Tim Hirschel-Burns

40 million Black Americans are eligible for Beninese citizenship How a recent law shows the promise and challenges of trying to right the wrongs of the past

timhirschelburns.substack.com/p/40-million...

Most people don't care about your issue If you want to make political change, the general public is generally not your audience

timhirschelburns.substack.com/p/most-peopl...

Two new pieces published this week:

1️⃣Why too much political/advocacy strategy focuses on the general public and not the subset committed to a specific issue

2️⃣On Benin’s fascinating + unprecedentedly broad new citizenship law, which makes most Black Americans eligible

🔗 below

Niemöller was asked by his concentration camp cellmate why he had ever supported Hitler and the Nazis. Reportedly, this is what he had to say for himself:

It’s Benin’s 65th birthday! If you want a quick read on Beninese history and why it’s the one other country that most Black Americans are eligible for citizenship in, boy do I have the Substack for you

I think it’s a really interesting story, and not just because I used to live in Benin.

It’s a story tying together Ciara, global economic equality, debates about responsibility for slavery, and even Zora Neale Hurston.

I tried to capture the ways it’s inspiring and the tricky nuances beneath it

40 million Black Americans are eligible for Beninese citizenship How a recent law shows the promise and challenges of trying to right the wrongs of the past

Last year, Benin passed a law that made the vast majority of Black Americans eligible for citizenship.

This week Ciara became the highest profile person to do it.

I wrote about what it says about the promise and challenges of trying to right the wrongs of the past
open.substack.com/pub/timhirsc...

I would engage with the substance more, but that's not what any of this is about.

A 28-year-old w/ no moral compass wanted a shiny gold star, so he started breaking things he didn't understand. Maybe he didn't realize how many people it would kill, maybe he just didn't care

I mean Jeremy's closing pitch is that instead of short-term humanitarianism we need countries to have real economic development, supported by trade.

From the admin that is slapping tariffs on developing countries left + right and thinks importing from them destroyed America!!

Instead it ends up a contradictory mess.

China coerces other countries but we should be more like them.

We need to give up fluffy cultural priorities but also we represent Western values.

We value American interests not charity well maybe ok being seen as generous is helpful

Douthat never actually pushes Jeremy to move beyond platitudes. Jeremy just says "America will continue to be the most generous nation in the world."

Well have people lost access to ARVs or not? Who is going to keep programs running when you fired all the ppl who do that?

But Jeremy is too much of a coward—or too cognizant of how out of step it is with public opinion—to say he wants to shut down lifesaving programs.

The interview is full of MAGA non-sequiturs: "UN bureaucracy," "NGO complex," reporters looking for "hand to hand combat"

Suddenly shutting off all programs with no warning and no meaningful review made it inevitable that people would die.

Brooke Nichols finds 300,000+ have already died. CGD says millions will die. The Lancet estimates 14 million. For Jeremy this is "short term disruption"

In the interview Jeremy confirms that DOGE didn't originally plan to shut down USAID + anger about allegedly improper payments motivated them.

But as NYT reported, it's bc DOGE bros misunderstood the payment system. Even Luke Farritor's review said "I could be wrong"
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/u...

When Musk's team called, Jeremy couldn't turn down the opportunity to have immense power over other people's lives. The gold star was too shiny.

So he falls in line. Where the true grifters aren't the world's richest man who relies on gov subsidies, but professors making $400k

He might genuinely believe some MAGA ideas, but above all he wants prestige. So much so that he authored pro-climate action articles + worked on Biden's Supreme Court reform commission. You can find this online! His article is in The Guardian!

And Jeremy gets caught on that here

I happen to have some mutual acquaintances w/ Jeremy—we did law school at the same time—and as the recent reporting has conveyed, he's a social climber w/ a thin resume + no foreign policy or development expertise.

And it shows! The interview alternates between platitudes + lies

Opinion | The DOGE Alum Asking if Foreign Aid Is America’s Problem

Ross Douthat released a new interview with Jeremy Lewin, the DOGE staffer who ended up running USAID. It's the first time he's spoken publicly at length.

As expected, he shows total moral bankruptcy—for him, millions of deaths are "some disruption in the short term"
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/o...

Absolutely everything they cut—from USAID to Medicaid to NPR—was to give tax cuts to rich people

Republicans seek to defund the OECD Move marks Trump administration’s latest effort to withdraw from international organisations

Good reflection of the state of the US-built international order:

Global South has criticized OECD for years as a rich country club whose tax deal favors its members.

GOP wants to destroy it bc they think its efforts to rein in corporate tax avoidance violate sovereignty
www.ft.com/content/e8e7...

Yes, What They Are Doing to USAID Is Illegal Within two weeks, USAID has gone from the world’s largest bilateral aid agency to an agency that functionally can’t work.

It's been so obviously illegal since the administration started doing it to USAID six months ago. What a horrific reflection on the courts that it continues basically unabated timhirschelburns.substack.com/p/yes-what-m...

Citizenship for Ciara + people like her is still meaningful. They can live in Benin or enter whenever they want. And it grants them a formal connection to the continent their ancestors were stolen from.

Nothing is simple in a post-colonial world, but that's a pretty good outcome

This genre of concern is part of why, when you read the fine print, the Beninese citizenship law comes with some caveats.

People from abroad who get citizenship like Ciara can't vote, nor can they get civil service positions in the government, which are often highly coveted

But such inequalities can bring tensions.

Ghana passed a similar law and granted land to people of African heritage moving to the country.

But some of the original residents lost their land without compensation. The tensions threatened to become violent
www.npr.org/2024/02/25/1...

Tourism is a central part of the current government's development strategy, and members of the African diaspora can spend and invest (in foreign currency) at rates few Beninese ppl could match.

If this helps Benin's economy while letting people reconnect with their roots, great

But in a world shaped by slavery and colonialism there's no easy way around the complexities of the present.

A key motivation for all this is that almost anyone of African descent living outside Africa will be disproportionately rich in a country with a GDP per capita of $1500

The new law passed last year is meant to re-connect the African diaspora w/ the continent.

People who can trace their ancestry back to Africans who were enslaved + sent abroad can get citizenship after 3 years as long as they visit once.

Ciara is the most famous person to do it

Benin has done more than most to commemorate the slave trade.

The gov led commemorations in the 90s, and in recent years, Benin has gotten stolen artifacts back from France + built prominent memorials.

I've visited Ouidah's historical sites multiple times + it's well worth it.

Benin was one of the major sources of slaves stolen and sent to the New World, particularly through the port city of Ouidah.

At least hundreds of thousands of people took their last steps on their home continent in Ouidah.

In Ouidah, the Door of No Return commemorates this.

Ciara is among the first descendants of enslaved people granted citizenship by Benin U.S. singer Ciara is one of the first public figures to become a citizen of Benin under a recent law by the small West African country granting citizenship to descendants of enslaved people.

I'm always interested in these rare cases when Benin pops up in international news, and I've been following this citizenship law for a while now.

In many ways, it's an innovative and inspirational initiative. But it also shows how hard it is to unwind past atrocities
apnews.com/article/ciar...