Trump administration first term
480 Articles

State Dept. Shakeup: The Trump Administration Must Do More to Keep U.S. Diplomats Safe
It’s a tough time to be an American diplomat. The State Department is reeling as Secretary Tillerson presides over a management trainwreck that hardly seems fitting for a man…

Iran Policy Implications of Replacing Tillerson with Pompeo and Cotton to CIA
The White House has created a plan to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson with current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and then nominate Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) to replace Pompeo…

Where Does the Trump Administration Stand on Encryption?
The circumstances are familiar: a deceased criminal, a locked phone, a determined FBI and a defiant tech company. After Devin Kelley murdered 26 people at the Sutherland Springs…

Flynn’s Turkish Delight: How, Why, and When He Reversed His Policy Positions on Turkey
Many commentators anticipate that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will likely indict retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn in part for the former National Security Advisor’s…

Trump’s Threat to Diversity Visas
Shortly after last month’s vehicle attack in Manhattan, President Donald Trump, in a tweet, called on Congress to eliminate the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” which has…

Extreme Vetting by Algorithm
Last week, a group of machine learning and data mining experts wrote to the acting secretary of DHS urging her to reconsider an automated Extreme Vetting Initiative being proposed…

Former Prosecutor Renato Mariotti’s Tweet Threads on National Security (Nov. 10-17)
Here is an exposition and analysis of some of this week’s national security-related threads authored by Just Security Editorial Board member and former federal prosecutor…

Kushner’s Unsatisfactory Senate Document Production
The most incendiary part of a stinging letter from Senate Judiciary Committee leaders to Jared Kushner’s counsel, Abbe Lowell, is the committee’s disclosure that “other…

Episode 46 of the National Security Law Podcast: The $15 Million Dollar Man
In this week’s episode, your devoted hosts dig into a bonanza of national security law odds-and-ends. First up is an en banc decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance…

Russian Money and Trump’s Legal Defense
Piece by piece, we continue to learn about Russia’s assault on the 2016 election: cyberattacks on voting systems in 39 states; troll farms that pushed divisive political messages…

Yemen Strike Raises Questions About Whether the US Follows Its Own Drone Rules
While we were visiting Yemen this month, the United States conducted a drone strike against alleged al-Qaeda members in Mareb Governorate, reportedly killing two suspects while…

How the Trump Administration Deals With Detainees Can Provide Insight Into its Counterterrorism Priorities
What is the US going to do with the “enemy combatants” it picks up during counterterrorism operations? How will we strike the difficult balance between protecting national…