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

Washington D.C.
Joined July 2012
Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
From afar, Lula winning and Vucic losing on the same day is hard to ignore. A crystallization of a kind of global anti-nationalist wave that's as real as the steady far-right march we've all spoken and written about for the past decade. And it's cresting a week before US midterms
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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
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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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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@ReichlinMelnickOct 20
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: 🧵
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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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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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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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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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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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
The stoic face of a man standing on the outrageous discipline that every innocent life is equal. Angering both the architects of Israeli genocide of Palestinians and the sub faction of the sub faction of activists who celebrate Iranian and Syrian dictators.
Mamdani is stone-faced as the protesters call him a traitor and sellout.
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Over the last year, 10 parties have signed on to Agreements on Reciprocal Trade (ARTs) with the US, a novel form of trade agreement with implications for countries in the Global South. As countries weigh their options, a new blog by @Thrasher_Rachel and @TimH_B advocates for prioritizing the preservation of policy space for development as much as possible. Read more: bit.ly/4y4NXEJ
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Across 4️⃣ case studies spanning Europe, South Korea and beyond, @TimH_B's International Investment Pushes blog series explored past large-scale mobilizations of finance that both rivaled the scale of climate and development finance needed today and were relatively successful at meeting their goals. The final installment synthesizing and concluding the blog series draws 3️⃣ key lessons applicable to the present: bit.ly/4ydtfmg
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
It's a bit surreal to imagine the vibe shift coming in 2028 if current trends hold—where the far right dominates much of Europe, much of Latin America, but then the US elects the most progressive president in its history.
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Tim Hirschel-Burns retweeted
Rodrigo Nunes @Equatormag provides one the best, broadly applicable descriptions of the rise of far right politics (in Brazil) that you will read. equator.org/articles/brazil-…
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