringe programs to USAID”. It most often appears alongside PEPFAR, Trump, Africa.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: February 27, 2025
  • Last seen: May 29, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Links For February 2025
February 27, 2025 · Original source
The current status of PEPFAR is still unclear - people are theorizing that maybe Trump/Rubio ordered it restarted, but Musk/DOGE are refusing to comply?! Whatever is happening, it’s “too little, too late” and many clinics are already closed.
Inline links: are theorizing, “too little, too late”
Contra MR On Charity Regrants
May 22, 2025 · Original source
USAID is not, itself, a charity. It is an organization that funds other charities. Cowen/Rubio’s claim that “only 12% goes [directly] to recipients” is false, because 0% goes directly to recipients, because USAID is not set up in a way where this even makes sense. All USAID money goes through other charities. The 12% number seems to be the amount that goes through foreign organizations (including charities, charitable government programs, and charitably-minded forprofits), with the other 88% going through charities based in the US.
Not every program is this good. Some are cringe scholarships-for-underrepresented-women-in-permaculture garbage2. Others go over budget or accomplish less than hoped, because charity is hard. But the overall track record is outstanding, outright fraud is rare, and the cringe is less common than you think (because Rubio and Trump falsely attributed many cringe programs to USAID that it never funded at all).
Inline links: 2, it never funded at all
Politics is nasty and sometimes involves lies. But the thousands of doctors, nurses, and charity workers who give up more lucrative careers elsewhere to save lives in the developing world are some of my heroes. I’ve talked to many of these people (see my father’s story of his time in this world here) and I couldn’t do what they do for a month, let alone a whole career. When Trump and Rubio try to tar them as grifters in order to make it slightly easier to redistribute their Congress-earmarked money to kleptocrats and billionaire cronies, this goes beyond normal political lying into the sort of thing that makes you the scum of the earth, the sort of person for whom even an all-merciful God could not restrain Himself from creating Hell.
Inline links: see my father’s story of his time in this world here
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID
May 29, 2025 · Original source
I want to make it clear: I am not recommending that people kill Donald Trump or Marco Rubio. I am recommending that God consider sending them to Hell. I think this is a moderate compromise proposal, endorsed by leading Hell experts2.
Inline links: endorsed by leading Hell experts, 2
This is why I found Tyler’s post saying that he was “fact checking” Marco Rubio’s claim that it was mostly waste, and indeed found that 75-90% “went to third-parties” and that “not all third parties are wasteful” but “USAID defenders [aren’t] keen to deal with such estimates” to provide such negative value. It looks like it’s offering this much-needed clarity, but in fact it’s the opposite.
Scott takes me to be endorsing Rubio’s claim that the third-party NGOs simply pocket the money. In reality my fact check with o3 found (correctly) that the money was “channelled through” the NGOs, not pocketed. Scott lumps my claim together with Rubio’s as if we were saying the same thing. My very next words (“I do understand that not all third party allocations are wasteful…”) show a clear understanding that the money is channeled, not pocketed, and my earlier and longer post on US AID makes that clearer yet at greater length. Scott is simply misrepresenting me here.
Inline links: my earlier and longer post on US AID