Rachel M Gisselquist

Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. Behind closed doors in Washington, top advisers made a series of decisions that had devastating repercussions for the poorest country on earth. We went to South Sudan and found people who died as a re...

The human cost of Trump's gutting of USAID: By the time Tor Top’s mother was sick with cholera, the nearby clinic had been shuttered for weeks. He bundled her into a canoe & paddled toward the nearest hospital, 8 hours away. Less than halfway into the journey, his mother died.

New, @propublica.org

100 million children are going hungry this Christmas. Elon Musk can give every child in the
world a $90 gift card, creating 2 billion smiles and still be the richest man alive. What do you
say, Elon - gift 44% of your wealth? We’d also settle for a 2% #WealthTax
c.org/jnnZhmp6J4

🎉 GSDRC Working Paper #2 is out! 🎉

After Kabul: Addressing concerns about corruption in donor publics by rechannelling aid

Fresh insights from our colleagues at the Development Engagement Lab. @soominoh.bsky.social @pmorini.bsky.social Jennifer Hudson, David Hudson @unibirmingham.bsky.social

Had the pleasure of attending this excellent symposium today—exciting work from UKRI Future Leaders Fellow @sandrapertek.bsky.social and team! IDD @unibirmingham

Is there a link between inequality & democracy?

Our new research using global data says the story is less clear than many theories suggest.
Read more 👉https://go.unu.edu/FlMw6

@rgisselquist.bsky.social

📚 At the UNU-WIDER conference, @rgisselquist.bsky.social presented Fragile Aid, a new volume on development in conflict-affected states. The book is now fully available online: fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/...

📢 All IDD, University of Birmingham news hee: www.devstud.org.uk/2025/07/16/i...

📢 New Policy Brief: How to make aid work in fragile states
Aid in fragile contexts needs more than technical fixes. The brief calls for long-term, flexible support rooted in local legitimacy.

📄: go.unu.edu/pTvBB

#FragileAid @apvjustino.bsky.social @rgisselquist.bsky.social @anvaccaro.bsky.social‬

Only one set of major civil service reforms have been implemented in Pakistan – and these were over 50 years ago.

Despite decades of promises to fix Pakistan’s bureaucracy, efforts have consistently stalled.

Role of Donors in the Delivery of Services in Protracted FCV Settings This report reviews the ways that donors are addressing the challenging nature of service delivery in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable (FCV) settings.

What is the role of donors in the delivery of services in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings?

Iffat Idris from @GSDRC.org explores here k4d.ids.ac.uk/resource/rol...

Enjoyed chairing this session on Welfare and Labour Effects, featuring 4 excellent papers by @timkohler.bsky.social ‪@leitemariante.bsky.social‬ ‪Shatakshi Gupta & @tsenguunjav.bsky.social

Pleased to be here at #WIDERDevConf2025!

Civil Service Codes and their Impact This report reviews the value of Civil Service Codes in reducing corruption and improving independence and objectivity.

Do codes of conduct and ethical codes reduce polticisation and #corruption in the civil service? 🏦

This study by William Avis from @gsdrc.org evaluates the impact of #CivilService codes.

Read the full findings here 👇

k4d.ids.ac.uk/resource/civ...

Elon Musk's conflicts of interest: $2.37 billion in potential federal penalties, report says On the day Trump took office, Elon Musk, Tesla and his other companies faced at least $2.37 billion in potential penalties from federal agencies, according to a Democratic congressional report.

Elon Musk's conflicts of interest: $2.37 billion in potential federal penalties, report says

New #OpenAccess book out now!

How States Respond to Crisis reveals how state capacity, authority & legitimacy influenced outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic with 7 in-depth case studies from the Global South.

Read the full book 👉 go.unu.edu/DhF08

@rgisselquist.bsky.social @anvaccaro.bsky.social

Here is what we know about the people disappeared from the United States and were apparently rendered to incommunicado prison in El Salvador: Country Known Names Unknown Names Total Venezuela 245 7 252 El Salvador 12 24 36 Total 257 31 288 Venezuela, 252 people. 137 rendered under the Alien Enemies Act, the rest with final removal orders: 238 people rendered to El Salvador on March 15. Names leaked to CBS News on March 20. 7 people rendered to El Salvador on March 30. Names leaked to Fox News on March 31. 7 people rendered to El Salvador as part of a group of 10 on April 13. Names are unknown. We only know it was 7 people because El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on April 20 that 252 Venezuelans are in Salvadoran custody, and 245 Venezuelans were already in El Salvador. El Salvador, 31 people, all with final removal orders: 23 people rendered to El Salvador on March 15. From much reporting, we know the identities of two: Kilmar Abrego Garcia and prominent MS-13 leader César Humberto López Larios, alias “Greñas.” The other 21 remain unnamed. 10 people rendered to El Salvador on March 30. Names leaked to Fox News on March 31. 3 people rendered to El Salvador as part of a group of 10 on April 13. Names are unknown. We only know it was 3 people because El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, tweeted on April 20 that 252 Venezuelans are in Salvadoran custody. As 245 Venezuelans were already in El Salvador, that would mean that 7 of the 10 were Venezuelan, leaving 3 Salvadorans.

288 people have been rendered to El Salvador’s mega-prison. We only know 257 of their names—and not because the US or Salvadoran governments shared them.

It shouldn't be up to civil society to compile things like this table. Of course, none of this should be happening at all.

See admis.me/b/2un

I had been doubtful that we were going to have a "this is the crisis moment" with Trump, as opposed to "everything about this is a destructive catastrophe."

But the Abrego Garcia case is the crisis moment.

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Before press came in — but while live feed was running on Bukele’s feed — Trump said to him: “home-growns are next. … You’re gonna need to build about 5 more places.”

x.com/nayibbukele/...

Rare earths & other critical minerals are discussed in our new @unu-wider.bsky.social open access book. Download via www.wider.unu.edu/publication/...

The letter sent to Harvard shows why they and every other institution have no choice but to resist. It would amount to a government takeover of the university, giving the Trump regime control over hiring and admissions. www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

Shao-yun Yang sharing his primary source translations on Ethnic Identity in Imperial China: An Online Sourcebook, on Academia.edu.

Translated primary sources for teaching the history of ethnicity in medieval China. A fabulous resource! #GlobalMiddleAges #MedievalSky www.academia.edu/community/ln...

Unprecedented corruption happening right in front of us

I gave a campus talk last night on Trump's first 100 days for the WUD Society & Politics group. A student asked me if I thought that, at some point, we might start to describe the US as a competitive authoritarian regime. I said that we were already there, it's just that most folks haven't noticed:

The Social Security Administration Is Gutting Regional Staff and Shifting All Public Communications to X The SSA’s shift to Elon Musk’s X comes as the agency plans to cut its regional office workforce by roughly 90 percent, WIRED has learned.

American Social Security Administration is cutting staff and shifting all its communications to X, owned by Musk.
You could not make up the corruption now in US politics
www.wired.com/story/social...

I’m not kidding; this is DOGE at work; multiple US citizens getting notices that they just leave the country because USCIS is revoking their humanitarian parole.

www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

Energy and AI – Analysis - IEA Energy and AI - Analysis and key findings. A report by the International Energy Agency.

AI's electricity demand is accelerating: by 2030 data centres will consume as much energy as Japan today, says new @IEA report.

Much of the energy will come from renewables & gas (though Trump is inevitably trying to promote coal).
www.iea.org/reports/ener...

♻️ What do we know about plastic reuse models in LMICs?

📚 See this new rapid evidence review by @gsdrc.org's William Avis:

Pressuring Migrants to ‘Self-Deport,’ Trump Moves to Cancel Social Security Numbers By placing migrants in Social Security’s “death master file,” the Trump administration is seeking to cut off their access to credit cards, bank accounts and other financial services.

NEW: @nytimes.com reports that the Trump admin is moving to strip hundreds of thousands of immigrants of Social Security Numbers they got when they were granted work authorization, repurposing a "death master file" to try to erase their previous legal presence in the United States.

The fear among academics and lawyers now talking on the record on just about any topic that involves the federal government or the White House is really extraordinary and worrisome, and getting worse, it seems to me, every week. Dissent by an establishment figures becoming verboten in the US

The evidence is now overwhelming that a very big majority of those whom ICE and the Trump administration rendered to El Salvador had no criminal records.

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