On Dec. 27, Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, made a trip to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Donald J. Trump. Some people around him were surprised that he had decided to go, but Mr. Gates wants to talk to whoever will listen.
The dinner lasted three hours, and Mr. Trump seemed to enjoy himself, a person close to him said. They talked about polio — an interest of both men — and Mr. Gates left the meeting “frankly impressed” by the incoming president’s interest in global health.
Or so he told The Wall Street Journal. His comments, which he reiterated to some friends, did not age well. Less than a month after the Mar-a-Lago dinner, Mr. Trump was inaugurated and immediately went to work tearing down the global health infrastructure that undergirds the work of Mr. Gates’s foundation.
Next week, the Gates Foundation, marking its 25th anniversary, plans to celebrate its achievements, including helping to cut global child mortality in half since 2000. At what should be a moment of self-congratulation, however, the foundation, which gives away $9 billion each year, is facing grave threats to both its work and its future.
Two days after Mr. Trump froze all U.S. foreign assistance, Elon Musk began to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development, which delivers aid 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 on a campaign of retribution against institutions — universities, big law firms — that it perceives as too liberal. Philanthropies have been on edge, assuming they will be the next target of his ire. They are concerned that the president will use his law enforcement agencies to paralyze charitable institutions through investigations. And they fear a challenge to their tax-exempt status — a threat that Mr. Trump made explicitly against Harvard University when it refused to bend to his demands.