US aid agency is in upheaval during foreign assistance freeze and staff departures

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand: Four years after Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup, the country is in the grip of a bloody civil war that has driven many of the country’s young across the border to Thailand.
There they scrape by doing hard jobs for little pay — often living in fear of being arrested and sent back to Myanmar.
AFP met three of them in Mahachai, a district of Samut Sakhon in Bangkok’s western suburbs known as “Little Myanmar” for its population of migrant workers.
They told of their experiences and hopes and fears for the future — speaking under pseudonyms for their own safety and that of their families back in Myanmar.“After the coup, I lost all my dreams,” Ma Phyu told AFP.
Before the military seized power, the 28-year-old was teaching young children while studying at university in Yangon with the aim of qualifying as a teacher.
After the February 1, 2021 coup, which ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, the generals launched a bloody campaign of violent repression against dissent.
Resistance has been fierce, led in large part by young people who grew up during Myanmar’s 10-year dalliance with democracy.
Like thousands of others, Ma Phyu chose to flee Myanmar rather than live under the junta, and now cannot return for fear of retribution from the authorities.

Thailand is home to the world’s largest Myanmar diaspora — 2.3 million registered workers, plus another 1.8 million unofficial migrants, according to the UN migration agency IOM.
Lacking Thai language skills, Myanmar migrants in Thailand are forced into difficult and dirty jobs including construction, food and farm work — often being paid below minimum wage.
Ma Phyu now works from 5:30 p.m. to 3:00 am in a fish processing plant, six days a week, regularly scolded by her supervisors for not understanding instructions in Thai.
Her husband arrived from Myanmar last year and the couple now live in a single-room apartment in Mahachai.
“I can’t stand the smell of fish any more. I feel disgusted at work and it’s the same at home. Nothing changes, I don’t want to live any more,” Ma Phyu said.
“My previous life was full of happiness. If there had been no coup, there would have been a good life for me.”

In a shabby room in a run-down building in Mahachai, Lwin Lwin practices Japanese grammar with five other Myanmar migrants.

The 21-year-old, who fled Myanmar without finishing high school, hopes learning the language will give her a way out of a tough existence in Thailand.
“The coup turned my life upside down. I thought I would finish school, go to university and work for the government,” she told AFP.
“But then the coup happened and all my ambitions were swept away.”
Like Ma Phyu, Lwin Lwin works in a fish processing factory in Samut Sakhon and lives in a crowded accommodation block.
“There is no happiness,” she said.
“I never thought I would be working in canned fish factory, but no matter what I feel, sad or happy, I have to work.”

Thura, 25, fled Myanmar after the junta announced in February last year that it would enforce conscription into the military.
Like thousands of others, Thura chose to escape to Thailand rather than fight for a regime he did not believe in, abandoning his dream of running his own garage.
“At first I wanted to join a People’s Defense Force and fight for the revolution,” he said, referring to the civilian groups that have taken up arms across the country to oppose the junta’s rule.
“But I have many siblings and I chose to come to Thailand.”
Remittances from workers in Thailand are a vital lifeline for many families in Myanmar, where the civil war has wrecked the economy.
In 2022 nearly one billion dollars were sent from the kingdom, according to the IOM.
Thura is waiting for his “pink card” — an official document allowing him to work in Thailand — and until it arrives he rarely leaves the one-room apartment he shares with his sister.
“We will be traumatized by this military coup till we die,” he said.
“If there were no coup, young people like us would be eating at home with our parents, brothers and sisters.
“Instead we are apart from our families for many years. It’s not good and I feel sad for us.”
 

WASHINGTON: The White House stenographers have a problem. Donald Trump is talking so much, the people responsible for transcribing his public remarks are struggling to keep up with all the words.
There were more than 22,000 on Inauguration Day, then another 17,000 when Trump visited disaster sites in North Carolina and California. It’s enough to strain the ears and fingers of even the most dedicated stenographer, especially after four years of Joe Biden’s relative quiet.
Now there are discussions about hiring additional staff to keep up with the workload, according to people with knowledge of the conversations who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The flood of words is one of the most visible — or audible — shifts from Biden to Trump, who craves the spotlight and understands better than most politicians that attention is a form of power. He’s been speaking nearly nonstop since starting his second term, drowning out dissenting voices and leaving his opponents struggling to be heard.
Take Wednesday, for example. During a signing ceremony for legislation to accelerate deportations, Trump, a Republican, talked up his accomplishments, claimed Hamas was using US-funded condoms to make bombs in Gaza, defended his administration’s efforts to freeze federal spending and reduce the government workforce, veered through descriptions of migrant violence and made the surprise announcement that Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be used as a detention center for people who are in the US illegally.
Trump’s commentary remains laden with falsehoods, including baseless allegations about voter fraud and assertions that California water policies worsened the recent wildfires. Sometimes he speaks off the cuff about consequential geopolitical matters, such as a recent suggestion that Palestinians should be displaced from Gaza while the enclave is rebuilt. It can be hard to know when to take him seriously, like when he muses about serving a third term, which the US Constitution does not allow.
But now that Trump is back in the presidency, it’s hard to ignore him.
“He’s dictating the news on his terms,” said Michael LaRosa, who worked as a television producer before serving as a spokesperson for former first lady Jill Biden. “He’s become America’s assignment editor.”

Most presidents try to start their terms with a bang, seizing the moment when their influence could be at its peak. However, Trump is in a different league.
Biden, a Democrat, spent 2 hours and 36 minutes talking on camera and used 24,259 words in his first week in office four years ago, according to numbers generated by Factba.se.
Trump’s comparable stats: nearly 7 hours and 44 minutes and 81,235 words last week. That’s longer than watching the original “Star Wars” trilogy back-to-back-to-back, and more words than “Macbeth,” “Hamlet” and “Richard III” combined.
It’s also much more than when Trump took office for his first term eight years ago. Back then, he was only on camera talking for 3 hours and 41 minutes and spoke 33,571 words.
Trump has spent decades practicing the best ways to get people to pay attention to him. As a New York businessman, he fed stories to gossip columnists, added gold plating to buildings and slapped his name on every product that he sold. His efforts reached an apex with “The Apprentice,” the reality television show that beamed him into American living rooms.
“One of the things that has given him the advantage is that he thinks like an executive producer,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican communications strategist. “He’s constantly programming the next hour and trying to keep his audience engaged.”
A sign of what was to come arrived shortly after Trump was sworn in. He delivered an inaugural address and then promptly gave more remarks to supporters that were even longer than his speech. And then he spoke at a downtown arena, where people had gathered for a rally, and later he parried questions from reporters for nearly an hour in the Oval Office while signing executive orders.
At one point, he turned to Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy.
“Does Biden ever do news conferences like this?” Trump said. “How many news conferences, Peter, has he done like this?”
“Like this?” Doocy responded.
“None,” Trump said, answering his own question.
On Friday, Trump presented a tour de force of talking, demonstrating that he’s far more willing to put himself in unscripted situations than Biden was.
He spoke with reporters while leaving the White House in the morning. He talked to them again after landing in North Carolina, then again at a briefing on the recovery from Hurricane Helene, and then again while meeting with victims of the storm.
Trump flew that afternoon to Los Angeles, where he conversed with local officials about the recent wildfires. Before boarding Air Force One to leave the city in the evening, he answered more questions from reporters on the tarmac.
As his travels continued over the weekend, Trump spoke to reporters twice at the back of Air Force One — as often as Biden did for his entire term.
“Transparency is back!” wrote longtime aide Margo Martin on social media.
That’s not the word that Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, would use.
“Being accessible and being transparent are two different things,” she said.
Sometimes more talking doesn’t produce more clarity. One afternoon, Trump told reporters that there were “no surprises” when Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski decided to oppose Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon. The next morning, Trump said he was “very surprised” by their votes.
Jamieson worries that the frenzied pace will exhaust people.
“More people will simply check out,” she said. “And that’s a problem. An informed citizenry is an engaged citizenry.”
Kate Berner, who worked on Biden’s communications staff, said Trump’s constant talking helps keep his adversaries off balance.
“By doing so much and saying so much, it is hard for people who oppose him to organize,” she said. “And it is hard for any one thing to take hold.”
But there’s also a risk for Trump, Berner said. If he’s not careful, she said, he could once again start “wearing out his welcome with the American people.”