One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

By this time next week, the estimated deaths due to the illegal destruction of USAID and the shuttering of its aid efforts will breach 400,000. More than 260,000 will be children. Source: www.bu.edu/sph/news/art...

Excellent turnout amidst crummy weather here in St Louis!

It's going up to $40 billion. USAID's budget last year was $28 billion.

#OpenAccess from @apsrjournal.bsky.social - Land, Power, and Property Rights: The Political Economy of Land Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa - https://cup.org/46qHNnT - @mattkribar.bsky.social#OpenAccess #FirstView

I’m thrilled that my job market paper, “Land, Power, and Property Rights: The Political Economy of Land Titling in sub-Saharan Africa,” is hot off the press and open-access at @apsrjournal.bsky.social. A quick thread featuring more than you ever wanted to know about land tenure.

🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**. Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825

This article highlights the fundamental lie behind Rubio’s claim that humanitarian aid is still flowing. Have grants been signed? A couple (massive cuts to humanitarian food). Has money been obligated? It’s starting to trickle. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/h...

Look, I hate to get all 1938 here, but this is exactly the same concession that Hitler made over Czechoslovakia.

We took a close look at Split Ticket's WAR metric, which has become influential in Democratic circles for suggesting moderates significantly outperform progressives. Our finding: The metric contains systematic biases that overstate the advantage of moderation. A corrected model shows no advantage.🧵

E.J. Antoni has more insurrections to his name than published papers

Excellent article by Pratik Pawar on the consequences of cutting the Demographic and Health Surveys, and efforts to revive them. I'm quoted briefly.

Trump and Republicans know that America’s presence and influence around the world is critical. Yet they’re destroying USAID and other foreign programs, ceding our global leadership to China.

When the Trump administration said "trade not aid," it turns out they don't mean trade either: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/w...

Jfc

NYT (Jan. 1963): MOSCOW REPORTS BOOMING ECONOMY "Every three months, statistics on results of the state plan are published. The statistics are unfailingly optimistic. Each time they raise questions ... about the relationship of statistics to reality." www.nytimes.com/1963/01/28/a...

The New York Times should be deeply ashamed of platforming Jeremy Lewin, the unqualified 28 year old DOGE bro who help destroy USAID. The piece below is full of lies, mischaracterizations, and bad faith which went completely unchecked. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/o...

NEW The White House is blocking the NIH from awarding new research grants for the rest of the fiscal year Chokes off billions in research funding Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol... with @nidhisubs.bsky.social

NEW: The scenes in the lobby of State Department headquarters this evening (Fri). Tears, cheers and hugs from colleagues as some of the 1300 fired workers leave the building with their belongings in boxes. (🎥 Alex Raufoglu)

they have pictures of you guys in here

What aid?

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I... I have not been this angry in a long time. Also for the love of god, how useless the courts have been. Where is the appellate review here? It's been months and at this point the harm is totaled in tens of thousands of jobs lost and hundreds of thousands dead.

“The old playbook will not yield the gains that we need to fight off this very, very serious threat to our democracy,” says @adambonica.bsky.social. wapo.st/3G1MNVy

oh no oh fuck they got me

Questions, in no particular order: 1. Where’s the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio? 2. Is there a homeland security/CT plan given recent focus on mass deportations and downgrading of CT? 3. Did the “2 weeks” backlash push him or was it a done deal? 4. Did he notify Congress at all? (More soon)

To whoever hired a plane to circle Stanford’s graduation carrying a banner that reads “Congrats: don’t work for Elon” I say 10/10, no notes.

I keep thinking about how events like this morning’s assassination and attempt could have possibly been prevented if national intelligence had picked up a domestic terrorism threat but instead FBI agents have been quietly reassigned to support ICE operations.

👋 Hello, we're the United States Institute of Peace (USIP)! We are very happy to join @bsky.app, and thrilled to announce that our website, www.usip.org, is back online! We look forward connecting here and bringing you useful content, resources and opportunities for peacebuilders around the world.

This is the language of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of a thousand night raids and drone strikes and clearing operations brought inevitably, finally, back home to American soil

What would you say if you saw it in another country? A senator from a coequal branch of government dragged away by security to prevent him from asking a question of a Cabinet official and arrested

Fulbright scholars are pretty deep into the "first they came for" chain, in case you're wondering how alarmed you should be.

Posting this 1967 Birmingham News editorial cartoon for all the people who don't realize that this is how MLK was viewed by a big chunk of white America.

2/ Dismantling USAID weakens U.S. soft power and national security. Cutting funding to the UN and multilateral organizations sidelines our global influence. Defunding public media is an assault on free speech and transparency.

They're literally doing the meme

"If there were justice in the world, Musk would never be able to repair his reputation... Musk’s sojourn in government has revealed severe flaws in his character — a blithe, dehumanizing cruelty, and a deadly incuriosity. This should shape how he’s seen for the rest of his public life."

We truly, deeply ❤️❤️❤️the #NotAllHeroesWearCapes campaign by @friendsofusaid.bsky.social! Sharing just a few here! #AltCitizen #DevelopmentHeroes #USAID

WaPo profile of new, pensive Musk, so relieved to escape "controversy of DC Beltway" that for some reason—who can say why??— landed on him. Made him "whipping boy" Phrases not in piece: "Largest single donor" "feeding USAID into woodchipper" "mass firings" www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

I’m happy to announce that last week I defended my doctoral dissertation: “Land, Power, and Politics: the Political Economy of Land Tenure Formalization in West Africa.”

“No children are dying on my watch,” said Rubio. It's blatantly false. Credible estimates count 190K deaths so far. In Kenya, I am seeing devastating impact, incl this child's starvation & many deaths directly caused by Rubio’s actions. More in my @msnbc.com clip. www.instagram.com/atul.gawande...

But there are short-term costs. The Noem letter has in its header that Harvard engaged in "pro-terrorist conduct." If everyone is a terrorist then no one is. This makes doing Noem's actual job--protecting against threats like terrorism--harder. 3/ www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05...

Scenario: Before I go to sleep, I tell ChatGPT “Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message: ​ When you came, you said: "I will give Gimil-Sin fine quality copper ingots." You left then but you did not do what you promised. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Grok)…

In short, over that weekend and Monday, FBI officials visited a USIP employee on medical leave in his home, an FBI agent called and threatened investigation of another USIP employee, the DC-USAO Chief of the Criminal Division called outside counsel twice...

NEW: Judge Howell rules that Trump/DOGE's *entire takeover* of the U.S. Institute of Peace was unlawful—including the removal of board members and termination of programs. She reinstates the actual board members and invalidates everything the imposters did. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

JUST IN: Judge Howell rules that the Trump/DOGE takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace was illegal and should be treated as null and void. ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show...

people need to internalize, very quickly, that federal research grants are a hypercompetitive contracting process not charity, and that what Uncle Sam gets in return for that money is American dominance in the future

Funded by USAID, PEPFAR, and the NIH.

Some personal news: I’ve accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. I’ll be working with the amazing faculty there to study the relationship between violent conflict and social cohesion.

I'll just take this moment to point out that the US Institute of Peace, just a few weeks ago, contained one of the finest concentrations of US expertise on India and Pakistan, and crisis management in South Asia.