Stevenson’s army, September 7

As we’ll discuss in class, being in the minority in the House isn’t much fun. Little power. We’ll also discuss the extraordinary power of chairmen. They control their committee’s agenda and staff. NYT article says many House Republicans are leaving Congress because they’ve lost power and it isn’t as much fun.
I’m told that Boris Johnson’s friends call him “Alex,” short for his given name, Alexander. I wonder if any of those are left now. Anyway, the FT’s Simon Kuper has a revealing story on what the Europeans now think of Johnson and Brexit.
Politico got leaked draft presidential directive calling for shift in foreign aid primarily to supporters of US policies.

Several publications have stories about how Hong Kong developments are affecting president Xi. Good piece in NYT,
which also links to extraordinary Reuters story of leaked comments by Hong Kong’s leader.
WSJ says the Trump administration still wants to keep classified documents relating to Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, 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).