2025-2026 U.S. National Interest
Diplomacy Awards
Open to all State Department Foreign Service and Civil Service employees, USNIDA recognizes distinguished diplomatic engagement in seven categories. BFF will select and publicly recognize qualified winners. BFF will award a total of $25,000 in USNIDA cash prizes.
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Featured Articles
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Organized Crime Rings: The True Winners of the Diversity Visa Program
September 17, 2026
To many outside observers, the congressionally mandated Diversity Visa program appears, at first blush, to be a great opportunity to spread the American dream across the world. After all, the program allows almost anyone possessing a high school education to apply for a visa to bring themselves, their spouse, and their children to the United States. Far from advancing American interests abroad, however, the program is rife with abuse and siphons limited government resources away from higher-priority needs.
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Foundry School Needs a Shop Floor: How to Turn Seventeen Lectures into 3.8 Million Skilled Hands
By Brendan James, U.S. Foreign Service Officer (Ret.)
September 8, 2026
Give the administration its due: Foundry School is the right idea, launched by the right people, aimed at the right problem. When the Vice President and the Secretary of State personally open a workforce program — as a flagship of Pax Silica, no less — Washington is saying something it has not said in two generations: that the factory floor is a matter of state. The diagnosis behind the program is exactly correct. The reindustrialization agenda has pulled trillions in announced investment onto American soil, and the binding constraint is no longer capital, energy, or land. It is people. By the government's own estimate, American manufacturers will need 3.8 million skilled workers by 2033 in semiconductors, defense, and energy. Foundry School exists, in the Department's own words, to turn investment into jobs. That is the correct mission statement of the decade.
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Next Steps for Foreign Assistance Reform
By Joanna Snearly, BFF Member (August 7, 2026)
The 2nd Trump Administration has made unprecedented progress in the reform of Foreign Assistance in the U.S. Department of State (Department). The elimination of many wasteful programs, the consolidation of USAID into the Department, and a reorganization has established a strong foundation for a foreign assistance system in alignment with U.S. foreign policy goals. This more disciplined use of public funds has increased accountability to the American people. As a next step, a more streamlined administrative structure for federal assistance programs (grants/cooperative agreements) would provide support for this new foundation.
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Let us know if you would like to join the Ben Franklin Fellowship and receive email information about our activities. Please tell us something about your foreign policy experience, particularly if you are currently in the Department of State or other U.S. government service. Also notify us if you would like to meet in person with a BFF representative.