Today begins a key inflection point for one of the major decisions facing the UN this year: who will be the next Secretary-General?

Antonio Guterres’ second and final term comes to an end on December 31. By January 1, 2027, a new Secretary-General will be leading the UN. Today and tomorrow, we will hear directly from the four declared candidates for the first time as they take questions from member states and civil society at a public forum held at the General Assembly. I will be following the hours of hearings, posting updates to our new WhatsApp group. Later this week, I will publish a free episode of Global Dispatches and To Save Us From Hell about the key takeaways from these hearings.

But for now, I wanted to take a particularly deep dive into the selection process for the next Secretary-General. Warning: what follows is an insider, process-heavy discussion of international bureaucracy and multilateral diplomacy, for those of you who crave insider-y conversations about UN rules of procedure for picking the Secretary-General.

So, with that throat clearing…Here’s what to expect in the race for the next UN Secretary General.

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At the moment, there seems to be no way out. The United States and Israel are continuing their relentless bombing campaigns. Iran is retaliating against countries in the region and summoning the best geopolitical lever it has: preventing oil tankers from crossing the strait. As a result, the cost of food around the world is poised to go up—which, for millions of people, can mean not eating.

Believe it or not, this is familiar territory for the United Nations.

Back in early 2022, the world was faced with a similar dilemma following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which all but halted Ukrainian agricultural exports. That had a huge impact on global food supplies. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine accounted for roughly half of global sunflower oil exports and about 10–17% of global exports of wheat and maize. The shock to those supplies hit import-dependent regions especially hard, particularly the Middle East and parts of Africa, helping drive a global food price spike.

At issue was the inability of civilian cargo ships to collect Ukraine’s vast agricultural exports and deliver them to the rest of the world without fear of attack. In the early spring, the UN began to work behind the scenes to find a solution: what would become known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

Under this agreement, merchant ships intending to pick up or offload Ukrainian grain would first transit to Turkey, where a team of Ukrainian, Russian, and Turkish inspectors would examine the ship under the watchful eye of UN officials. Once cleared, the ships could travel along an agreed maritime corridor without threat. The agreement worked: sufficient Ukrainian agricultural exports re-entered the world market, reducing a major strain on global food supplies. And Russia got what it wanted, too, with the lifting of restrictions on its own fertilizer and agricultural exports.

The context of the Black Sea in 2022 and the Strait of Hormuz in 2026 is different, but the outline the Black Sea Grain Initiative provides may show a path forward on Hormuz—and some key international diplomats are starting to take notice.

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Donald J. Trump’s Board of Peace, on which Donald J. Trump serves as chair-for-life, will hold its inaugural meeting today at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump United States Institute for Peace. On hand will be leaders of about two dozen countries not typically associated with foreign policies that prioritize international humanitarian law and peaceful conduct in international affairs.

The major outcome of this meeting was announced ahead of time: in a social media post last week, Trump claimed he has received $5 billion in pledges for Gaza reconstruction. If true, that would be a massive sum. In all of 2025, donors committed about $4.2 billion in aid to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

I say “if true” because we’ve not seen any actual documentation of these pledges made through the Board of Peace. This is unlike the UN system, which assiduously documents pledges and then compares those pledges against actual committed funds. The UN does this because donors sometimes make a big show of promising money to a humanitarian crisis, only to never commit those funds. So, until we have clarification about whether this $5 billion actually exists as committed funds, it’s reasonable to be skeptical. Also, until we know how these funds will be spent—for example, on supporting local Gaza initiatives or as financing for real estate projects run by family members of the Chairman-for-Life of the Board of Peace—it is probably worth withholding judgment on the propriety of this kind of fundraising.

What we can judge right now is the notion that this Board of Peace will somehow challenge—even supplant—the United Nations and the Security Council.

It won’t. And it can’t.

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I think it is important to understand Trump’s actions in Venezuela as a singularly consequential historical inflection point—one that future historians may point to as marking the transition from one era to another. Think of the 1956 Suez Crisis, which exposed the fecklessness of the British and French empires and sparked a period of rapid decolonization; the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union; or the September 11 attacks, the response to which hastened the end of America’s unipolar moment and made way for China’s rise.

Trump’s moves in Venezuela, combined with the way in which his administration is justifying these actions, are likely as consequential. This time, however, the casualty of the transition may be the rules-based world order — potentially to include the United Nations itself.

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Claiming dominion over an entire hemisphere — and then acting on it by deposing a foreign head of state to secure access to natural resources — is about as imperialist as foreign policy gets. It is also exactly the kind of behavior that the United Nations and the (formerly) U.S.-backed, post–World War II rules-based international order were created to guard against. There is now an open clash in geopolitics between the very foundation of the current international system, in place for the last 80 years, and a hegemonic power indifferent to that system.

A nakedly imperialist United States and a United Nations created to uphold a liberal international order cannot exist side by side. Something is going to have to give.

If I sound alarmist here, it’s because what’s happening is truly alarming.

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It’s hard to imagine a time before Giving Tuesday. By now, it’s locked into America’s holiday season calendar. But Giving Tuesday didn’t just come from nowhere. Rather, you can draw a straight line from the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York every September to the ubiquity of Giving Tuesday today.

It may sound odd… but trust me. I was there!

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To understand the origins of Giving Tuesday, you need to temporarily suspend everything you know about the pernicious influence of social media on politics and society in 2025.

Fifteen years ago, the social media landscape was much, much different. Twitter was a new and exciting platform — many users in less developed countries flocked to it because it primarily used an SMS-based interface, requiring neither a smartphone nor expensive data. Instagram was still an independent company, not yet bought by Facebook. (Meta didn’t even exist!) Meanwhile, Facebook users would mostly just see updates from their friends. The newsfeed algorithm had not yet been rolled out — let alone designed in such a way to spark maximum outrage. The “surveillance capitalism” that sustains today’s social media giants had not yet firmly taken hold.

It seems like a quaint, bygone era. And it was.

Back then, people of good conscience who were genuinely concerned about social and political progress could believe that social media may be leveraged for good. It was in this context that a partnership was born between the United Nations Foundation, the 92Y in New York, and Mashable — then an upstart media company covering web culture and technology — around a conference called the Social Good Summit.

The first Social Good Summit was in September 2010, held at the 92Y, a cultural institution on the Upper East Side of New York. I was there (and I might have even moderated a panel or two). The Social Good Summit was designed as a kind of counter-programming to the United Nations General Assembly underway fifty blocks south. Just as social media was opening up new space for political and social debate, the three day event at the 92Y would serve as a kind of “People’s UNGA” to discuss how this emerging technology could be harnessed to advance social and economic development and human rights.

The programming in those early years was a cross between diplomats, presidents, and prime ministers in town for UNGA — who gave talks about using social media for social progress — and extremely earnest users of social media who believed in the collective power of networks to do good in the world. (This was before the advent of “influencers” as a distinct métier, but that’s basically what they were.)

In 2012, some of the key drivers behind the Social Good Summit — including Henry Timms and Asha Curran of 92Y, and Kathy Calvin and Aaron Sherinian of the United Nations Foundation — held a meeting in which the idea of a “Giving Tuesday” was conceived. As Henry Timms told me later that year, “You have Black Friday and Cyber Monday — so why not Giving Tuesday?”

And so, the idea was born. The conveners of the Social Good Summit tapped the networks of the influencers they had brought together the previous two Septembers, and voilà — it quickly went viral, to the point where we can hardly remember a time before Giving Tuesday. And the world is better off for it.

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Social media is a darker place today, to be sure. But I haven’t personally lost my belief that it can still be harnessed to do some good in the world. To that end, I’ve teamed up with some other Substackers this holiday season to raise money for GiveDirectly.

In short: GiveDirectly facilitates unconditional cash transfers to communities in the developing world as a tool to fight extreme poverty. Regular listeners to the Global Dispatches podcast may recall this episode from August about a GiveDirectly program that offered cash transfers to pregnant women in rural Kenya, resulting in huge declines in infant and under-five mortality. Unconditional cash transfers are genuinely effective, but they are also politically fraught, so government aid agencies have not yet coalesced around them. This makes it an area where philanthropy — i.e., your contributions — can make a real difference.

Here’s how you can help. Go here. It’s special link just for my audience. Once there, make a contribution and post about it — you guessed it — on social media.

Pretty much everything about social media is terrible today. But just maybe we can still harness it to make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

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For the past several weeks, the United States has been circulating drafts of a Security Council resolution meant to put into action a key part of President Trump’s 20-Point Peace Plan: the deployment of an International Stabilization Force for Gaza.

The idea goes like this: troops from Arab or Muslim-majority countries would deploy to Gaza as Israeli forces pull back. In theory, the proposal makes sense. There’s a long history of international troops successfully stepping in after a conflict to help stabilize the peace. But in Gaza, there’s very little reason to think this force will actually deploy anytime soon — if ever.

Here’s why.

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One of my favorite UNGA pastimes is watching the UN TV livestream as world leaders enter the building and ride the escalators up to the General Assembly. Nerdy, I know — but I like to see how many presidents and prime ministers I can recognize on sight.

On Tuesday morning, I was busy watching Antonio Guterres’s speech and missed the now-infamous escalator mishap. So I was perplexed when, during Trump’s speech, he started complaining about the escalator breaking down on him — and also about the teleprompter not working.

Here’s the full excerpt from his UNGA speech on these two apparent mishaps.

Thank you very much, very much appreciated. And I don’t mind making this speech without a teleprompter because the teleprompter is not working. I feel very happy to be up here with you nevertheless, and that way you speak more from the heart. I can only say that whoever’s operating this teleprompter is in big trouble

…

All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the first lady wasn’t in great shape, she would have fallen, but she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape, we’re both still. And then a teleprompter that didn’t work. These are the two things I got from the United Nations, a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter. Thank you very much. And by the way, it’s working now, just went on. Thank you. I think I should just do it the other way; it’s easier. Thank you very much.

My first instinct wasn’t that this was some conspiracy to force Donald Trump to walk a flight of stairs, but rather an ill-timed outage. For the last several months, the UN has been intermittently shutting off escalators to save money amid a major liquidity crisis — largely caused by the United States not paying its member dues. I initially chalked it up to cosmic coincidence that the escalator would shut down for the one world leader most responsible for the UN’s funding woes.

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But that turned out not to be the case. Apparently, a member of the American delegation inadvertently tripped a safety mechanism, causing the escalator to stop. Here’s the full explanation of what happened from UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric:

In answer to the many questions received about the escalator incident this morning involving the President of the United States and the First Lady, I have the following information to share: President Trump, accompanied by the First Lady and delegation, arrived at the UNHQ building this morning, and entered through the Delegate's entrance. After passing through the security gates, President Trump and the First Lady approached the escalator. In an effort to document their arrival, a videographer from the US delegation stepped on to the escalator ahead of the President and First Lady. As the videographer, who was traveling backwards up the escalator reached the top , the First Lady, followed by President Trump, each mounted the steps at the bottom. At that moment (9:50am), the escalator came to a stop. Our technician, who was at the location, reset the escalator as soon as the delegation had climbed up to the second floor. A subsequent investigation, including a readout of the machine's central processing unit, indicated that the escalator had stopped after a built-in safety mechanism on the comb step was triggered at the top of the escalator. The safety mechanism is designed to prevent people or objects accidentally being caught and stuck in or pulled into the gearing. The videographer may have inadvertently triggered the safety function described above.”

So that’s what happened with the escalators. What about the teleprompter?

The AP’s Edith Lederer is a legendary reporter who has been covering the UN for decades. This is far from one of the most important stories she’s broken in her storied career, but she does cite a UN source saying that — like the escalator — the teleprompter mishap was not the UN’s doing. Instead, the White House was responsible for the teleprompter during Trump’s speech.

I initially thought this would be a one-day story. Trump seemed to take the mishaps in stride. His line about the teleprompter operator being in “big trouble” was clearly a joke. And he’s apparently very pleased with how his speech went. Here’s his social media post shortly following the speech.

All in all—pretty positive!

Then, later in the day, when Trump met with Antonio Guterres, he didn’t even mention the mishaps in his remarks to reporters. Instead, he offered some encouraging words about the UN as an institution, saying Americans are “100% behind the UN.”

So I thought we could move on and discuss weightier matters. But no.

Something happened in the next 24 hours that caused Trump to suddenly change his tune. I can’t speculate on what shifted, but in a Truth Social post yesterday afternoon, Trump raged over the escalator outage and teleprompter mishap. He demanded an investigation, said the Secret Service was involved, and even called for the arrest of UN staff he alleges stopped the escalator. He also leveled a third accusation: that his microphone had been turned down so low people in the General Assembly Hall couldn’t hear him.

Here’s that post.

On the audio levels — I think this one is easily explained. Unlike a conventional auditorium, where a speaker system projects audio loud enough for everyone to hear, the General Assembly keeps the sound relatively low. It’s not silent — just lower than you’d expect. That’s to benefit the translators and the people listening to the simultaneous interpretation in six different languages. They need to hear the translation clearly over the ambient noise in the room, so the main speaker system isn’t cranked up.

Granted, I’ve only ever sat in the back of the General Assembly Hall, where the press is usually placed, but it can sometimes be difficult — though not impossible — to hear. Even when the speaker is using English, I almost always use the earpiece provided on the back of the chairs to catch everything they’re saying.

Still, Donald Trump thinks this is a big deal. So, along with the escalator outage stopping and teleprompter mishap, it suddenly is a big deal!

How much of a problem is this going to be for the UN? Alas, I fear more than you’d might expect.

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The showcase of every UNGA is what is formally known around the UN as the “General Debate.” This is the parade of presidents and prime ministers who take the dais before the UN General Assembly, delivering sometimes fiery speeches to a global audience.

The General Debate always follows a familiar pattern. On a Tuesday, the new President of the General Assembly speaks first, followed by the Secretary-General. By tradition, Brazil is the first country to speak, and then comes the United States. After that, the schedule changes year by year, with speaking slots earlier in the week reserved for Heads of State (HS in the schedule) and Heads of Government (HG). Only after all the heads of state and government have spoken are lower-level officials, like foreign ministers, given their time.

Some speeches are more high-profile than others. This year, there are nine world leaders whose speeches I’ll be following particularly closely. The first (of course) is Trump. While Trump is always somewhat unpredictable, there are a few global issues we can reasonably expect in his speech: the Gaza conflict, Ukraine — and, of course, he’ll likely tout his tariffs.

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Outside the obvious themes, I’ll be zeroing in on three specific aspects of Trump’s speech.

Will he fillet the SDGs? The Sustainable Development Goals are very much the beating heart of the UN. All member states adopted them back in 2015 and today, the SDGs provide a framework for pretty much everything the UN does around ending extreme poverty, and promoting public health and environmental protection. But earlier this year, the Trump administration stunned the UN by declaring that it “rejects and denounces” the SDGs. This is an extremely unpopular position—the rest if the UN’s 192 member states very much support them. I’ll be watching to see if Trump himself invokes the “rejects and denounces” paradigm, and what, if anything, he’ll say about the SDGs.

How deep will he lean into culture war issues? The Trump administration’s animous towards the SDGs stems from a perception that they are used to advance cultural causes like gender equality, reproductive health and LGBTQ rights in ways that contravene cultural conservatism. (Though here it should be noted that deeply conservative countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia have not directed animous towards the SDGs as a whole in the same way as the United States under Trump). In various UN bodies, the United States has objected to erstwhile routine affirmations of women’s and human rights, arguing that these affirmations advance a cultural agenda to which the US now objects. In the context of a growing fervor in some quarters of American politics, I’m watching to see the extent to which he leans into these culture war issues in his speech.

Will he take credit for peace deals? Trump raised eyebrows over the summer when he claimed credit for six peace deals in his first six months in office. (Here’s an apparent list.) Notably, his claiming credit for ending the India-Pakistan conflict this spring seems to have caused a severe rupture of American-Indian relations. Meanwhile, the DRC-Rwanda conflict which Trump claims to have ended is very much still hot, with Reuters reporting just last week that the killing is ongoing, with both sides digging in amid missed ceasefire deadlines. Some countries seem more welcoming of President Trump’s public interventions (like Armenia and Azerbaijan) while others, like India, are not. I’m watching to see the extent to which Trump leans into his self-described peacemaker role, and if he leverages that to make any bold statements on Gaza and Ukraine.

But UNGA is about much more than Trump! Here are 8 other speeches I’m Most Anticipating

Below the fold for paying subscribers is something of a cheat sheet for 8 other world leaders whose speeches I think will be particularly resonant this year, including Brazil, South Korea, Qatar, Ukraine, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Israel. To understand why I think these remarks in particular may shape the debate at UNGA this year, please purchase a subscription. You’d be supporting my work and help cover the costs associated with my UNGA coverage.

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Read on for my UNGA cheat sheet!

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Last Friday, the UN General Assembly set the stage for high drama during High-Level Week next week.

In a packed chamber, UN Member States voted 142–10 to back “tangible, time-bound and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, endorsing a French and Saudi-led initiative called the “New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.”

The New York Declaration is a set of principles, backed in July by about a dozen countries along with the European Union and the Arab League, that seeks to create a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel in the context of ending the war in Gaza. The Declaration acknowledges that there is no ongoing peace process between the parties but nonetheless aims to demonstrate broad international support for a two-state solution. (It is significant to note that Saudi Arabia and most of the Arab League—who do not formally recognize Israel—backed a document implying they would do so upon the implementation of a two-state solution.)

The Declaration includes denunciations of the killing of civilians by all sides in the Gaza war, but goes much further than any UN statement to date in calling for the abolition of Hamas. The Declaration explicitly condemns Hamas’ terror attack on October 7, calls for the immediate release of Israeli hostages, and demands that Hamas disarm and hand over control in Gaza. “In the context of ending the war in Gaza, Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State,” reads a key portion of the Declaration

Still, the New York Declaration, now formally endorsed by 142 countries, contains several provisions Israel is likely to oppose, including ending settlement activity, allowing unfettered humanitarian access to Gaza, reaffirming Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and calling for full admission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations. “The only beneficiary is Hamas,” said Israel’s UN ambassador of the resolution (despite its call for Hamas to turn over its guns and end its rule in Gaza.)

Israel, the United States, Hungary, Argentina, and a smattering of mostly small Pacific island states that vote with the US in the General Assembly as a matter of routine opposed the resolution. But this vote was about as lopsided as a vote can be at the UN. And the timing of the vote is consequential. On Monday the 22, Presidents and Prime Ministers from around the world will gather in General Assembly Hall for a highly anticipated meeting dedicated to Palestinian statehood.

With this vote, all signs point to this gathering at the start of UN Week as being the defining geopolitical moment of this year’s UNGA.

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UNGA is here! The 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly kicked off on September 9th, with former German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock taking the gavel as President. But the real action doesn’t start until “High-Level Week,” beginning Monday, September 22, when hundreds of presidents and prime ministers will descend on New York for a whirlwind of speeches, high-stakes diplomacy, and yes—plenty of canapés.

This year is extra special: it’s the UN’s 80th anniversary. And for me, it’s the 19th General Assembly I’ve covered in 20 years, going all the way back to the UN’s 60th anniversary in 2005.

I’ll be on the ground in New York with my press credentials, sensible shoes, and a water bottle in hand—ready to bring you the news, analysis, and insider insights you won’t find anywhere else. As we get closer to High-Level Week, I’ll share details of the major speeches and side events I’ll be covering. (And if you spot me, come say hello!)

For now, I want to give paying subscribers an exclusive preview of the four storylines, events, and meetings that I expect will define this year’s UNGA. To celebrate UNGA season—and the UN’s 80th—I’m offering a special discount throughout September. It’s the perfect time to upgrade so you don’t miss a thing.

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And now, here is my personal preview of the big stories I’ll be following for UNGA80.

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It’s officially UNGA season! Over the next several weeks, I’ll be publishing exclusive updates and sharp analysis on everything happening around the UN General Assembly. Politico once called me the “uncrowned king of UN nerds” — and this is the time of year I earn that crown. Most of this coverage will be behind the paywall, but for September I’m offering a special 40% discount on subscriptions. If you want insider analysis and context you won’t find anywhere else, now’s the time to join.

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The United Nations doesn’t exactly “celebrate” its birthdays. But it does leverage milestone moments as opportunities to reform and keep up with the times. The first year I properly covered the UN was in 2005, its 60th anniversary. Then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan championed a set of institutional reforms, particularly around human rights. At that year’s General Assembly, member states affirmed the “Responsibility to Protect” populations facing mass atrocity and genocide and created the Human Rights Council. These were major advances at the time, pegged to reinvigorating a core UN function at its 60th birthday.

A decade later, in 2015, the UN’s 70th anniversary ushered in the Sustainable Development Goals: 17 goals—including the total elimination of extreme poverty—that every country pledged to pursue by 2030. This was a profoundly impactful innovation, and today the SDGs remain the organizing principle of much of the UN’s work, from environmental protection to economic development and beyond. The 70th birthday was a high-water mark of member states’ collective ambition, with the UN as the platform for cooperative solutions to humanity’s most urgent problems.

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Ten years on, as the UN prepares to mark its 80th anniversary during UNGA later this month, the vibe is very different.

Rather than using this milestone to expand the UN’s role in global affairs, this UNGA may mark an era of retrenchment. The geopolitical reality of 2025 is stark: ongoing conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan are eroding confidence in the UN’s ability to steer the world toward more peaceful outcomes. Meanwhile, the institution itself is mired in an unprecedented financial crisis, driven largely by U.S. funding cuts and clawbacks.

As in years past, the anniversary is being used as a catalyst for reform. But unlike the 60th and 70th, the reforms now on the table are not about expanding the UN’s reach. Quite the opposite. As the UN turns 80, the agenda championed by Secretary-General António Guterres and many member states would shrink the institution—preparing it for an era in which it must do less with less.

UN80, Explained

These reforms are being pursued under the rubric of “UN80,” which António Guterres launched in March when it became clear that the UN’s ongoing liquidity crisis was about to get much worse.

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At the heart of this so-called “rescissions package” is a targeted strike against U.S. contributions to the United Nations and the broader multilateral system. American funding for cornerstone UN agencies like UNICEF and the UN Development Program isn’t just being reduced — it’s being eliminated. Zeroed out.

And no part of the UN system is left untouched.

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The book shows how Grant, through sheer force of will, aggressively promoted these low-cost, high-impact health interventions to governments and donors around the world. He succeeded — and the results were breathtaking. An estimated 25 to 30 million children's lives were saved from 1982 to 1997, an era that global health professionals refer to as the Revolution in Child Survival.

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Jim Grant may not be a household name, but he probably should be. Nick Kristof once wrote that his efforts probably saved more people than were killed by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao combined. He is a true American hero.

And then there’s Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Yesterday, at a major conference dedicated to saving children’s lives in the world’s poorest countries through the routine deployment of childhood vaccines, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services may have single-handedly upended decades of progress in reducing child and infant mortality.

What Kennedy did at that conference is as outrageous as it is deadly.

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Over the last two weeks, delegates from 193 out of 194 countries met in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, an annual gathering of health ministers who set the agenda for the World Health Organization. Absent was the United States, which pulled out of the WHO within days of Trump taking office.

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But the work continued. The WHO adopted a potentially transformative international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response. And in America’s absence, other countries — notably China — stepped into the void and offered a degree of international leadership that was heretofore unprecedented.

Call it post-American multilateralism: what transpired at the 78th World Health Assembly was a microcosm of what we can expect should the United States continue to sit on the sidelines of major multilateral forums it once championed.

What happened in Geneva wasn’t just about health—it’s a window into what global governance looks like when America walks away.

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Since March 5 and the collapse of the ceasefire, Israeli authorities have implemented a total commercial and humanitarian blockade of the Strip. Put simply: no food, fuel, or medicine has entered Gaza in over two months. This has driven the price of food—and all commodities—to levels far beyond the reach of most Gazans.

Meanwhile, humanitarian stockpiles are being rapidly depleted. The World Food Programme ran out of supplies to support hot meals on April 25. Four days ago, the NGO World Central Kitchen ceased operations due to a lack of food and supplies. “After serving more than 130 million total meals and 26 million loaves of bread over the past 18 months, World Central Kitchen no longer has the supplies to cook meals or bake bread in Gaza,” the NGO said in a statement.

Gaza is running out of food, leading to an unprecedented number of people facing famine. According to a UN report released today, approximately 477,000 people trapped in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, making a full-blown famine “increasingly likely” if the blockade persists.

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The UN uses a technical classification system to describe levels of food insecurity, ranging from Level 1 (households can feed themselves without resorting to irregular coping mechanisms) to Level 5 (families begin to starve to death, children first, because they can’t access food). Level 5 may include an official famine declaration once excess mortality due to starvation crosses a certain threshold. Crucially, famine is only declared after it’s determined that people are dying from starvation in significant numbers.

With that in mind, consider how the new UN report describes the situation in Gaza today:

Nineteen months into the conflict, the Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine. Over 60 days have passed since all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies were blocked from entering the territory. Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks. The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation. From 11 May to the end of September 2025, the whole territory is classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), with the entire population expected to face Crisis or worse acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above). This includes 470,000 people (22 percent of the population) in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5), over a million people (54 percent) in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), and the remaining half million (24 percent) in Crisis (IPC Phase 3).

This marks a significant deterioration compared to the previous IPC analysis (released in October 2024) and the already dire conditions detected between 1 April–10 May 2025. During that time, 1.95 million people (93 percent) were classified in Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above), including 244,000 people (12 percent) in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe) and 925,000 (44 percent) in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency).

In other words, the food security situation was already extremely dire—and it has suddenly gotten much worse as a direct consequence of the complete blockade of aid into Gaza.

The solution remains what it has always been: the fighting must stop, and Israeli authorities must allow humanitarian goods to enter Gaza. “Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border. We can’t get it to them because of the renewed conflict and the total ban on humanitarian aid imposed in early March,” said UN World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain in a statement today. “It’s imperative that the international community acts urgently to get aid flowing into Gaza again. If we wait until after a famine is confirmed, it will already be too late for many people.”

All this is unfolding as the conflict is poised to escalate further. The Israeli government has committed to a massive expansion of the war, an operation it’s calling “Gideon’s Chariots,” intended to completely raze what remains of Gaza and force the surviving population into undefined “humanitarian zones.”

This new report from the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification provides a clear and grim warning: a mass famine will engulf Gaza if current conditions persist — and yet, there’s little reason to expect things will get much better.

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On Friday, the White House released a “Skinny Budget” — a document that outlines high-level budget priorities without delving into program-by-program appropriations. This marks the first formal indication of the Trump administration’s spending priorities, and when it comes to foreign aid in general — and the United Nations in particular — the outlook is grim.

The budget request slashes foreign aid by roughly 84%. This includes a nearly 50% cut in funding compared to 2025 levels, plus an additional $20 billion reduction in funds previously approved by Congress. Combined, the total foreign affairs budget would amount to just $9.6 billion.

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Nearly every tentacle of American foreign policy is impacted by these sweeping cuts. Embassies will be shuttered. Democracy promotion efforts through entities like the National Endowment for Democracy will end. The Food for Peace program — which supplies American-grown food, transported on American ships, to people in crisis in partnership with the World Food Program — is zeroed out. And there are massive cuts to global health spending, to name just a few. You name it, and chances are the White House budget request slashes it.

This includes sweeping cuts to the United Nations itself — cuts that, if enacted, would have profound and severe consequences for the institution and its ability to carry out its work around the world. Put simply, this budget sets the United Nations up for failure.

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It’s something of a bemusing oddity around the UN that there’s an “international day” for pretty much everything. World Pulses Day (February 10) is a celebration of dry beans, lentils, chickpeas, and peas. Then there’s World Bicycle Day (June 3), International Day of Yoga (June 21), World Bee Day (May 20), and International Day of Parliamentarism (June 30), just to name a few. Pick a topic, and at some point in the UN’s 80-year history, the General Assembly has probably commemorated it with a specially designated day — or, in the case of quinoa, an entire year (2013).

These are not meaningless, per se — these designated days can sometimes serve a useful diplomatic purpose when a country or region wants to showcase leadership around an idea, or in the case of Bolivia, an ancient grain. But they don’t require anything of anyone, with the singular exception that for one of these days to become official, the General Assembly needs to take a vote.

Such was the case on March 4, when the General Assembly was seeking to designate an "International Day of Peaceful Coexistence.” These proceedings tend to be fairly dull affairs — high-stakes geopolitics this is not. But what unfolded was anything but routine: the United States upended the vote with a forceful objection, all because the resolution endorsed the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Speaking at the General Assembly, a mid-level American diplomat rose in objection to the resolution, saying the United States would not support the General Assembly action because the resolution in question referenced the Sustainable Development Goals, which, he announced, the United States now “rejects and denounces.”

“Put simply, globalist endeavors like Agenda 2030 and the SDGs lost at the ballot box,” said Counselor for Economic and Social Affairs (ECOSOC) at the U.S. Mission to the UN Edward Heartney, to a stunned General Assembly hall. “Therefore, the United States rejects and denounces the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals, and it will no longer reaffirm them as a matter of course.”

This statement is the diplomatic equivalent of ripping the foundation from a decade of work at the UN — not just walking away from the table, but flipping it over on the way out.

The Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 goals, including ending extreme poverty, that the entire 193-member UN agreed to set as their economic, social, and environmental lodestar for 15 years hence. They are due by 2030. Some are on track, most are not — but the entire world agreed that the SDGs would be a blueprint for how we might make progress against some of our greatest global challenges. They are now very firmly the organizing principle around which pretty much everything at the UN revolves.

But this statement from the Trump administration showed that the United States is not going to simply ignore the SDGs — rather, it is going to target them for elimination. And in the weeks since, we have seen the Trump administration open new fronts against the SDGs, which suggest that the administration is seeking to strip the entire edifice of international cooperation on sustainable development from the whole UN system.

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I removed the paywall from this piece because this is a story not well covered by my media colleagues and ought to be shared widely.

One of the most effective tools for global stability is suddenly on the chopping block.

The Washington Post obtained an eye-popping memo crafted by senior Trump administration officials outlining a plan to slash State Department spending by about 50%. The memo includes massive cuts across the board — funding for the National Endowment for Democracy would end, and dozens of diplomatic outposts would be shuttered.

But one proposed cut stands out for its potential to destabilize the international system: a complete elimination of U.S. contributions to UN Peacekeeping. The line item reduces American support from $1.2 billion to zero.

We don’t yet know if these cuts will make it into the final version of the White House budget request. And we don’t know if Congress would be willing to go along with such a sweeping denuding of American diplomacy. But as a journalist who has covered the UN for nearly 20 years, I can tell you exactly what would happen if the United States suddenly and completely ends its support for UN Peacekeeping:

The fallout would be immediate. Dangerous. And global.

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How UN Peacekeeping Works

UN Peacekeeping is not included in the UN Charter. Rather, the modern idea of armed but neutral peacekeepers was born during the Suez Crisis of 1956, when Israel, Britain, and France invaded Egypt after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. A Canadian diplomat named Lester Pearson recognized that the conflict risked escalating into a broader war — especially with Cold War tensions flaring. So, he proposed the bold idea of sending neutral, international troops to the Sinai Peninsula to separate the warring parties and facilitate a peaceful withdrawal. The contingent was known as the United Nations Emergency Force — the first armed UN peacekeeping mission.

Over the decades, the contours of individual UN peacekeeping missions have varied, but the general idea — deploying international troops as neutral monitors to uphold a peace agreement or ceasefire rather than to fight a war — gained traction. Armed groups that sign a peace agreement often need time and space for the agreement to take hold. This sometimes means physically separating armies with neutral peacekeepers; other times, it means peacekeepers help disarm fighters and perform other critical tasks necessary to implement peace.

The track record of UN peacekeeping is strong. To be sure, there have been failures — particularly in Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s. But over the last 25 years, UN peacekeeping has played an outsized role in sustaining peace.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in West Africa — particularly in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. In the early 2000s, these countries were ravaged by brutal civil wars. The peace agreements that ended these conflicts were backed by sizeable UN peacekeeping missions — tens of thousands of Blue Helmets — that provided the security required for the political transformation of each of these countries into the multiparty democracies they are today. Peacekeeping worked so well in West Africa that there are no peacekeepers there today. They worked themselves out of a job. The Sierra Leone mission ended in 2005, the Côte d’Ivoire mission in 2017, and the Liberia mission concluded in 2018.

Today, more than 68,424 personnel serve in eleven peacekeeping missions led by the UN’s Department of Peace Operations. Of those, only 22 are Americans, and relatively few come from other Western countries. Instead, the bulk of UN peacekeepers come from a relatively small number of countries with a proud tradition of troop contributions, including Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Rwanda. This reflects an unspoken arrangement that has emerged over the last quarter century: developing countries provide the boots on the ground, while wealthier countries provide the bulk of the funding to deploy and sustain these missions.

And here, it’s important to note that the peacekeeping budget is quite small — just $5.6 billion this year. Compared to the cost of deploying conventional militaries, that figure is minimal. The United States has historically been the largest single contributor to UN peacekeeping and, by agreement, covers about 27% of the cost of each mission. China contributes about 19%, followed by Japan (8%) and Germany (6%). The rest of the world picks up the remaining tab.

That arrangement is now at risk of falling apart — and with it, the ability of UN peacekeeping to enforce peace agreements and prevent festering conflicts from spiraling out of control.

These eleven missions vary widely in scope and function. In South Sudan, for example, UN peacekeepers have provided protection to hundreds of thousands of civilians who fled to UN bases amid civil war. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, peacekeepers are in near-daily conflict with a rebel group ravaging the eastern part of the country. In Lebanon, peacekeepers help uphold a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

There are also several older missions — often called “legacy” missions — that monitor frozen conflicts to prevent them from reigniting. In Cyprus, for example, a peacekeeping mission has been in place since 1964 to prevent Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots from resuming civil war. About 1,000 personnel are deployed to that mission, and their job is largely to make sure very local disputes don’t spiral into wider conflict. (And it’s worked. Even without a political settlement, this small deployment has kept the peace — and prevented the chaos and, frankly, the diplomatic headache that would come with two NATO members fighting each other.)

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Chaos Will Ensue

But now, each of these missions is under dire threat. They simply cannot function with a major reduction in funding caused by the elimination of U.S. contributions. The consequences of peacekeepers being unable to do their jobs are easy to imagine. In the DRC, for example, Rwanda-backed M23 rebels could advance on Kinshasa and topple the government, triggering a major regional war in a country the world depends on for critical minerals used in our electronics. South Sudan is already on the brink of another full-scale war, fueled by capricious leaders stoking ethnic tensions — where will civilians facing slaughter flee if peacekeeping bases disappear? In Lebanon, the risk of renewed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah — and the regional escalation that could follow — would grow dangerously high.

The point is: a world without UN peacekeeping is a more chaotic and dangerous place. Though it often flies under the radar in the West, UN peacekeeping has become a pillar of international peace and security. The Trump administration’s move to withdraw U.S. support effectively removes a key source of stability. This will directly affect the people living in places where peacekeepers deploy, who can expect even more hardship and deprivation. But it will also profoundly impact global security. Long-festering conflicts may escalate. Long-frozen conflicts may thaw into violent eruptions. If these cuts to peacekeeping are enacted, there will be, in short, more war and less peace.

Considering the myriad global challenges facing world leaders right now — from a trade war with China, to hot conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, to escalating humanitarian crises — the relatively modest American financial contribution to UN peacekeeping is certainly worth the return. These missions are often the last thing standing between a tenuous peace and open war. Slashing funding won’t just create chaos in faraway places; it will boomerang back in the form of instability, displacement, and crises the world is ill-prepared to manage in this particularly crisis-addled moment.

UN Peacekeeping doesn’t often make headlines — but it will when it’s gone. And if these cuts are enacted, that day will come fast.

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Elise Stefanik was Donald Trump’s first cabinet pick. Before Pete Hegseth, before Marco Rubio, before Pam Bondi, Trump tapped Stefanik to serve in his cabinet as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Though she had scant foreign policy experience, Stefanik was an ur-Trump loyalist, skillfully transforming her persona from a normie, moderate Republican to ultra-MAGA. Trump rewarded this loyalty within days of his election by tapping her to represent him in Turtle Bay.

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At this point, her confirmation hearing seems long ago—the big political controversy at the time was Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, which took place the night before. During her hearing, Stefanik conveyed mostly conventional Republican views towards the UN, emphasizing ways the institution could be reformed and streamlined, but not advocating any radical shift in U.S. policy. She has a reputation as a sharp-tongued partisan, but her comportment was ecumenical, and the views she expressed toward the UN and multilateralism were not far outside the mainstream. If the confirmation vote had been held soon after that hearing, she would surely have sailed through with bipartisan support.

But politics got in the way of that vote. She is a member of Congress from New York. If she had taken up her post at the UN, it would have left the GOP with the thinnest of majorities, potentially jeopardizing other Trump priorities. So, her nomination was withdrawn.

That move may give Republicans in Washington some relief. But for the UN, this is a potentially disastrous development.

To continue reading about what Stefanik’s withdrawal means for the United Nations—and what to expect next from a second Trump term—become a subscriber, now available at a 40% discount👇

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In 1961, The New Yorker published a profile of Maurice Pate, an American who served as the founding executive director of UNICEF. The piece tells the fascinating history of UNICEF, which grew out of post-war efforts to feed and shelter hundreds of thousands of children whose lives were upended by the Second World War, and soon evolved to a global organization dedicated to improving the health and welfare of children worldwide.

The title of the piece, The Heart of Unicef, was derived from the adage that “UNICEF is the heart of the UN.” It’s a glowing profile that tells the story of how, by mid-century, Maurice Pate and UNICEF were able to channel international solidarity to improve the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children. For example, it recounts how Pate devised a partnership with Mexico to drive down malaria, which was killing 20,000 Mexican children annually. Within four years, malaria was all but eradicated in the country, putting Mexico’s malaria levels on par with the United States.

It’s these kinds of efforts — and support from mid-century megastars like Katharine Hepburn and Danny Kaye — that cemented UNICEF’s reputation as the heart of the UN. Despite the Cold War, conflicts, and upheavals, the world could still come together in support of children. To this day, UNICEF remains the most popular and beloved UN agency.

But now, the Trump administration is taking direct aim at UNICEF, positioning one of the world’s most trusted child welfare organizations as its latest target—an attack that carries potentially devastating consequences for millions of children worldwide.

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Last week, UNICEF (along with a few other UN agencies) received a bizarre questionnaire from the United States that demanded “yes” or “no” answers to some 23 questions. These questions are absurd, and clearly crafted in such a way as to force answers that would justify an American withdrawal from UNICEF as its longtime financial and political backer.

For example, one question asks the agency to affirm that it “does not work with entities associated with communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties, or any party that espouses anti-American beliefs.”

Of course UNICEF does — because it’s an agency of the United Nations! To be sure, the vast majority of UN member states don’t fall into any of these categories. But the UN is a member-based institution composed of 193 countries. Some of these countries are run by communist parties, like China and Cuba. A couple can credibly be called totalitarian, like North Korea and Eritrea. Some are run by avowedly socialist parties, like certain countries in Northern Europe, and a few are expressly anti-American, like Iran.

The UN is not a club of like-minded governments — that’s what groups like NATO or the Organization of Islamic Cooperation are for. Rather, the whole point of the UN is to serve as the one entity that can bring every country together to find opportunities for cooperation transcending wide differences. This is what UNICEF does every day: provide a platform where countries can find ways to support the world’s most vulnerable children, despite vast political and cultural divides.

Within that framework, the goal of American policy from 1945 until circa March 2025 has been to blunt the influence of American rivals in the multilateral system through deep and routine engagement with the UN. The United States has leveraged the UN to advance its core national interests and values. The priorities of the United States have historically held more sway at the UN than those of its rivals precisely because the U.S. — as host country and dominant global power — has leaned into the United Nations as a tool to advance American national security interests and promote American values. These values have historically included supporting poor children worldwide — apparently, until now.

The DEI Smokescreen

Another set of questions asked by the Trump administration of UNICEF is around diversity and they are equally absurd. UNICEF is being asked to give a “yes” or “no” answer to the question: “Can you confirm there is no DEI project or there are no DEI elements in this project?”

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