Stevenson’s army, June 9

The Biden administration has released its first formal war powers summary report. It’s the first in a year, since the Trump administration failed to submit one as required in its final month in office. The report shows US troops equipped for combat in 16 countries. No surprises, but an important benchmark.
The White House also released a formal letter waiving a provision of last year’s NDAA forbidding troop cuts in Afghanistan unless the president submitted a huge report answering all kinds of questions about the situation there.
No report, but the law allows a waiver.
The Senate passed a 2400-page bill to counter China technologically. Anything that big and that popular becomes a catch all for special interest provisions. I haven’t seen a neutral analysis, but the Hill has a short “5 takeaways” on the measure.
CRS finally has its demographic summary of the 117th Congress

TNSR has a new piece on civilian control of the military.

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).