By Monica Montgomery The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes appropriations and establishes policy for the Department of Defense (DOD), nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy (DOE), defense intelligence programs, and other defense activities of the federal government (e.g., military construction projects, homeland security programs). The Defense Department is one of the only remaining agencies that gets such a yearly authorization. Fiscal […]
The NDAA process, explained
The President and the Nuclear Button
With the 2020 presidential election looming large, it’s a good time to take a look at the absolute power the President of the United States has over U.S. nuclear weapons. Policy Analyst and Host Geoff Wilson sat down with Dr. Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology, to discuss the […]
Trump’s Iran policy is rejected but the political battle wages on
By Samuel Hickey The president of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, Dian Triansyah Djani of Indonesia, has determined that the Security Council cannot proceed with the United States’ effort to snap back sanctions on Iran. After quiet consultations with the 15-member body, he said that he was “not in a position to take further […]
The Final Test of Trump’s Iran Policy
By Samuel M. Hickey Years of the Trump Administration trying to squeeze Tehran, either to the negotiating table or to regime change, have so far failed. As the U.S. general election creeps ever closer, it seems that a last-ditch effort to unilaterally reimpose all previous United Nations (UN) sanctions and more permanently isolate Iran is […]