On January 24, the State Department paused disbursements of foreign aid for a 90-day review period. So far, there are exemptions for emergency food aid but not for PEPFAR. This market resolves YES if PEPFAR funding is unfrozen as of February 15, 2025, and NO if funding is (still) frozen on that date.
https://apnews.com/article/state-department-trump-foreign-aid-bf047e17ef64cb42a1a1b7fdf05caffa
Update 2025-02-07 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Clarification of Resolution Criteria
50% Funding Threshold: The market will resolve YES if at least 50% of total PEPFAR funding is unfrozen by February 15, 2025, as estimated from reliable sources.
Outcome: If less than 50% of the funding is unfrozen by that date, the market will resolve as NO.
1,000
3.00One last bit on the food aid comparison: this market defined emergency food aid as something that, by already being "exempted", was NOT frozen, in contrast to PEPFAR.
However, food aid has been subject to the same kind of post-waiver confusion:
https://www.devex.com/news/the-mess-inside-rubio-s-lifesaving-waivers-109398
"The mess inside Rubio's 'lifesaving' waivers
On Jan. 24, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued an exemption to the foreign aid freeze: a waiver for lifesaving humanitarian programs. But over the last three weeks, nothing about the waivers has gone according to plan."
This hopefully helps illustrate how "state dept policy" and "what happens after state issues waivers" are two separate things.
@DanielZiegler I asked this to DeepSeek R1 via Perplexity, and it stated that the waiver led to 53% theoretical capacity, but with 18% "implementation loss" only 35% of funding was operational. However, I don't know how reliable this is. Facts on the ground change quickly and I'm afraid DeepSeek can't properly deal with it. That said, it did draw on quite some practical information and I was nevertheless impressed.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-at-least-50-of-pepfar-fundi-vnHNYS0oQWyalVKnXySSYA#3
Good luck resolving this 😅
@DanielZiegler You agreed with a "resolves Yes" comment 14 says ago.
The market was written originally about exemptions granted by the State Department.
You've converted this from a political question (will the State Dept walk back their pause of this aid) to a very different "how well are the gears of bureaucracy turning" question.
I don't know why you're pushing forward with reversing the meaning of this market, and I protest. I feel annoyed because I think your response to my protests has been to avoid responding.
I will claim once again that the right thing to do is to N/A this market.
@DanielZiegler 12 days ago you agreed that YES was satisfied and just needed to stay that way through Feb 15. 7 days ago you redefined the market and have been silent since then. Can you please clean this up? People are still betting on contradictory assumptions.
Welp, I guess this market was totally unnecessary because PEPFAR "has continued uninterrupted and was never paused."
https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1890166678069080150
Yes I'm being satirical, other than that it's super clear that the "freeze" that Rubio's waiver unfroze is very very gone, even if other things now gum up the works.
@DanielZiegler how will you resolve this if funding is partially unfrozen but >50% of it is still frozen?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/us/politics/usaid-job-cuts.html
The Trump administration plans to reduce the number of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions, three people with knowledge of the plans said on Thursday.
I can see a world where e.g. the State Department part of the funding is unfrozen as-of Feb 15th, but USAID/CDC is not.
Under the literalist interpretation, if PEPFAR disburses a single dollar on Feb 15th, this is 'unfrozen'; under a consequentialist interpretation, the thing we actually care about ("will PEPFAR continue to function") won't be true.
I can see the case for either interpretation, though I do have a vested interest in 'no'.
@draaglom Let's make 50% funding the line, as well as I can estimate it from reliable sources. And I'll stop betting given that it might end up ambiguous.
@DanielZiegler Oy. No blame to you as market creator, but I think that reality has dissolved the definition of this market and it should be NAed.
The description focused on "State Department paused" and "exemptions" and we're now in a world where exemptions have been issued, which is a clear YES in divergence with the end results that most of us actually care about. However, the market was framed in a "will the state dept change its mind?" way. The world gets messy in ways we don't expect sometimes. I no longer think there is a fair resolution for this market.
@JamesBaker3 I'm going to reiterate that I contest reinterpreting "freeze" to mean "disrupted for any reason" versus via state department policy. The market defined "exemptions for emergency food aid" as not frozen, in contrast to PEPFAR.
@DanielZiegler Although PEPFAR is funded by the State Department, roughly two-thirds of its grants are implemented through U.S.A.I.D. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Neither organization has released funds to grantees since the freeze was initiated."
— https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/health/trump-usaid-pepfar.html
Yesterday
@JamesBaker3 further refinement on what this comment meant to me: "if State changes course but the system still breaks down"
But now the definition of "unfrozen" and "exemptions" together has been revealed to be undefined
@Fay42 I should have worded this more clearly but I wrote "funding is unfrozen as of February 15, 2025" so I will wait to see that it is still unfrozen then
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who initially exempted only emergency food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt from the aid pause, agreed Tuesday to at least temporarily keep spending money on humanitarian programs that provide life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance, according to a copy of a signed waiver obtained by The Associated Press.