"The Millennium Challenge Corporation has been an American aid success story when viewed from a whole range of perspectives. The last thing the admin should do is to abandon a successful innovation." Nancy Lee walks through the MCC's track record: bit.ly/4d5IJjg

"there's something a bit weird undercutting this movement to reshore factory jobs: American manufacturers say they are struggling to fill the jobs they already have." npr.org/sections/plane…

🚀 WORLD'S LARGEST BATTERY: Switzerland breaks new ground. 1.6 GWh / 800 MW redox flow battery in Laufenburg (2x China’s record). Non-flammable | Water-based | No lithium/cobalt Stabilizes Europe’s grid + trades energy Powers AI data center | Recycles waste heat

Gap between what US Treasury thinks USAID has obligated in awards & what USAID reported to USAspending.gov it has obligated. In a perfect world, the numbers match. Turns out it is hard to keep accurate numbers when you've fired everyone. usaspending.gov/submission-sta…

Excited to see our Center for Global Development research featured in this excellent The New York Times article about the devastating effect of the US' remittance tax on Africa, especially coming after extensive aid cuts. nytimes.com/2025/06/03/wor…

1/ Stanley Fischer helped rescue Israel’s economy—twice. He was a world-class economist, but also a master at translating ideas into action. My tribute to his legacy and what other countries can learn: 🔗 cgdev.org/blog/stanley-f…

Haiti, Somalia, Burma, Sudan and Afghanistan all hit with a full travel ban. Will impact thousands of future students and especially in Haiti and Somalia have a sizeable economic impact through lower remittances.

In parts of Africa, pregnant women and new moms are using direct cash aid to pay for hospital care, food and even farmland — as part of a program to cut child and maternal deaths. devex.com/news/is-uncond…

81 years ago, our bravest generation stormed the beaches of Normandy to free Europe from the clutches of a brutal authoritarian. Today, we face authoritarianism on our own shores. We owe it to ourselves and our country to fight for freedom at home.

The big beautiful bill puts a 3.5% tax on remittances. Helen Dempster Sam Huckstep and Charlie Ward estimate this could reduce remittances to El Salvador by over 1 percentage point of GNI. That's a massive economic hit for a poor country.

We're thrilled to welcome Samantha Attridge to Center for Global Development as a Senior Fellow! Sam brings deep expertise in development finance, with a particular focus on innovative and blended finance. We look forward to having her join the team!

Elisa New, my wife, has an op-ed in the New York Times Opinion today, "Walt Whitman Would Have Hated This. " In it, she asks what kind of nation we will be without the National Endowment for the Humanities and the larger cultural infrastructure DOGE defunded. A lesser one.

My daughters, who practice medicine and social work in rural New Hampshire made me realize that a focus on macroeconomics, while valid, misses the human brutality that I now see as the most problematic aspect of the OBBB legislation. This round of budget cuts in Medicaid far

“The cruelty of these cuts is matched only by their stupidity,” writes Lawrence Summers about the domestic policy bill President Trump signed into law on Friday. “Medicaid beneficiaries will lose, but so will the rest of us.” nyti.ms/3IhICpg

New blog: There is a bipartisan consensus to preserve lifesaving US foreign assistance. I list twelve large, lifesaving USAID awards that have been cancelled. If we want to avoid a mounting death toll, these awards need to be reinstated.

SDRs could be used as MDB capital to boost development finance—without draining reserves. To make that happen, Mark Plant explains that three ingredients are needed: political leadership, collective action, and institutional adaptation. More: bit.ly/3TvZSK0

New research shows that during congressional hearings, Dr. Janet Yellen—then Chair of the US Fed. Reserve—was interrupted more, & more aggressively, than her male counterparts. Eeshani Kandpal links this to broader patterns of workplace bias women face: bit.ly/46v4W9d

Incredibly relevant to the times we live in

Kenya plans to raise up to $4 billion by securitizing an import levy to fund expansion of its China-built railway bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

People I talk to outside DC do not understand what's happening. On my way to work, three cars surrounded a fourth, five guys got out in masks, wearing no agency name, grabbed a man from the car, shoved them in theirs, and drove off.