The U.S. accepts Afrikaner refugees.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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This morning, an email with our team bios was inadvertently sent to our entire mailing list. The post in question was incomplete, with team member bios missing and photos paired with the wrong members of the team. The email was sent while an engineer was testing our new staff page to launch this morning. We’re very sorry for the error, as we take seriously the quality of the emails we push to your inbox, though we tried to maintain a sense of humor and laugh at some of the mismatched photos and names! If you’d like, you can check out the real staff page (with proper photos and bios) here. 

Tomorrow, we answer your questions.

In tomorrow’s Friday edition, we’re going to be catching up on a pile of reader questions in a mailbag edition. Every few months we sit down as a team to publish one of these posts, allowing us to catch up on reader questions that have piled up in our inbox. 

Quick hits.

1. Officials from Russia and Ukraine will meet in Turkey today for peace talks; the United States is also expected to send an official delegation. Russian President Vladimir Putin will reportedly not be in attendance. (The talks)
2. A federal grand jury indicted Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan on two counts for her alleged attempt to help an unauthorized migrant evade immigration authorities. (The indictment)
3. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council and his deputy. Gabbard also moved to bring the agency under the purview of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (The firings)
4. The Justice Department is reportedly investigating UnitedHealth Group for possible criminal Medicare fraud. (The report)
5. The Supreme Court heard arguments on whether to lift or narrow a series of lower-court injunctions blocking the Trump administration’s birthright citizenship ban from taking effect. (The arguments)

Today's topic.

The South African refugees. On Monday, 59 South Africans arrived in the United States as refugees, the first group to be granted the designation under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in February. The refugees are Afrikaners, a South African minority group descended primarily from Dutch settlers who arrived in South Africa during the 17th century. President Trump said the group has been the victim of racially discriminatory policies that have led to disproportionate violence, which he equated to genocide. The South African government rejects this accusation.

Back up: Afrikaners make up a small percentage of South Africa’s population, which is more than 80% black. Many Afrikaners work as farmers and they own a disproportionate amount of the country’s agricultural land, a carryover effect from apartheid policies in the 20th century. In January, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law allowing the government to seize privately owned land without compensation when deemed to be “in the public interest.” While the government says no land has been seized yet, the law prompted concern with Afrikaners who fear their land could be targeted. White House adviser Elon Musk decried the "racist ownership laws" as contributing to an ongoing "genocide" against white farmers, though crime and murder data suggest violence against Afrikaners is not happening on a scale constituting genocide.

Subsequently, President Trump signed an executive order pausing all foreign assistance to South Africa and directing the secretaries of State and Homeland Security to expedite the process of resettling Afrikaners in the United States as refugees. South Africans can now submit a statement of interest for the resettlement program to the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. Refugee admission typically takes months or years, but the U.S. fast-tracked the process for the group that arrived on Monday and expects to accept additional arrivals. 

President Ramaphosa has rebuked the U.S. for classifying Afrikaners as refugees.“Those people who are being enticed to go to the United States do not fit the definition of a refugee,” Rampaphsa said on Monday. “A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution or economic persecution, and they don't fit that bill.” Ramaphosa also called the Afrikaners seeking refugee status in the U.S. “cowardly.”

Refugee advocates in the U.S. also questioned the decision to admit Afrikaner refugees after the Trump administration paused the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program in January. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau justified the decision by emphasizing the executive order’s criteria for admitting refugees who “[do] not pose any challenge to our national security and… can be assimilated easily into our country.”

The Trump administration says the Department of Health and Human Services will help resettle the Afrikaner refugees by facilitating “temporary or longer-term housing” and “basic home furnishings, essential household items and cleaning supplies.” Separately, the Episcopal Church, which has helped resettle refugees under federal grants for nearly four decades, said it would terminate its contract with the government over its decision to admit the Afrikaners. “In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said. 

Today, we’ll explore the debate over giving Afrikaners refugee status, with views from the left, right, and South African writers. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left criticizes Trump for admitting one group of refugees while excluding all others.
• Others criticize the president’s description of the situation in South Africa as a genocide.

In Bloomberg, Patricia Lopez wrote “Afghan refugees should be treated as well as South African ones.”

“It’s ironic that Trump finds it so easy to acknowledge systemic racism in South Africa while denying its effects in the US. Even worse is the administration’s admission of White Afrikaners to the US, while it works to deport refugees and asylum-seekers — many of whom are not White — already in the country. As for genocide, little evidence has surfaced,” Lopez said. “It is true that a South African law, which came into effect in January, gives the government the power to confiscate property without compensation. For a real estate developer like Trump, that had to cut deeply. And surely it didn’t hurt that Trump’s biggest donor, South-African-born Elon Musk, made the case on the Afrikaners’ behalf.

“Ordinarily a concern for the life, safety and property of a minority group, accompanied by a determination to cut through red tape to get them out of danger, would be cause for praise. For more than seven decades, the US has been offering people from other countries refuge from storms of chaos and violence,” Lopez wrote. “The problem is that Trump has ‘paused’ the entire US refugee admissions program — while an estimated 130,000 conditionally approved refugees, mostly Black and brown-skinned, remain in limbo. This inequality in treatment is too obvious to ignore.”

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore argued “Trump’s claim of Afrikaner ‘genocide’ strips the word of any meaning.”

“It’s hardly news that Donald Trump uses over-the-top rhetoric to inflate his many boasts of world-historical greatness and to smear his opponents… But even the lowest of expectations cannot forgive the abuse of language the president committed during a press availability today in defending his creation of refugee status for white South African farmers even as he is closing the door on refugees from virtually everywhere else,” Kilgore said. “The president of the United States is grossly misusing a term that should be strictly reserved for the worst outrages of human cruelty: genocide.”

“Post-colonial (and for that matter, post-feudal) land-redistribution policies are hardly all that unusual, and while it’s possible to question their wisdom or fairness, they do not inherently cry out to heaven for vengeance,” Kilgore wrote. “Even the legitimate fears of Afrikaners that they could lose their land without compensation remain more hypothetical than real, since the South African government has not moved to implement the expropriation law. But in any event, losing land, however painful or unjust, is not by any reasonable definition ‘genocide.’”

What the right is saying.

• Some on the right say Trump is right to prioritize refugees who are best equipped to assimilate into America.
• Others argue the left’s criticism of the move falls flat. 

In The Federalist, Brianna Lyman said “Trump is right to prioritize refugees who will make better Americans.”

“On Monday, dozens of South Africans — primarily white Afrikaner farmers — arrived in the United States, having been granted refugee status by the Trump administration. The propaganda press responded by implicitly accusing the administration of hypocrisy and racial bias. Yet this criticism is not only disingenuous — it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and limits of America’s refugee and asylum policies,” Lyman wrote. “The admission of 60 refugees is minuscule compared to the thousands of resettlements the administration has attempted to halt. And while critics seize upon this as evidence of selective compassion spurred by bias, the truth is far more practical: Smaller, more culturally aligned groups tend to integrate more successfully into American communities.

“A handful of English-speaking farmers who share many of America’s civic and cultural values presents far less strain on communities than the resettlement of thousands of individuals from vastly different societies, such as Haiti, where integration challenges are numerous,” Lyman said. “This isn’t xenophobia — it’s discernment… A refugee policy that aligns with our founding values and shared cultural identity does not oppose diversity — it merely insists on compatibility with a goal not of racial homogeneity, but of cultural integrity.”

In National Review, Noah Rothman suggested “the left plays into Trump’s hands on admission of South African refugees.”

“We find ourselves in the midst of a dramatic role reversal. All of a sudden, the Trump administration is positioning itself as a champion of the rights of oppressed minorities abroad yearning for the liberty and security that can be found only within America’s borders. Democrats, by contrast, are up in arms over the importation of a refugee population facing persecution abroad,” Rothman wrote. “To a particular type of leftwing activist, it might as well still be 1993 in South Africa — a nation plagued by apartheid-style abuses executed by its tyrannical white minority. They must think: How could such a population ever be oppressed…  Likewise, among the president’s more performatively provocative defenders, agitating all the right people is a virtue in and of itself.”

“Trump and his defenders are utterly unfazed by the allegation that their policies are thinly veiled sops to white supremacists and fascists. The power of that argument is exhausted. It resonates with no one save devotees of and converts to the Democratic cause. Worse still, Democrats are wagering whatever authority they retain on immigration issues by seeming to adopt a racially discretionary standard when evaluating the relative level of persecution about which they should care,” Rothman said. “If oppression is oppression, and if America remains the last best hope of mankind — the shining beacon on the hill — it should not matter whether the victims of foreign oppression have the correct lineage and approved genetic markers.”

What South African writers are saying.

• Many South African writers view Trump’s decision as a challenge to the country’s democratic system.
• Some Afrikaner writers say Trump’s claims about the challenges facing the group are inaccurate.

In The Daily Maverick, Lisa Otto said “Afrikaner ‘refugees’ in US will neither be welcomed as martyrs nor fast-tracked to privilege.”

“From the perspective of the public, choosing this particular route to leave South Africa is egregious and runs counter to the national spirit we are trying to foster. But beyond the obvious diplomatic irritation and ideological provocation, it is worth considering a different dimension: what exactly are these individuals walking into?,” Otto asked. “It is likely that some among this group believe they are heading to a land of prosperity, liberty and recognition… That expectation may quickly confront the grittier reality of life as a refugee. Refugee status does not come with a red carpet. It comes with temporary assistance, complex bureaucratic systems and the immediate expectation of economic self-reliance.”

“When a foreign power grants refugee status to a privileged minority from a democratic country without conflict, it undermines the legitimacy of South African democracy itself. It signals, intentionally or not, that the post-apartheid project has failed in the eyes of Donald Trump and his friends, and it does so without evidence. South Africa should respond with calm clarity: not by inflaming tensions, but by reaffirming the legitimacy of our constitutional order and the truth of our ongoing, if imperfect, transformation,” Otto said. “The US decision is also a stark reminder of how our national story is received abroad, almost completely without nuance.”

In The Guardian, Max du Preez wrote “as a white Afrikaner, I can now claim asylum in Trump’s America. What an absurdity.”

“I am a blue-blood Afrikaner, at least in terms of ancestry: both my grandfathers were young Boer soldiers in the Anglo-Boer war and I am directly related to the president of the old Transvaal Republic, Paul Kruger… Unlike other colonial societies in Africa, my ancestors never left,” du Preez said. “Imagine my bewilderment when Donald Trump and his ‘first buddy’, South African-born Elon Musk, declared that we Afrikaners are a threatened species; that our black compatriots are engaged in a ‘genocide’; that we are victims of oppression and discrimination and as such offered special refugee status in the United States.”

“Where does their interest in our country come from? South Africa irritated the US and other western governments when it took Israel to the ICJ (international court of justice), alleging genocide in its war in Gaza – Trump made this clear in his executive order on South Africa,” du Preez wrote. “But Trump’s expressed anger is mainly directed at the treatment of Afrikaners, a group of people he’s probably never thought of before Musk became his confidant. Why this fixation? Three letters: DEI. Diversity, equity and inclusion. In South Africa, it is called black empowerment and affirmative or corrective action: attempts to speed up the recovery from centuries of dehumanisation, exclusion from the economy, and job reservation.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• A lot of misinformation about Afrikaners is percolating online, but they are still a group with reasonable fears of persecution.
• It’s fair to question why the Trump administration is making an exception for this refugee group over others.
• I think we should welcome well vetted refugees into this country in general.

When this story first started to percolate, this is what I posted on X:

We should obviously accept Afrikaner refugees into the U.S. There is very little doubt about the persecution and violence they've faced. The point should be that we maintain this posture toward similarly [persecuted] and in-need groups, regardless of race or language or religion.

I was making a point about our posture toward refugees more broadly, not about Afrikaners in particular. I have a lot of empathy for any persecuted group, and I had read news reports about Afrikaner farmers being murdered and commentary tying those murders to anti-white and anti-wealth tensions. That, paired with a legislative push inside South Africa to seize privately owned land without compensation, led me to conclude that Afrikaners were easily one of those refugee groups I support our country helping. Imagine being an Afrikaner and hearing elected leader Julius Malema say, “We are not calling for the slaughtering of all white people, at least for now.”

If I were one of them, I might feel a sense of persecution, too. And if I were living amid the incredibly complex post-Apartheid tensions in South Africa, I can certainly imagine why I might want to flee.

That being said, I was surprised (and my curiosity was piqued) when a stream of responses to my post contested the very premise of this persecution. It turns out that I had taken in quite a bit of online hyperbole about what Afrikaners are experiencing, while other viral posts grossly exaggerated the data on murders of farmers. 

That’s not to say anti-Afrikaner violence doesn’t happen, or isn’t an issue — as Jean-Yves Camus, head of the Observatory of Political Radicalization at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, said,"When you have 50 to 60 people, mainly Afrikaners, killed every year, with families murdered through acts of torture, you cannot ignore the problem.” It’s just to say that the persecution is not as extreme as it is represented. White farmers in South Africa certainly aren’t facing a “genocide,” as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk are claiming, removing almost all meaning from the word.

Obviously South Africa’s land ownership situation is the product of decades of apartheid that has historically benefited the country’s white minority, and millions of South Africans (understandably) want to rectify past injustices. We cannot accept retribution in the form of violence, and no person is responsible for the sins of their ancestors; but anyone with even a paper-thin understanding of the country’s history can grasp how it could motivate the government to propose some otherwise radical-sounding ideas like land seizures without compensation.

That brings us to the United States’ role. Trump, who has attempted to shut down our refugee program and holds a generally antagonistic posture toward refugees, is suddenly embracing Afrikaners. So what makes these refugees different? It is, of course, reasonable to believe that Afrikaners will “assimilate” more easily than most other refugees because they are English-speakers. They’re also a small group of dozens of people, barely a drop in the bucket of total asylum seekers. They’re also likely to be the coincidental beneficiaries of Trump’s personal relationships, if Elon Musk pushed Trump to make a big deal out of welcoming these refugees from his home country.

But in the minds of most American observers, the most salient differentiator is that Afrikaners are considered white. Trump’s administration drinks from an information stream where commentators profess that whites are now the most persecuted group in America — an increasingly common viewpoint — and there is plenty of reason to think that those commentators see themselves in the Afrikaners more than anything else. Of course, a kind of racism and xenophobia is also laden in the belief that Afrikaners are more deserving of our welcome than other refugees — you’d have a hard time making the case they are in a more dire situation than Afghan or Venezuelan refugees.

But as I said yesterday when discussing Trump’s drug-pricing order, Trump’s occasional ideological fluidity can be disorienting, and Democrats should be careful how they respond. Politically, describing policies as emblematically racist or white supremacist is an exhausted tactic, and doesn’t just reach very few people outside the most devoted liberals, but turns a lot of people off. And, of course, the Trump administration has also extended the same antagonistic posture it’s had toward migrants from the global south to Ukrainian refugees, an almost entirely white group, which muddies claims of racism. 

However, the administration is inconsistent in its application of a principle it claims is of the utmost importance: antisemitism. It turns out at least one of our newly adopted residents from South Africa has a penchant for posting online about how much he hates the Jews. His words and views are far more serious than the sins of the students Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been trying to deport, yet the administration remains silent. Just the slightest degree of consistency here — and improved vetting — would be nice. 

After all of this learning and discussion and nuance, though, my position is still pretty similar to where it was yesterday: I think we should warmly welcome well vetted refugees from all across the globe: Ukrainians, Venezuelans, Haitians, Afghans and yes, Afrikaners. People who flee to the U.S. for safe harbor are most likely to truly love and appreciate what we offer as a country — that’s common sense to me. Regardless of where they come from, refugees will ultimately have a kind of loyalty to the U.S. that is hard for any native-born citizen to appreciate. People take it for granted now, but we are actually very good at integrating and assimilating disparate groups; the U.S. is incredibly tolerant compared to other nations, and refugees tend to do well here economically and socially over time.

That doesn’t mean we let everyone in, just that we should not discriminate based on country of origin. All refugees should have their claims heard and a standard of vetting equally applied to them. 

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I'm curious to know what Tangle staff feels about the House Ways & Means Committee meeting held Wednesday 5/14/25. Hope you guys do some follow up on it. Thanks.

— Nancy from Burien, WA

Tangle: Like many people, we first found out about the Energy and Commerce Committee meeting from a viral Ken Klippenstein tweet that showed 71-year-old Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) falling asleep in the hearing room. And also like many people, our initial reaction was frustration — our Congress is too old, they aren’t taking their jobs seriously, this is unacceptable. And without context, that’s a pretty reasonable reaction. After all, Congress has been getting older, their approval rating is below 30%, and they haven’t produced significant legislation yet in this term.

With additional context, however, the situation becomes a lot more nuanced. Energy and Commerce was at the tail end of a marathon voting session, having just pulled an all-nighter. Dingell was not the only one who was feeling fatigued; Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT), at just 44 years old, also fell asleep during a separate overnight Ways and Means Committee meeting. 

If there’s anything to criticize here, it’s how Congress relies on these kinds of stamina-testing voting sessions to pass legislation. 

The root issue isn’t that our Congress is too old or too lazy; it’s that it’s too partisan. It can’t pass bills without horse trading and putting everything it’s trying to do into one package. We applauded House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for initially proposing breaking the spending bill into smaller bills after he took his position, and hope for some far-off future where that can become a reality — and hopefully prevent embarrassing moments like what we saw yesterday.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

According to new data from the World Travel & Tourism Council, the United States is the only country out of 184 global economies projected to lose tourism dollars in 2025. The estimates show the U.S. losing $12.5 billion in travel revenue on the year, a visitor spending decline of roughly 7% year-over-year. The issue is multi-faceted: the U.S. was slower than other countries to roll back pandemic travel restrictions, and the recent strength of the dollar has priced out some potential tourists. However, tourism data from March also shows a steep drop in arrivals for some of the United States’s largest visitor populations (the UK, Germany, South Korea, Spain, Ireland, and the Dominican Republic), suggesting the Trump administration’s policies and international posture are also having an effect. Travel from Canada and Mexico, the largest source of inbound visitors to the United States, is also down approximately 20% year-over-year. Bloomberg has the story.

Numbers.

• 64.7 million. The approximate population of South Africa.
• 2.7 million. The approximate number of Afrikaners in South Africa.
• 1992. The year South Africa’s apartheid period formally ended, following a referendum vote to end minority rule. 
• 339 and 296. The number of farm attacks in South Africa in 2022 and 2023, respectively, according to AfriForum.
• 50 and 49. The number of farm murders in South Africa in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
• 37,000. The number of refugees admitted by the United States in 2025, according to State Department data.
• 88,000. The remaining number of refugee admission slots for 2025. 
• 8,000. The approximate number of inquiries received by the State Department about the Afrikaner refugee resettlement program. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote an update on President Trump’s hush money case.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the FDA seeking to remove ingestible fluoride products for kids from the market.
• Nothing to do with politics: Is your state in U.S. News’s 10 best states?
• Yesterday’s survey: 1,376 readers answered our survey on Isaac’s take about Trump’s drug-pricing executive order with 51% agreeing in principle and on outcomes. “As a lifelong conservative, I oppose price controls. I believe negotiation with the pharma companies is the only way to proceed. Of course, the best solution would come through legislation and not an executive order,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

In 1969, the federal government labeled Chattanooga, Tennessee, as the “worst city in the nation for particulate air pollution.” Five decades later, Chattanooga has become the first city in North America and third in the world to be named a National Park City. To achieve the status, a city must meet a list of criteria that make it “greener, healthier, and wilder,” as determined by the nonprofit National Park City Foundation. “The outdoors is our competitive advantage. It’s at the heart of our story of revitalization, and it’s core to our identity,” Mayor Tim Kelly said. Nice News has the story.

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