🧵Corruption, kleptocracy, and oligarchy should be the unifying theme of progressive policy — and, for that matter, center-left and liberal policy — and that’s been true for a very very long time.

"You can't trust Donald Trump." "But you can trust Trump to be Trump." @mattduss.bsky.social from @cipolicy.bsky.social on how Australia & other countries can understand the US President. 🎧 theaus.in/4nrpSTe @emmashortis.bsky.social #auspol

"The credibility of any U.S. foreign policy initiative, by Trump or any president, is undermined by the U.S.'s own internal political crisis, visible to the world," @mattduss.bsky.social told the NYT www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...

“The Knesset vote may be symbolic, but the expulsion of Palestinian communities and rapid settlement expansion are not,” @mattduss.bsky.social said about Israel's preliminary approval of a bill to annex a settlement city in the West Bank www.al-monitor.com/originals/20...

“What’s bizarre is that the Trump organisation is so deeply leveraged in the Middle East that the corruption could sustain the ceasefire." @mattduss.bsky.social told @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Echoing CIP's statement, @mattduss.bsky.social emphasizes the need for sustained pressure to advance the ceasefire and achieve lasting peace for Gazans and Israelis.

“The Democrats need to empower messengers that the establishment is scared of, people who don’t delight megadonors. Democrats need to stake their claims on a set of strong beliefs, and see if Americans will follow.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/o...

🎧 Listen: @mattduss.bsky.social on Bob Woodward's book 'War' and the limitations of DC’s most famous chronicler. www.thenation.com/podcast/poli...

New from @mattduss.bsky.social for @cipolicy.bsky.social: following President Trump’s meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House, and the Trump administration’s release of a “21-point plan” to end the conflict in Gaza.

“the moment for building a great progressive majority party has arrived, a coalition asserting itself against a sclerotic political elite, our economic overlords in Big Tech and Wall Street and a radical right crusading against its own country.” www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/o...

State Dept's revoking visa of Colombia's president because he said in Spanish "That's why from here, from New York I ask all the soldiers of the army of the United States not to point their guns at people. Disobey the orders of Trump. Obey the orders of humanity." www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

Recognizing Palestine doesn’t reward terrorism, it rewards diplomacy. The failure to do so for so long is what led to Oct 7. But now states must follow up that recognition with concrete action. My piece in @foreignpolicy.com foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/25/p...

“How to Fix America” 🎧➡️ @mattduss.bsky.social joined @gideonrachman.bsky.social on the @financialtimes.com Rachman Review to discuss the challenges defining America’s future. www.ft.com/content/4581...

Democrats should build their future policy platform against one clear idea: anti-corruption. And this should go not just for domestic policy, but for foreign policy as well. Writing on the topic with Trevor Sutton and Matt Duss for @foreignaffairs.com: www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

Unlike Trump, Lula's UN address offered a “positive and unifying vision of the multilateral system, of international law and of norms that uphold human dignity and human security. As far as I could tell, Lula was the real leader of the free world today.” www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

AOC: We should be clear about who Charlie Kirk was. A man who believed that the civil rights act that granted black Americans the right to vote was a mistake… His rhetoric and beliefs were ignorant, uneducated, and sought to disenfranchise millions of Americans.

The Palestinians in El Salvador – A Prosperous, yet Largely Depoliticized Diaspora. @mpaarlberg.bsky.social traces 19th-century Palestinian immigration to El Salvador and the community’s economic, cultural, and political evolution. www.palquest.org/en/highlight...

Senators, representatives, and Presidential aspirants can all work to change this back to a first principle of restraint, and they should do so, argues John Ramming Chappell for @cipolicy.bsky.social. internationalpolicy.org/publications...

Fall Books features Matt Duss on the crisis of Democratic foreign policy, Becca Rothfeld on Ingeborg Bachmann, Laila Lalami on the Internet's lost souls, Sarah Chihaya on Susan Choi, Elias Rodriques on James Baldwin, and @jeetheer.bsky.social on William Buckley: www.thenation.com/issue/octobe...

“It’s an attack on diplomacy itself, making clear that Netanyahu intends to see Israel’s accelerating campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza through to the end…. This will have disastrous consequences for future peace efforts, and for U.S. security.” - @mattduss.bsky.social

“what is one to make of a book that, after detailing how Biden and his team helped perpetrate an era-­defining catastrophe in Gaza, proceeds to describe that team as ‘an example of steady and purposeful leadership’?” On Woodward’s “War” @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/worl...

“‘War’ reflects how the Democratic Party establishment desperately wants to see itself…More than any other recent president, Biden embodied the foreign policy establishment, and that establishment cannot admit failure” @mattduss.bsky.social on Bob Woodward’s “War” www.thenation.com/article/worl...

Trump’s Pentagon rebrand shows what @mattduss.bsky.social ss calls “belligerent chest-thumping, not peacemaking — with dangerous consequences for U.S. security, global standing, and our armed forces.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/u...

NEW 🧵The White House has now issued its first formal legal justification for the lethal attack on a vessel in the Caribbean. This War Powers report to Congress is long on bluster and short on substance. This letter does not adequately justify the premeditated killing of apparent civilians. 1/n

Matt Duss is always worth reading: www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democ...

“Washington will never succeed in building a more democratic, equal, and peaceful world if it fails to control endemic graft.” @cjcmichel.bsky.social, Trevor Sutton, and @mattduss.bsky.social call on Democrats to build a policy agenda focused on anticorruption:

John Mearsheimer vs. Matt Duss: A Debate on Trump-Putin Summit, Ukraine, Russia & Paths to Peace

John Mearsheimer debates @mattduss.bsky.social on the origins of the Russia-Ukraine War www.democracynow.org/2025/8/15/ma... @democracynow.org

This, by @cjcmichel.bsky.social & @mattduss.bsky.social is good. The problem, of course, is that we're now seeing how a corrupt, kleptocratic U.S. regime can -- like their counterparts -- turn these kinds of instruments to their own purposes. So if we ever get another bite at the apple...

"If the U.S. does not confront kleptocratic networks, offshore havens, and money laundering, it exposes its institutions to malign foreign influence." @mattduss.bsky.social, @trevorsutton.bsky.social & @cjcmichel.bsky.social wrote in @foreignaffairs.com www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

On our Stop Starvation in Gaza call this Sunday, we’re excited to be joined by @ramirez.house.gov, Lead Sponsor of the Block the Bombs Act, and @mattduss.bsky.social, Executive VP @cipolicy.bsky.social and former foreign policy advisor to @sanders.senate.gov. RSVP now: innmvmt.org/nationalcall

“While it’s progress that most Democrats voted to block military aid to Israel, it’s shameful most Senators opposed it. If the Senate truly represented Americans’ views on Gaza, the resolutions would have passed easily.” @mattduss.bsky.social in @thenation.com www.thenation.com/article/poli...

“Trump seems to be realizing what a lot of us observed from early on — that Zelensky is not the problem,” said Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. “Ukraine is not the problem. Putin is the problem.”

Trump Admits Financial Penalties on Russia ‘May or May Not’ Work www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/u...

📢 New statement from @mattduss.bsky.social in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France will recognize Palestinian statehood. internationalpolicy.org/publications...

Politico Playbook named this new Foreign Policy piece by @cipolicy.bsky.social’s @mattduss.bsky.social a “must-read.” “Biden’s Team Lied About Gaza. It’s Time to Hold Them Accountable.” foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/18/b...

I agree with @mattduss.bsky.social. “If we are serious about rebuilding U.S. democracy, unrigging the system and ending that impunity is imperative. The fight for accountability for Gaza is inseparable from the fight against Trumpism.” foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/18/b...

This is a necessary essay by @mattduss.bsky.social. My primary question is: knowing administration officials lied and made genocide possible, is the only sanction they should face not being a public leader again? foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/18/b...

An absolutely #mustread piece from @mattduss.bsky.social this morning. "If we are serious about rebuilding U.S. democracy, unrigging the system and ending that impunity is imperative. The fight for accountability for Gaza is inseparable from the fight against Trumpism."

“Biden’s Team Lied About Gaza. It’s Time to Hold Them Accountable” @cipolicy.bsky.social’s @mattduss.bsky.social explains in @foreignpolicy.com how impunity for abetting war crimes weakens U.S. democracy. foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/18/b...

How should Democrats approach foreign policy moving forward? @mattduss.bsky.social offers a progressive perspective on reshaping strategies for the Trump era and beyond on Pod Save The World @crooked.com crooked.com/podcast/was-...

Framing the forced displacement of Palestinians as a voluntary act—as Netanyahu has done—is an outrageous distortion of reality in the midst of ongoing violence and humanitarian crisis, @mattduss.bsky.social told @democracynow.org Full Interview: www.democracynow.org/2025/7/9/net...

Just as cuts have contributed to the preventable deaths of dozens of Americans in floods and tens of thousands of lives lost abroad by ending US aid projects fighting disease, hollowing out the State Department will inevitably incur a major human cost. @cipolicy.bsky.social’s @mattduss.bsky.social:

"Day after day, the destruction, the death, the suffering is unspeakable. And we can’t allow it to simply fade into the background." 📣 "This needs to end." - @mattduss.bsky.social

No one should miss how monumentally stupid and destructive this is. It betrays a fundamental ignorance of the sources of US safety and prosperity, and shows shameful disrespect to professional diplomats and families who’ve endured a lot in service to our country.

CIP's EVP @mattduss.bsky.social's statement on the Trump Administration's massive cuts to the State Department’s workforce

"Sanctioning a UN expert signals the U.S. is behaving like a dictatorship," @nancyokail.bsky.social told @aljazeera.com, responding to the announcement of U.S. sanctions against UN expert Francesca Albanese for supporting ICC war crimes charges against Netanyahu. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/...

MATT DUSS: “Right-wing Christian evangelical zionists are Netanyahu’s real base in 🇺🇸 - many (like Ambassador Huckabee) don’t recognize Palestinians as a people and believe Israel should control all of the land as a prerequisite for the 2nd coming of Jesus.”

"Vladimir Putin Is Not Interested in a Peace Deal": Matt Duss on Trump's Stalled Ukraine Diplomacy