Stevenson’s army, August 4

My SAIS colleague, Charlie Stevenson, distributes an almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. This is a third tasting. If you want to get it directly, follow the instructions below:

– As most of you know, the Senate Majority Leader can control whatever amendments are offered to any measure by “filling the amendment tree” and yielding only for amendments he approves. That has reached such an extent under Leader McConnell that NYT has a front page story noting:
The number of Senate roll call votes on amendments — a key indicator of whether lawmakers are engaged in free and open debate — plummeted to only 18 this year, according to a review of congressional data. During the same time period in the 10 previous Congresses, senators took anywhere from 34 to 231 amendment votes.
The figures come from a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Here is the full report.

– RollCall notes how both parties are targeting state legislative races in order to be in stronger positions to gerrymander after the 2020 census.
-WSJ has more details on the Oval Office meeting where most of Trump’s advisers spoke against the latest tariffs on China.
– Robin Wright of the  New Yorker reports that the president had approved an invitation to a personal meeting with the Iranian foreign minister only a few days before deciding to personally sanction him.

To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).