Global development policy. Past: @YaleLawSch, 🇧🇯. Views mine. Subscribe to my Substack: https://xitter.cf/t.co/deUMR6V323

Washington D.C.
Joined July 2012
I met with Finer, Sullivan, and a bunch of Biden's senior people several times throughout 2023-2024 and I cannot stress enough how maddening it is to watch them reposition now after spending the time they were actually in power gaslighting the shit out of everyone
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
.@arelisrhdz reporting from Springfield Ohio
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
The president called an African country a ‘shit house’ on camera. I remember the old days - his first term! - when calling African countries ‘shit holes’ was a huge controversy that had to be denied. We have normalized his Neo-Nazism now. Lucky us.
Q: If there is a problem with Ilhan Omar's age, could she be deported? TRUMP: She could be. She could also go to jail. I think she's a sick, very dishonest person who hates our country. She comes from a country that is essentially not even a country. Somalia. It's a real shit house.
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Emphasizing again that we cannot treat this as just business as usual. This is the President of the United States openly attacking an entire ethnic group.
Trump: "You go up to Minnesota -- number one place in the entire country for the sale of Mercedes-Benz. And Somalians are buying them. They come here with low IQs and no money and they get rich. Do we feel stupid? Our fraud division is getting them all."
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
Weird to read this as I am on a plane flying back from Sudan after spending days sitting in IDP camps talking to people about how this “new” US approach to humanitarian aid is working out. Rubio’s claim is “unequivocally” garbage. Let me share some of what I heard: đŸ§”
SECRETARY RUBIO: The one that is unequivocally better right now, by far, it's night and day, is humanitarian response. It is faster, more effective, and gets to the target way faster than ever before.
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Extremely rare for me to be on the forefront of a cultural trend so just soaking in this moment to say go see You Can See Everything people
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
At #ONEData we're launching the Development Finance Observatory. A data analyst in your pocket. Ask it about aid, debt, domestic finance, inflation, trade, and more. Get a trusted, verifiable answer. 100,000 indicators. 1,300 places and organisations. developmentfinance.org
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These people really didn’t learn anything from when they came for Minneapolis the first time?
BREAKING WSJ: The Trump admin's investigation into Rep. Ilhan Omar is aimed at building a case to strip her of her U.S. citizenship and ultimately deport her, according to U.S. officials and other people familiar with the probe. wsj.com/politics/policy/ilha

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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
Huge news out of NYC, and a public investment model that has legs at various levels of government: city helping build research hubs and then sharing in proceeds from intellectual property generated there. Quantum computing is the tech frontier. nytimes.com/2026/10/14/nyreg

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Saying it again: there has been no permanent right-wing shift. Voters just hate incumbents
Replying to @realDonaldTrump
@realDonaldTrump’s “Shield of the Americas” is built on quicksand. @LAPOP_Lab 2026: 8 of 11 presidents members of the “Shield” are under water. And trust in the US govt is lowest since 2012 (even in US “closest” allies). [NB: recent data shows Fujimori already under water too].
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
China reduced extreme poverty fast, but Indonesia hasn’t been far behind. China is often the poster child for rapid reductions in poverty, and for good reason. In the early 1980s, over 90% of its population lived in extreme poverty, but by the early 2020s, that number had dropped to nearly zero. Some might assume that China is the only reason why global extreme poverty has declined. But that’s wrong: many countries have seen dramatic reductions in poverty, too. Indonesia is one clear example; it’s shown alongside China on the chart. In 1984, 86% of Indonesians lived on less than $3 per day. By 2025, this had fallen to less than 4%. While it didn’t quite match China’s decline, it has still been impressive. The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen from 140 million to about 10 million. Note that the international poverty line is extremely low, defined as people living on less than $3 per day. But Indonesia has also made progress when measuring higher poverty lines. (written by @_HannahRitchie and @parriagadap)
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
DHS raiding a member of congress's home to search for immigration paperwork filled out decades ago by her now-deceased father really checks all the fascist police state boxes.
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I can’t say I expected analytical rigor in Trump’s list, but even for him it’s bold to include Israel and Iran as one of the eight wars he “settled” 
 even as he is working with Israel to wage war on Iran
US President Trump has a meltdown after losing the Nobel Peace Prize to Indian-origin South African jurist Navi Pillay
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
This afternoon in Marble Hill, a New Yorker was shot by an ICE agent in a residential neighborhood. Early reports indicate agents surrounded him and a 5-year-old child in his car before firing multiple rounds. We believe the child was physically unharmed. This is an unconscionable and incredibly serious situation. I have called the President; when we speak I will demand that he ends all ICE enforcement actions in our city. I will not stand by while ICE agents terrorize our communities. Our thoughts are with the injured New Yorker and his family tonight. We are praying for his recovery. Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children. Abolish ICE.
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Smart piece and well worth a read. But a bit disappointed that Pritchett's *political* critique of aid's focus on narrow welfare-improving interventions doesn't engage with the fact that these uses of aid routinely poll best in donor countries
USAID's demise sent shockwaves through the aid community. But USAID is not the only aid agency to have seen large cuts in recent years. Why are all the aid agencies being cut? @LantPritchett argues it is because they have neglected politics: indevelopmentmag.substack.co

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The health, edu, and humanitarian aid of the last few decades produced a lot of RCTs in economics journals but very few visits to members of Congress from faith groups, do-gooder liberals, and diaspora communities—the sorts of actors you saw in a PEPFAR or Jubilee 2000 coalition
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Pritchett argues that aid for growth and structural transformation got thrown under the bus for being long-term and difficult to measure. I'd argue a very similar thing happened to funding for pro-aid organizing and public communications, leaving aid very vulnerable to attacks
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