#feltmans

[radroachrepellent]

a collection of really good images of cherry’s adventures

[thena0315]

Returning from WandaVision

The Home Foundation + WestView Residents

[unicorn39]

Trust is defined as choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions.

[Charles Feltman] The Thin Book of Trust 

[transbookoftheday]

All the Things We Don't Talk About by Amy Feltman

A tender, immersive family saga that follows a neurodivergent father, his nonbinary teenager, and the sudden, catastrophic reappearance of the woman who abandoned them.

Morgan Flowers just wants to hide. Raised by their neurodivergent father, Morgan has grown up haunted by the absence of their mysterious mother Zoe, especially now, as they navigate their gender identity and the turmoil of first love. Their father Julian has raised Morgan with care, but he can’t quite fill the gap left by the dazzling and destructive Zoe, who fled to Europe on Morgan’s first birthday. And when Zoe is dumped by her girlfriend Brigid, she suddenly comes crashing back into Morgan and Julian’s lives, poised to disrupt the fragile peace they have so carefully cultivated.

Through it all, Julian and Brigid have become unlikely pen-pals and friends, united by the knowledge of what it’s like to love and lose Zoe; they both know that she hasn’t changed. Despite the red flags, Morgan is swiftly drawn into Zoe’s glittering orbit and into a series of harmful missteps, and Brigid may be the only link that can pull them back from the edge. A story of betrayal and trauma alongside queer love and resilience, ALL THE THINGS WE DON’T TALK ABOUT is a celebration of and a reckoning with the power and unintentional pain of a thoroughly modern family.

[ardnasl]

Always tricky

[unita2org]

ECCO CHI SONO I TERRORISTI CHE COMPIONO ATTENTATI IN RUSSIA PER CONTO DELL’OCCIDENTE (TERZA PARTE)

Macron/Rotschild l’ultimo interprete dei desideri dei massocapitalisti Rete Voltaire “Sotto i nostri occhi” (11/25) Le due anime della Francia di Thierry Meyssan Proseguiamo la pubblicazione a episodi del libro di Thierry Meyssan, Sotto i nostri occhi. In questa puntata la Francia si mostra divisa: il presidente fa il gioco degli anglosassoni, mentre il suo rivale gollista quello del Qatar;…

[matildashoney]

“‘what may look like a joy ride,’ brigid said, ‘is actually someone fleeing the scene. i’m not saying that you need to forgive her. it’s your grudge to carry if you want to keep it with you. but you can empty your baggage whenever you want,’ she said. ‘you can let go.’”

[mariacallous]

American Jewish food is most typically defined as pastrami sandwiches, chocolate babka, or bagels and lox. But I am here to argue that the greatest American Jewish food may actually be the humble hot dog. No dish better embodies the totality of the American Jewish experience.

What’s that you say? You didn’t know that hot dogs were a Jewish food? Well, that’s part of the story, too.

Sausages of many varieties have existed since antiquity. The closest relatives of the hot dog are the frankfurter and the wiener, both American terms based on their cities of origin (Frankfurt and Vienna respectively). So what differentiates a hot dog from other sausages? The story begins in 19th century New York, with two German-Jewish immigrants.

In 1870, Charles Feltman sold Frankfurt-style pork-and-beef sausages out of a pushcart in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Sausages not being the neatest street food, Feltman inserted them into soft buns. This innovative sausage/bun combo grew to be known as a hot dog (though Feltman called them Coney Island Red Hots).

Two years later, Isaac Gellis opened a kosher butcher shop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He soon began selling all-beef versions of German-style sausages. Beef hot dogs grew into an all-purpose replacement for pork products in kosher homes, leading to such classic dishes as Franks & Beans or split pea soup with hot dogs. Though unknown whether Gellis was the originator of this important shift, he certainly became one of the most successful purveyors.

Like American Jews, the hot dog was an immigrant itself that quickly changed and adapted to life in the U.S. As American Jewry further integrated into society, the hot dog followed.

In 1916, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker opened a hotdog stand to compete with Charles Feltman, his former employer. Feltman’s had grown into a large sit-down restaurant, and Handwerker charged half the price by making his eatery a “grab joint.” (The term fast food hadn’t yet been invented, but it was arguably Handwerker who created that ultra-American culinary institution.)

Nathan’s Famous conquered the hot dog world. Like so many of his American Jewish contemporaries, Handwerker succeeded via entrepreneurship and hard work. His innovative marketing stunts included hiring people to eat his hot dogs while dressed as doctors, overcoming public fears about low-quality ingredients. While his all-beef dogs were not made with kosher meat, he called them “kosher-style,” thus underscoring that they contained no horse meat. Gross.

The “kosher-style” moniker was another American invention. American Jewish history, in part, is the story of a secular populace that embraced Jewish culture while rejecting traditional religious practices. All-beef hotdogs with Ashkenazi-style spicing, yet made from meat that was not traditionally slaughtered or “kosher”, sum up the new Judaism of Handwerker and his contemporaries.

Furthermore, American Jewry came of age alongside the industrial food industry. The hot dog also highlights the explosive growth of the kosher supervision industry (“industrial kashrut”).

Hebrew National began producing hot dogs in 1905. Their production methods met higher standards than were required by law, leading to their famous advertising slogan, “We Answer to a Higher Authority.”

While the majority of Americans may be surprised to hear this, Hebrew National’s self-supervised kosher-ness was not actually accepted by more stringent Orthodox and even Conservative Jews at the time. But non-Jews, believing kosher dogs were inherently better, became the company’s primary market. Eventually, Hebrew National received the more established Triangle-K kashrut supervision, convincing the Conservative Movement to accept their products. Most Orthodox Jews, however, still don’t accept these hot dogs as kosher.

But over the last quarter of the 20th century in America, the Orthodox community has gained prominence and their opinions, and food preferences, hold more weight in the food industry.

The community’s stricter kashrut demands and sizable purchasing power created a viable market, and glatt kosher hot dogs hit the scene. Abeles & Heymann, in business since 1954, was purchased in 1997 by current owner Seth Leavitt. Meeting the demands of the Orthodox community’s increasingly sophisticated palate, their hot dogs are gluten-free with no filler. Recently, they’ve begun producing a line of uncured sausages, and the first glatt hot dogs using collagen casing.

Glatt kosher dogs can now be purchased in nearly thirty different sports arenas and stadiums. American Jews have successfully integrated into their society more than any other in history. So too, the hot dog has transcended its humble New York Jewish immigrant roots to enter the pantheon of true American icons. So when you bite into your hot dog this summer, you are really getting a bite of American Jewish history, and the great American Jewish food.

[jalwyn21]

I’m losing it over the albatross / Bowery stuff she is dredging up, ty for posting the background. lol girl a breakup is not an out of control destructive fire, chill. She always equates her feelings with real human toll and always makes others responsible for them. “Am I allowed to cry” ma’am you are 34

No, but she is basically saying she wants to "burn" William Bowery.

2 days after Joe's birthday she sings Coney Island, a William Bowery song. And she announces the albatross? The Albatross Hotel employee who started the fire that destroyed the Bowery section of Coney Island over "unrequited love' ??

In 1903 a devastating fire took place on Coney Island’s Bowery.

There was a fire in 1903 that destroyed everything in the Bowery section of Coney Island..

“On November 1, 1903, just a couple of months after nearby Luna Park had wrapped up its inaugural season, one of the worst fires in Coney Island's history consumed over 260 buildings. It began in the Albatross Hotel, at the west end of the Bowery, and was carried by the wind eastward to Jones Walk. It was prevented from going further by a brick wall that Feltman had wisely built after the 1899 fire to protect his property from the fire-prone wooden Bowery buildings. Every structure in the Bowery was destroyed, and almost every building between Surf Avenue and the beach was burned. The fire is said to have been set by a former employee of the Albatross Hotel because of unrequited love for a female employee who preferred the attentions of the hotel's owner.”

This woman really is f!cked in the head...

[lookninjas]

You know, it's interesting to me that I saw an article as I was scrolling through my dash this morning that (supposedly) blames the U.S. for being deeply involved in a genocide in Sudan. You might think from such a description that we'd be talking about U.S. military aid or boots on the ground or the CIA or something like that, and not just the Trump administration tanking our diplomatic efforts and Biden's administration not making the best decisions to right the ship. You might also think that such an article would not include a section like this:

David Satterfield, who replaced Feltman as US special envoy to the Horn of Africa and who has since resigned, said that Washington did not have anything but bad choices in Sudan, and therefore had to strike deals with the Sudanese military. According to Satterfield, “If there is ever an opportunity to return to a path towards restoration of a civilian-led government, you’re going to have to talk to the military then as well.

You also might not think that such an article would outright reference Russian involvement in Sudan, which it does.

Russia believes that its strong presence in Sudan will augment its status in Africa and the Middle East, which is considered an American redoubt. Since 2014, and with Moscow’s aspirations to exploit African mineral riches, the Kremlin has strengthened its ties to Sudan in order to ameliorate western sanctions following its invasion of Crimea, sanctions that became even harsher after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.16 In 2017, former Sudanese President al-Bashir visited Russia and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two countries agreed to establish a holding company run by the paramilitary Wagner Group to mine gold ore. Russia also signed a 25-year lease in December 2020 to build a military base at Port Sudan on the Red Sea that can receive nuclear-powered ships. It was also interesting that Hemedti headed an official delegation to Moscow on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

And while we're talking about Russian involvement in Sudan, which is why I'm here in the first place, it's really really really interesting to me that this article was phrased as proof that the U.S. was heavily involved in genocide in Sudan, despite the fact that the Russian Wagner group (accused of war crimes in Ukraine) has been providing missiles and military training to the Sudanese paramilitary group RSF while smuggling gold out of Sudan to fund their own activities in Ukraine. Fun fact about the Wagner group: They're also heavily involved in social media misinformation campaigns.

Wasn't there a Russian misinformation campaign on tumblr leading up to the Presidential elections in 2016?

And despite the "mysterious" death of Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash (a short time after his aborted march on Moscow), Russia is still working on bringing the Wagner organization back under their control. Because, you know, they still have that whole invasion of Ukraine they're working on. An invasion of Ukraine that would sure be a whole lot easier for them if they could convince Americans to stop providing military support to Ukraine. They're already doing pretty nicely with the Republican party, but the Democrats (and the American left in general) have been harder to get on-side.

It does kind of feel like tying American military involvement in other countries to active genocide would be a great way to discourage people on the American left from supporting continued involvement in Ukraine, wouldn't it?

We're slightly less than a year away from the next American presidential election. There is no reason to believe that the Russian propaganda machine, which has already been operating at full blast since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, is going to slow down. This quote from the linked article is particularly chilling:

A particular challenge is that people tend to spread falsehoods “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth”; this is particularly the case for false political news (Vosoughi, Roy and and Aral, 2018[7]). For example, one study found that tweets containing false information were 70% more likely to be retweeted than accurate tweets (Brown, 2020[8]). Another study found that false information on Facebook attracts six times more engagement than factual posts (Edelson, 2021[9]). In addition, feedback loops between the platforms and traditional media can serve to further amplify disinformation, magnifying the risk that disinformation can be used to deliberately influence public conversations, as well as confuse and discourage the public.

I think it's important to remember, especially now, that we are capable of spreading misinformation. The article about U.S. involvement in Sudan wasn't placed on there by an algorithm. This is fucking tumblr. That was one of my mutuals. Because they're concerned about American military intervention and they're against genocide and it sounded bad and they were upset and they didn't think to read the article. Because they didn't spend the time of Prigozhin's march on Moscow mainlining information on the Wagner group the way that I did, so they didn't go "Hey, Sudan? Wait a minute --" the way I did. Because misinformation that isn't targeted at your group is designed to be easy to spot, so you'll think that the misinformation that is targeted to your group will also be easy to spot, and it fucking isn't.

Because this culture of "If you care, you'll share" has gotten people to click that reblog button without thinking twice about it.

Don't keep falling for it. You don't have to spend an hour digging up sources and pulling out quotes for a ten-note post the way that I did. I'm like this as a human. It's fine if you're not. But if you're not even going to click the link to read the article and actually read it critically (or if there's no sources at all except a twitter screenshot, which I've also seen quite a bit of), then don't reblog it. Save it as a draft for when you have time to do the research, or just don't do anything with it at all. You're not obligated.

And if you have the relevant background to spot the disinfo, I mean -- again, look, you're not obligated to take that hour and search those sources. Even I don't do this all the time. It's hard, it's frustrating, and it will not spread the way the disinfo does. I'm gonna see that genocide post like five times at least on my dash, and I'm probably going to see it at least once from someone who has at least liked this post (if not reblogged it as well). But if you can. If you have the energy and the time. Try to put a little info out there. It might help someone.

That's all. Be good. Be skeptical.

[gregor-samsung]

" Il 7 febbraio [2014], mentre Barack Obama pontificava sul diritto degli ucraini all’autodeterminazione, è stata pubblicata su YouTube (forse dai Servizi russi) una telefonata intercettata fra [Victoria] Nuland* e Geoffrey Pyatt, ambasciatore americano a Kiev: i due già sanno che Yanukovich cadrà e decidono – non si sa bene a che titolo – chi fra i suoi oppositori dovrà essere premier e ministro del futuro governo. La Nuland confida a Pyatt di aver esposto il suo piano di “pacificazione” dell’Ucraina al sottosegretario per gli Affari politici dell’Onu, Jeffrey Feltman, che è intenzionato a nominare un inviato speciale sul posto d’intesa col vicepresidente americano Joe Biden, ma all’insaputa degli alleati della Nato e dell’Ue. «Sarebbe grande!», esulta la Nuland. Che non gradisce come futuro premier ucraino il capo dell’opposizione, l’ex pugile Vitali Klitschko («Non penso sia una buona idea»): meglio l’uomo delle banche Arseniy Yatsenyuk, che infatti andrà al governo di lì a un mese, mentre Klitschko diventerà sindaco di Kiev come premio di consolazione. Pyatt vorrebbe consultare l’Ue, ma la Nuland gli urla: «Fuck the Eu!» (L’Ue si fotta!). Anche il controverso finanziere ungherese George Soros si vanterà di aver partecipato al casting per il nuovo governo ucraino. La cancelliera tedesca Angela Merkel e il presidente del Consiglio Ue Herman Van Rompuy protestano per le «parole assolutamente inaccettabili» della Nuland. Ma non perché gli Usa decidono il governo e il futuro dell’Ucraina come se fosse una loro colonia. Mosca grida al golpe. Ma anche un alto esponente del battaglione Azov (nome di battaglia “Voland”), nel libro Valhalla Exspress tradotto in Italia nel 2022, ammetterà che «la Ue non ci interessava» e che Euromaidan «non fu una rivoluzione, ma un colpo di Stato». "

* Assistente del segretario di Stato John Kerry per gli Affari europei e asiatici.

---------

Marco Travaglio, Scemi di Guerra. La tragedia dell’Ucraina, la farsa dell’Italia. Un Paese pacifista preso in ostaggio dai NoPax, PaperFIRST (Il Fatto Quotidiano), febbraio 2023¹ [Libro elettronico].

[radroachrepellent]

Hiiiii everyone 1st post on the fallout side acc!! This is my girlie Cherry Feltman, my main FO4 OC

Somewhere in her family tree she is related to the man credited for creating the first hot dog stand in the US, Charles Feltman… Or at least, that’s what her and her family say to keep business coming in the radiated world of the wasteland.

She is still a work in progress like backstory wise and I have some things drafted and working but I wanted to share meow

My little blorbo. She’s like unhinged but smooth about it like 40% self insert lololo

Credit to renardoniro for the vault girl maker art! Rest of the art is mineeee

[fairycosmos]

chlo do u have any lgbtq+ book recommendations?? ☺️

yes!! i would like to read more lgbt books but here r some i've read that i think were. considerable.

aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe by benjamin alire saenz (this is THE classic), boy parts (you need to look up the triggers on gooddreads before reading to decide if you want to, not really an LGBT love story, but an LGBT main character with a lesbian relationship through a chunk of it), you exist too much by zaina arafat, all the things we don't talk about by amy feltman, young mungo by douglas stewart, the atlas six by olivie blake, sorrowland by rivers soloman (!!!), the song of achilles by madeline miller, the house in the cerulean sea (very sweet + gay + magical + cheesy),  maurice by e.m. forster, less by andrew sean greer. <3

[socialmediasocrates]

i can't believe i'm writing fo4 fic in this the year of our lord 2024

if you're here for the bg3 fic it's on its way i promise

transcript under the cut

first screenshot:

every day, filomena woke up at five in the morning to catch the casualty lists on the news.

they rolled twice a day, at five in the morning and five in the evening, and she sat on the couch watching, nursing a cup of coffee and a cigarette. there were ten nathans on the list that morning; two of the last names looked familiar, both of them nearly gave her a premature heart attack. nathan farrier, nathan feltman, nathan fielder. she finally released the breath she’d been holding. nathan fasciani never showed up. twelve more hours of planning a wedding instead of a funeral. then she’d watch the five pm news, and the clock would reset. this was the rhythm of life while he was off fighting in alaska. twelve hour cycles hoping the name fasciani never showed up, a mounting sense of dread bitter in the back of her throat in between.

(that last name did appear, eventually, but it wasn’t nate. it was his brother, gianni. killed by chinese door gunners on a vertibird run over the position where his unit had dug in, body never recovered. they buried an empty coffin. nate’s parents aged a decade in a week. there would be an empty chair with a smartly folded american flag and a photo sitting in it for gianni at the wedding.

god, was it ever worth it?)

second screenshot:

“so, at the very bottom of hell, there’s this huge lake, right? and lucifer’s in the middle of the lake, frozen from the waist down-”

“the devil’s a popsicle?”

“no, he’s the ultimate sinner, trapped in a prison that he’s constantly refreshing by beating his wings, which are attached to his chin, by the way-”

“the devil’s a winged popsicle?”

“you’re the worst.” she readjusted the phone, cradled between her shoulder and the side of her head, as it began to slip.

“i’m the worst? dante made the devil a wing-chinned popsicle.” even his laugh sounded tired, but there he was. laughing. his mom always said he’d be laughing when the bombs dropped, and part of filomena hoped he would. the world always seemed less big and scary when nate was laughing at it.

“he’s only half a popsicle, the top of him isn’t frozen. he’s got three faces, and he’s chewing on judas iscariot, brutus-”

“-of et tu, brute fame?”

“-yeah, that one, and also his brother-in-law gaius cassius longinus, i guess he was also big into the stabbing caesar thing-”

“-damn, can’t trust anyone in the roman senate-”

“-you can’t trust anyone in the american senate, either; it’s not like they’ve changed much.”

and there he went, laughing again. she stopped working on her paper for a moment to just listen and pretend he was sitting next to her, his chin hooked over her shoulder, reading it as she wrote it, making running commentary on the poem.

“i miss doing homework with you,” she admitted, softly like saying it quietly enough would trap the admission in the moment, make it private even though she was sitting at her desk in a dorm room she shared with two other young women.

“i miss you, i don’t know about the homework.” and then a shift. voice lower, “i don’t suppose you’d appreciate me asking you to worry less.”

“it’s not about appreciating the sentiment, so much as it’s just impossible. you’re in anchorage. i’m going to worry.”

“i know. but it’ll be okay, cross my heart. i’ll be back for the wedding by june.”

he was not back for the wedding by june. it happened in mid-august, a week before his birthday.

[thenookienostradamus]

Hey so I put together a list of trans and Jewish books (books about trans Jews or by trans Jews - or both!) for my synagogue for TDOV. We have been "the queer shul" in our city since the 90s so we have a reputation to uphold here. Anyway I thought I'd share it here for those interested.:

Memoir/biography

1. Becoming Eve - Abby Chava Stein. Chronicles her journey through transition, from ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to transgender woman

2. Through the Door of Life - Joy Ladin. A memoir of transition from the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox university

3. What We Will Become - Mimi Lemay. Lemay writes about her own journey and that of her child, Jacob, who knew he was a boy from age two

4. Blood, Marriage, Wine, and Glitter - S. Bear Bergman. Essays by Bergman, a trans, Jewish, polyamorous parent

5. Continuum - Chella Man. A memoir of many identities; Man is Chinese-Jewish, genderqueer, and Deaf

Fiction (adult)

1. Sarahland (Stories) - Sam Cohen. Cohen's 10 stories all center on women named Sarah, including a transgender Sarah who marries Hagar

2. Confessions of the Fox - Jordy Rosenberg. Rosenberg re-imagines English folk hero Jack Sheppard as a trans man

3. The Blade Between - Sam J. Miller. A man returns to his hometown to help (no joke) ancient whale demigods and the ghost of a onetime lover fight (again, no joke) insidious gentrification. I've read this one; it's an absolute bonkers joy.

4. The Right Thing to Do at the Time - Dov Zeller. A trans-centered Yiddish-inspired retelling of Pride & Prejudice

5. All the Things We Don't Talk About - Amy Feltman. A family saga about a neurodivergent father, a nonbinary teen, and the woman who abandoned them both

Torah & Spirituality

1. Torah Queeries - Drinkwater et al., ed. Modern, queer readings of the parashot

2. The Soul of the Stranger - Joy Ladin. Reading Torah and understanding God from a transgender perspective

3. Transgender & Jewish - Naomi Zeveloff, ed. Stories of the "first wave" of openly gender nonconforming Jewish people to take places of leadership in the mainstream

[ausetkmt]

In late October 2021, a top U.S. envoy met with Sudanese military commanders and Sudan’s top civilian leader to shore up the country’s precarious transition toward democracy. The generals assured Jeffrey Feltman, then the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa region, that they were committed to the transition and would not seize power. Feltman departed the Sudanese capital of Khartoum for Washington early on the morning of Oct. 25. En route, he received news from Sudan: Hours after he left, those military leaders had arrested the country’s top civilian leaders and carried out a coup.

For the next 18 months, Washington adopted a series of controversial policy measures to both maintain ties with the new military junta and try to push the East African nation back toward a democratic transition. Months of work led to a new political deal that offered, on paper at least, new hope, and some Biden administration officials felt they were tantalizingly close.

But the deal blew up in the eleventh hour as violence erupted across Khartoum last month between forces controlled by the rival generals, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who leads the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagalo, the head of the powerful Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group.

The collapse of Sudan’s democratic transition has led to anger and backlash in Washington among diplomats and aid officials, some of whom feel that the Biden administration’s policies empowered the two generals at the center of the crisis, exacerbated tensions between them as they pushed for a political deal, and shunted aside pro-democracy activists in the process.

“Maybe we couldn’t have prevented a conflict,” said one U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But it’s like we didn’t even try and beyond that just emboldened Hemeti and Burhan by making repeated empty threats and never following through.”

“And all the while,” the official added, “we let the real pro-democracy players just be cast to the side.”

The conflict between Burhan’s and Hemeti’s forces turned Khartoum overnight into a battle zone that put millions of citizens, as well as U.S. and foreign government personnel, in the crossfire of firefights, airstrikes, and mortar attacks. The fighting has pushed Sudan toward the brink of collapse and undermined, perhaps permanently, a Western-funded project to bring democracy to a country beset by autocracy and conflict for half a century.

People run and walk through the streets in front of an armored personnel carrier as fighting in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum continues between Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces on April 27. AFP via Getty Images

As successive rounds of cease-fires fail, Western officials and analysts increasingly fear that the fighting could lead to a full-scale civil war, bringing a new vacuum of instability and chaos to a region already suffering humanitarian crises and along the strategic Red Sea, through which 10 percent of global trade flows.

“The way things are going, Sudan begins to resemble a massive Somalia of the early 1990s on the Red Sea, a total state breakdown, if the fighting doesn’t stop,” said Alexander Rondos, a former European Union envoy for the Horn of Africa.

Interviews with about two dozen current and former Western officials and Sudanese activists close to the negotiations describe a deeply flawed U.S. policy process on brokering talks in Sudan in the run-up to the conflict, monopolized by a select few officials who shut the rest of the interagency team out of key deliberations and stamped out a growing chorus of dissent over the direction of U.S. Sudan policy.

“From the outset, there was a consistent and willful dismissal of views that questioned whether the U.N. talks would be a recipe for success or for failure,” said one former official familiar with the matter. “Those warnings were ignored, and instead the U.S. built a dream palace of a political process that has now crashed down on the people of Sudan.”

Current and former U.S. officials, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said internal warnings of roiling tensions in Khartoum and a possible conflict were dismissed or ignored in Washington, setting the stage for U.S. government personnel to be trapped amid the fighting in various parts of Khartoum with no advance preparations to move them to safety. In Khartoum, these officials and Sudanese analysts said, the policy was further hampered by an embassy that was for years understaffed and out of its depth, without even an ambassador for much of the crucial period.

A woman inside her house protects her face from tear gas in the Abbasiya neighborhood of Omdurman, Sudan, on Nov. 13, 2021. Organizations called for civil disobedience and a general strike during demonstrations against the military coup. Abdulmonam Eassa/Getty Images

“We seemed to have lost all institutional memory on Sudan,” said Cameron Hudson, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former State Department official. “These generals have been lying to us for decades. Anybody who has worked on Sudan has seen this stuff play out time and time and time again.”

The U.S. State Department has sharply disputed these characterizations. “U.S. engagement after the October 2021 military takeover was centered on supporting Sudanese civilian actors in a Sudanese-led process to re-establish a civilian-led transitional government,” a State Department spokesperson said in response.

“The United States did not press for any specific deal but tried to build consensus and put pressure on the key actors to reach agreement on a civilian government to restore a democratic transition,” the spokesperson said and added that those efforts included “near constant diplomacy, often working closely with civilians, to defuse tensions between the SAF and RSF that arose multiple times and again emerged in the days before April 15, 2023,” when the fighting began.

Still, for an administration that has made promoting global democracy a centerpiece of its foreign policy, many government officials who spoke to Foreign Policy contended that Sudan could stand as one of the starkest foreign-policy failures, even in the wake of the successful evacuation of all U.S. government personnel and campaign to help U.S. citizens escape the country.

These officials also fear that the crisis could reverberate well beyond Sudan’s borders if the warring sides don’t agree to a viable cease-fire soon, with the risk of rival foreign powers exacerbating the conflict and transforming it into a proxy war.

Interviews with multiple Sudanese activists and civil society leaders, meanwhile, paint the picture of a pro-democracy movement that has completely lost faith in the United States as a beacon for democracy and supporter of Sudan’s own democratic aspirations. Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of their safety as fighting continued in Khartoum.

“Either the U.S. and West properly step up or they just need to fuck off because halfhearted steps and empty threats of sanctions, again and again and again, are doing more harm than good,” said one Sudanese person deeply familiar with the internal negotiations. “Our trust in the U.S. is entirely gone.”

Sudanese protesters cheer on arriving to the town of Atbara from Khartoum on Dec. 19, 2019, to celebrate the first anniversary of the uprising that toppled Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir. Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images

After a popular pro-democracy uprising ousted longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and set the stage for Sudan to rejoin the international community after decades as an international pariah, the United States invested countless diplomatic resources and hundreds of millions of dollars in Sudan’s democratic transition.

Sudan seemed poised to be a success story. A popular uprising, led in many ways by Sudanese women, had ousted one of the world’s most notorious dictators. U.S. President Joe Biden in a major U.N. speech in September 2021 denounced the global rise of autocracy and touted Sudan as one of the most compelling contrasts to that trend worldwide after the 2019 revolution. In Sudan, he said, there was proof that “the democratic world is everywhere.”

Just a month later, Burhan and Hemeti orchestrated their coup. Afterward, the Biden administration froze some $700 million in U.S. funds to aid in the democratic transition and, over a year later, issued visa restrictions on “any current or former Sudanese officials or other individuals believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic transition in Sudan.” The World Bank and International Monetary Fund also froze $6 billion in financial assistance.

But some U.S. diplomats felt that didn’t go far enough and none of those reprisals would directly affect Burhan or Hemeti. A fierce internal debate unfolded. Some officials argued that Washington needed to roll out punishing sanctions against Burhan and Hemeti to bring them to heel and show support for pro-democracy activists. Other officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Molly Phee—Biden’s top envoy for Africa—argued that sanctions wouldn’t be effective and might undermine U.S. influence with Burhan and Hemeti as they sought to bring them back to the negotiating table.

“There was the right thing to do, to show the Sudanese people we were all-in on democracy, to punish Hemeti and Burhan for this blatant coup, and then there was the wrong and slightly more expedient thing to do, [to] just keep working with them after some stern finger-wagging,” said one U.S. official involved in the process. “We chose door number two.”

Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, leaves after meeting with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Khartoum on Sept. 29, 2021. Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images

Feltman, the former U.S. envoy, said he advocated for sanctioning Burhan and Hemeti during his time in government but in hindsight wasn’t sure if it could have prevented the conflict. “Do I think sanctions ultimately would have prevented them from eventually taking 46 million people of Sudan hostage because of their personal lusts for power? No.”

There were other complicating issues as well. Senior Biden administration officials working on Africa policy were consumed by the war in neighboring Ethiopia, where an estimated 200,000 to 600,000 people died during a bloody conflict in the country’s northern Tigray region. And the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum was understaffed and unable to come to grips with the situation; a full-time U.S. ambassador wouldn’t arrive until three years after Bashir’s ouster. During this time, officials say, Phee took direct charge over U.S. policy on Sudan.

Phee worked closely with a U.S. Agency for International Development official detailed to the State Department, Danny Fullerton, in Khartoum to negotiate directly with Burhan and Hemeti and bring them to the table for a new political deal.

“The embassy was just very beleaguered, with a real shortage of skilled or enough political officers, and both the chargés d’affaires and later the ambassador when he got there were very frustrated with a lack of support from Washington,” said one American familiar with internal embassy dynamics. “It was a group that was out of its depth, overly busy, and, frankly, not as well connected as it should’ve been with the right people in Sudan’s pro-democracy communities.”

This official said severe embassy staffing shortages, detailed in a State Department watchdog report on the embassy published in March, and leadership issues contributed to difficulties in hashing out negotiations with Burhan and Hemeti. But other current and former officials dispute that, insisting that the State Department can still make deals with high-level involvement from officials in Washington, even with an understaffed embassy.

Five current and former U.S. officials and two Sudanese activists familiar with the negotiations said that before the U.S. ambassador came to Khartoum in late 2022, U.S. officials involved in the negotiations with Hemeti and Burhan didn’t do enough to incorporate Sudan’s pro-democracy resistance committees into deliberations on a new political deal with the two generals, nor did they heed warnings about the inherent risks and flaws in a new deal.

A Sudanese woman chants slogans and waves a national flag during a demonstration demanding a civilian body to lead the transition to democracy outside the army headquarters in Khartoum on April 12, 2019. Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images

These officials said there was mounting dissent in Washington over the trajectory of U.S. policy but that Phee dismissed other policy options, including threatening Hemeti or Burhan with sanctions or other forms of pressure or incorporating Sudan’s pro-democracy groups into the political negotiations. The State Department watchdog report also noted that the deputy chief of mission in Khartoum “at times remained focused on her predetermined course of action and did not consider alternatives offered by staff”—though the report did not address whether this had any affect on U.S. policy.

The State Department spokesperson, however, sharply disputed these characterizations: “While we cannot comment on internal policy deliberations, State Department leaders carefully considered policy proposals and different opinions on our policy on Sudan and did not dismiss or stamp out any dissent.”

All the while, Burhan and Hemeti sought to expand their own power and influence across Sudan, currying favor with foreign powers and setting the stage for a growing rivalry that would later ignite a deadly conflict. Burhan found backers in neighboring Egypt. Hemeti courted the United Arab Emirates and Russia and began deepening ties between the RSF and the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian mercenary outfit widely reported to be responsible for war crimes in other parts of Africa and in Ukraine. Hemeti, implicated in widespread atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur conflict that broke out in 2003, launched a coordinated public relations campaign to try to transform himself into a statesman on the world stage in what was seen as a political charm offensive and challenge to Burhan’s rule.

Hemeti visited Moscow on Feb. 23, 2022, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to discuss the possible opening of a Russian port on Sudan’s coast along the strategic trade routes in the Red Sea. Some U.S. officials who had been pushing for sanctioning Hemeti believed his brazen visit to Moscow would finally convince top decision-makers to finally pull the trigger on a major new tranche of sanctions. The sanctions never came.

Around that time, at least one memo was written and circulated within the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs warning of the risks of current U.S. policy on Sudan and listing potential scenarios that could emerge from the rivalry between Burhan and Hemeti, including those tensions erupting into a full-scale conflict. The memo, described in broad terms by several congressional aides and former officials familiar with it, was meant to go to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s desk, but the draft was heavily edited, watered down, and never passed out of the bureau, those people said. “Still, the State Department leaders can’t say they weren’t warned,” one former official said.

Human rights advocates have also criticized the Biden administration’s approach to Sudan in the months leading up to the eruption of violence in April. “By repeatedly failing to hold abusive leaders accountable or making clear, through concrete measures, that abusive behavior would not be condoned, Sudan’s Western partners sent these generals the signal that they can continue holding the country at a gunpoint with almost no consequences,” said Mohamed Osman, an expert on the region at Human Rights Watch.

During this time, Sudanese activists became increasingly disenchanted with the U.S. approach to Sudan. “There was no meaningful commitment that we’d ever seen from either [Burhan or Hemeti], and that was all put aside and sacrificed effectively at the altar of a political process and a political agreement that was never going to hold and that had very little popular support,” said Kholood Khair, a Sudanese political analyst who followed the negotiations closely.

John Godfrey, the U.S. ambassador to Sudan, delivers a speech in Port Sudan amid the delivery of tons of corn as part of U.S. humanitarian support for the country on Nov. 20, 2022. AFP via Getty Images

In September 2022, John Godfrey, a career U.S. diplomat with experience in the Middle East and North Africa and a background in counterterrorism, landed in Khartoum as the first U.S. ambassador to Sudan in a quarter century. Godfrey, officials said, immediately began trying to make inroads with so-called resistance committees and other civil society organizations that had been the driving force in Sudan’s push for democracy.

“He was beset with the cards that were dealt to him,” the American familiar with the embassy’s internal dynamics said. “He was burning the candle at both ends trying to make this deal happen, even if people back in Washington, outside of Phee and the [Bureau of African Affairs], weren’t giving Sudan much attention or thought.”

Even as Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia distracted most in Washington, Phee and Godfrey—alongside counterparts including senior diplomats from the United Kingdom, United Nations, African Union, and a regional bloc called the Intergovernmental Authority on Development—pushed to restart Sudan’s transition to civilian rule. An apparent breakthrough came last December, when Sudan’s military leaders and some factions of the country’s pro-democracy forces agreed to a new civilian-led transitional government in a matter of months.

But the Western negotiators acceded to demands by Hemeti and Burhan to cut civil society and pro-democracy activists out of the negotiations, giving the military junta an early win over the weaker civilian groups, officials said. The December agreement also left unresolved one major issue that would soon become an explosive one: plans to incorporate the RSF into the SAF to create one unified military force for the country.

People gather to protest the framework agreement signed by Sudan’s military and civilian leaders, which aims to resolve the country’s governance crisis, in Khartoum on April 6. Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

That question fueled more tensions between Burhan and Hemeti in the coming months. Analysts in Khartoum began sounding alarm bells about the roiling tensions that would set the stage for an eruption of violence. The push for the agreement may have exacerbated it.

“There was this absolute desperation to push the final deal over the line to the point of succumbing false hope,” said another person involved in the negotiations.

In Washington, however, plans were underway to celebrate the new transitional government the second the agreement was signed. The embassy continued arranging meetings with Hemeti and Burhan and conducting routine embassy business; an American rock band played a festival in March as part of a State Department public diplomacy tour.

The business-as-usual approach belied the tensions in Khartoum. A signing ceremony for the deal was delayed and then delayed again. Burhan and Hemeti were amassing forces around Khartoum. Some low-level U.S. diplomats and Sudanese civilian negotiators began more explicitly warning their friends and colleagues back in Washington through informal back channels that a conflict seemed imminent.

“People were calling around, saying, ‘You’ve got to pass up these messages to everyone you know in D.C. that there could really be a war, it doesn’t feel like the international community is taking us seriously’” said the American familiar with internal embassy dynamics.

Activists demonstrate in front of the White House in Washington on April 29, calling on the United States to intervene to stop the fighting in Sudan. Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images

Top officials in Washington either downplayed or misinterpreted these warning signs, according to six officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter. It wasn’t the first time that Burhan and Hemeti had amassed forces around Khartoum, nor the first time that U.S. interlocutors had to step in to help calm the tensions.

Godfrey and his counterpart from London, Giles Lever, who played key roles in shepherding the December deal to the finish line, left the country on separate vacations by early April, a sign that Washington felt the deal was all but done. Back in Washington, after Burhan and Hemeti signed the agreement, the State Department sent word to Congress that it wanted to ready $330 million in funds to aid Sudan’s democratic transition, according to three congressional aides and officials familiar with the matter. Those officials said the department was drafting a carrot-and-stick plan for Sudan, with the millions of dollars of funding the carrot and new sanctions authorizations a hefty stick.

The State Department had a long-standing Level 4 travel advisory for Sudan, recommending that U.S. citizens “do not travel” there, and sent out one additional security alert, on April 13, advising citizens to avoid Karima in northern Sudan, and barring U.S. government personnel from leaving Khartoum, in light of the “increased presence of security forces.” The United States didn’t issue a broad travel warning urging citizens to leave via commercial air travel, consolidate U.S. government personnel inside Khartoum in the event of a crisis, or order a departure of nonessential personnel as tensions between Burhan and Hemeti reached a boiling point.

“We’re all really questioning why we didn’t do more to prepare for the worst-case scenario,” a third U.S. official said.

Drone footage shows clouds of black smoke over Bahri, also known as Khartoum North, outside Sudan’s capital, in a May 1 video obtained by Reuters.Third-party video via Reuters

On April 15, the tensions between Hemeti and Burhan finally boiled over. The RSF launched what appeared to be a coordinated series of attacks on SAF bases and hammered Khartoum International Airport with gunfire and missiles—effectively cutting off the only viable means of escape in a densely populated city that is hundreds of miles from the coast or nearest border.

At once, the city of some 5 million people became a battle zone. The U.S. Embassy began working frantically to consolidate all its personnel and their families in several key locations. Godfrey, the U.S. ambassador, had rushed back to Khartoum, cutting his vacation short, just before the fighting erupted. RSF fighters carried out wholesale looting and assaults, and SAF troops began bombing sites around Khartoum. RSF fighters assaulted the EU’s ambassador in Khartoum, Aidan O’Hara, and in various other instances reportedly fired on, briefly kidnapped, or sexually assaulted U.N. and international organization workers, according to internal U.N. security reports obtained by Foreign Policy.

The White House, State Department, and Defense Department leaped into crisis mode, working around the clock to draft up embassy evacuation plans. On April 22, a contingent of U.S. troops took off from a U.S. base in Djibouti on three Chinook helicopters and, after refueling in Ethiopia, landed in Khartoum to safely evacuate all U.S. government staff and their families. All the while, top U.S. diplomats worked to arrange temporary cease-fires between Burhan and Hemeti to aid civilians and assist those trying to escape.

“None of the foreign diplomatic missions in Khartoum changed their security posture or staffing levels before the outbreak in fighting, and the U.S. embassy was very focused and effective in consolidating its personnel immediately after the war started,” the State Department spokesperson said.

An estimated 16,000 U.S. citizens remained trapped in the city, including many dual U.S.-Sudanese citizens and a smaller number of NGO and aid workers who worked on U.S.-funded humanitarian and development programs. U.S. lawmakers became infuriated that the Biden administration wasn’t doing more to aid in the evacuation of U.S. citizens after the initial outbreak of the conflict, comparing the fiasco to the ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Saudi-flagged ferry passenger ship Amanah carrying evacuated civilians fleeing violence in Sudan arrives at King Faisal Naval Base in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on April 26. Amer Hilabi/AFP via Getty Images

One resident who stayed in Khartoum was Bushra Ibnauf, a dual U.S.-Sudanese citizen and doctor who had moved back to Khartoum from Iowa. “He had a passion for doing good. I remember him saying, ‘I can be replaced in Iowa, but I can’t be replaced in Sudan,’” said Yasir Elamin, the president of the Sudanese American Physicians Association and a close friend and colleague of Ibnauf. Ibnauf and other doctors ventured out amid gunfights and explosions to provide aid to wounded civilians as the conflict dragged on.

Other Sudanese citizens began trying to make their way out of Khartoum, either by fleeing north to the Egyptian border or on a precarious overland journey to the coast at Port Sudan. “It was hell on earth,” recalled one Sudanese activist who escaped Khartoum. “We only left through the city and all the firefights because we were running out of water. Our choice was either definitely die of thirst or maybe get hit by bullets. It was no choice at all.”

U.S. officials have made brokering a sustainable cease-fire their top priority, but so far no cease-fire has held. Both Burhan and Hemeti have sent negotiators to peace talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, coordinated with Washington and Riyadh, but many officials and analysts doubt the talks will lead anywhere after multiple ceasefire attempts failed. On May 4, Biden announced a new executive order granting new legal authorities to impose sanctions on those involved in the violence in Sudan. Some Sudanese analysts doubt sanctions will work.

“The point of sanctions is that it is used as a threat during normal times to prevent bad actors from doing bad things,” said Amgad Fareid Eltayeb, a former assistant chief of staff to Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok before he was ousted from power. “I think right now it’s too little, too late—it’s already a war situation.”

The situation in Khartoum remains dire. “​​I don’t think so-called safe areas right now are going to be safe for much longer because the aim of the game from both sides seems to be total control of the country,” said Khair, the Sudanese political analyst.

A Sudanese person paints graffiti on a wall during a demonstration in Khartoum on April 14, 2019. Omer Erdem/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

U.S. lawmakers are pressing for new envoys to enter the fray. Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Gregory Meeks, issued a joint appeal to Biden and the U.N. to appoint new U.S. and U.N. special envoys to Sudan, saying that “[d]irect, sustained, high-level leadership from the United States and United Nations is necessary to stop the fighting from dragging the country into a full-blown civil war and state collapse.”

Many Western officials fear that Sudan could plunge into civil war if the fighting isn’t stopped soon, but it’s also unclear what a viable cease-fire would mean for any hopes of reviving the moribund democratic transition in Sudan. “This is not yet a full-scale civil war, à la Syria, à la Libya,” said Feltman, the former U.S. envoy. “It’s still a fight between two rival forces. Now is the time to arrest it, to stop it before it spirals.”

All the while, the fighting in Khartoum continues. Some U.S. citizens have found additional ways to evacuate, either with the direct assistance of the U.S. government or of other countries.

Others weren’t so lucky. Ibnauf, the Sudanese American doctor who stayed in Khartoum to provide succor to civilians amid the fighting, was stabbed to death by suspected looters in front of his family on April 25.