Stephanie T. Williams

In a devastating survey of current employees conducted by the State Department’s union: 86% say changes in the workplace since January have affected their ability to advance U.S. diplomatic priorities; 98% report poor morale. Nearly 1 in 3 are considering leaving the Service. Generational damage.

And the guy now in charge was fired during the first Trump administration for attending a gathering of white supremacists. Grotesque, to say the least.

As legacy media organizations have been bought off or buckled, ProPublica is doing some of the best investigative reporting on the Trump administration’s excesses. People should support this publication (I do!). Thank you and please keep up this very important work!

Sudan's deadly divide: The RSF and SAF's reign of terror | Brookings While methods vary, both RSF and SAF forces demonstrate disdain for international humanitarian law and contempt for Sudan’s citizens.

Jeff Feltman’s new piece for @brookings.edu on the tragedy in Sudan in advance of the MbS visit to Washington.
www.brookings.edu/articles/sud...

Very disappointed that you seem to lack the simple decency to congratulate Zohran. You aren’t very good at reading the room, are you, Pete?

Trump has no idea what’s going on. He’s turned the WH into a gilded Assisted Living Facility with court jesters and a ballroom.

#OTD in 1967, Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first Black Supreme Court justice. His work as a civil rights lawyer, including in Brown v. Board of Education, reshaped America’s path toward equality. #TheMarchContinues

Tunisians protest against President Kais Saied's authoritarian rule on July 25 anniversary Tunisians have taken to the streets to protest President Kais Saied, marking four years since his consolidation of power

Four years of decline, with no end in sight.

wapo.st/3TZX3Rt

Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya underscore that regime change does not result in political stability. "Libya Since Qaddafi: Chaos and the Search for Peace" by @stephanietwilliams.bsky.social documents this reality and the tremendous difficulties in restoring social order to fractured nations.

"Do you want America to be at war with Iran?"

No: 85%
Yes: 5%

YouGov / June 22, 2025

So Trump lied when he said “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated”? No way? He lied?

A decidedly flawed take on Iraq’s post-2003 implosion which had as much to do with terrible USG decision-making & Iraq’s full-scale societal fragmentation as it did with external meddling. Iran presents a far more complex problem set. Stop whistling past the graveyard. These are very perilous times.

ICE looking more and more like the American Gestpo.

It’s literally a death cult.

A top staffer to Sen. Tina Smith emailed Sen. Mike Lee’s top staffers on Monday about “how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend”

Full emails below

The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement

TY to the NYT for unmasking this crude attack on free speech and the academy. Obvs that Heritage is directly hooked into the Trump regime on this & other attempts to crush our democracy. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/u...

Trump administration working on plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya Details are murky and no final agreement has been reached, but the plan is under serious enough consideration that the administration has discussed it with Libyan leadership.

If true, a deeply immoral and shameful negotiation aimed at ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homeland. Highly unlikely even a single Palestinian was consulted. Utter madness.
www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

I was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. I resigned because of Trump's foreign policy. | Opinion I served in our country's foreign service for three decades. The Trump administration's Ukraine policy will make the U.S. less safe.

“I cannot stand by while a country is invaded, a democracy bombarded, & children killed with impunity. I believe that the only way to secure U.S. interests is to stand up for democracies & to stand against autocrats.” www.freep.com/story/opinio...

Expelling Black and Brown people. Importing the White descendants of the people who invented Apartheid. Via a chartered aircraft, of all things. MAGA is all about White Nationalism. They prove it every day.

Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight

If true, this is an obscenely sick decision. The U.S. State Department’s own Human Rights Report and Trafficking in Persons Report have documented the absolutely horrific conditions in detention centers and prisons all across Libya. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/u...

Congratulations and so well deserved - thank you to Declan and the NYT staff for shedding light on the slaughter and enormous human suffering in Sudan, and highlighting the regional actors who have been cynically fueling the conflict. Hope it leads to some accountability.

Trump's executive order to gut funding for public media (including NPR and PBS) will cut off news sources for millions. That’s exactly what he wants: to exert even more control over the information that the public receives – or doesn’t even receive at all.

It’s a hallmark of dictatorship.

YouTube video by Mother Jones The Curious Case of Kash Patel's $25,000

According to Kash Patel’s own financial disclosure statement, he pocketed $25,000 from a production company operated by a filmmaker associated with a Kremlin-subsidized propaganda project, a pro-Putin oligarch, and a pro-Kremlin disinformation agent.

@davidcorn.bsky.social's NEW video explains:

Oligarchy (noun):

A government of and by a few at the top, who exercise power for their own benefit. Their power and wealth increase as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets, and create monopolies that put more wealth into their pockets.

👇🏽🎯

Of course. The defenestration of our diplomatic corps, part of the overall purging of expertise in the federal government, is right out of the dictator’s playbook. The moral laissez faire of his acolytes, refraining from registering any dissent in the face of these radical decisions, is abhorrent.

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

—Louis Brandeis

As Famine Rages in Sudan, U.S. Aid Remains Scarce The stark consequences of the rollback are evident in few places as clearly as in Sudan, where a brutal civil war has combined with a staggering humanitarian catastrophe.

Shame on Secretary Rubio and the Trump administration for enabling this tragedy. A shocking and repellent abandonment of American values. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/w...

In Fight Over Abrego Garcia’s Deportation, Trump Seeks to Shift the Focus The president is trying to rewrite the narrative of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation as a dispute about illegal immigration rather than the rule of law.

🎯🎯 Important to note: "...Mr. Trump, who is himself a convicted felon, has gone so far as to say that he is contemplating sending violent criminals who are American citizens to be locked up in El Salvador, where prisons are not governed by minimal U.S. standards." www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/u...