Stevenson’s army, August 9

I make a big deal in the spring course about the importance of agency authorities, capabilities, and culture.  Previously I’ve noted how many of President Trump’s official documents are little more than press releases, not legally significant actions. That’s abundantly true of the four measures signed Saturday and touted as pandemic relief. Read them for yourself.  Only one is called an executive order; the others are memorandums. None adds money to the fight. Instead, the agencies are told to shift money from FEMA, or to use unspent money. Officials are told to “consider” using “existing authorities” to halt evictions and provide help.  They could have done that on Friday, too. To get new money, you need a new appropriation under our Constitution; to change an expiring law, you need a new law. I’ve seen good assessments of these new documents by NYT and Vox.
WaPo says Chief of Staff Meadows now spends most staff meetings on political messaging rather than pandemic issues.

FP has an analysis of the new agreement between China and Iran.
Sen. Blumenthal says we need more declassification of intelligence assessments of foreign electoral interference.
SAIS Prof James Mann says Brent Scowcroft didn’t always follow his own model of neutral honest broker.

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. 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).