Trump Taps New National Security Adviser

Political scientist Peter Feaver, a scholar on civil-military ties, says he expects Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to take a skeptical view of Russia, seeing Moscow as a dubious partner and major potential threat to U.S. security. And Feaver says he expects a similar skepticism toward Iran, whose support for proxy groups across the Middle East many senior military officials say has gone unchecked.

Read More in The Washington Post

Energy Discussions Live on as EPA Rule Faces Death

If there’s an enduring upside to U.S. EPA’s doomed Clean Power Plan, it’s that it spurred some much-needed discussions about energy on the state level, says Brian Murray, director for economic analysis at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. “There really was not much going on in terms of coordination and dialogue between energy and environmental regulators at the state level before all this.”

Read More at E&E News

Trump’s Repeal of Stream Rule Hurts Climate, Species

 

When he rolled back a regulation to protect streams from mining pollution last week, President Donald Trump made good on his promise to ease up on coal mining. “This repeal is ignoring a lot of the recent science that clearly documents a lot of these downstream impacts,” says biology professor Emily Bernhardt, who has studied the ecological effects of coal mining.

Read More at Inside Climate News

 

Good Luck Making America Safe Again Without Mexican Military

“Most Americans don’t remember that we invaded Mexico at least three times, and forced it to give up nearly half of the territory they won in their independence from Spain,” says public policy professor Stephen Kelly, who served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico from 2004 to 2006. “Nowhere is that feeling of invasion, that Mexico has been robbed and violated, more strongly felt than in the Mexican army.”

Read More in McClatchy

Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch and the Rise of Originalism

“People like (Bork and Scalia) have really succeeded in persuading everyone from the right to the left that we ought to do more historical research in constitutional interpretation than maybe we did under the Warren court,” says law professor Ernest Young. “Everyone is pretty much persuaded that history counts, (but) very few people think that only history matters.”

Read More in The Christian Science Monitor

Trump and Terrorism: Finding a Way Forward

“The United States will soon reach a crossroads in its struggle against terrorism,” writes political scientist Peter Feaver and a colleague. “The international coalition fighting the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) has driven the group out of much of the territory it once held and, sooner or later, will militarily defeat it by destroying its core in Iraq and Syria. But military victory over ISIS will not end the global war on terrorism that the United States has waged since 9/11.”

Read More in Foreign Policy