Stevenson’s army, October 3

I’ve been traveling the past couple of days, but here is today’s edition:

– NYT explains Republican holds on State Dept nominations. What Sen. Cruz [R-TX] has been doing is objecting to taking up nominations by unanimous consent and thus forcing Leader Schumer to use the 3-day cloture process for every contested nomination.

-China has been sending warplanes to warn Taiwan.

-WaPo highlights the tough budget choices facing the Biden administration, whether to drop favored programs from budget reconciliation or make them temporary in order to meet future budget number targets.

– CRS has new report on international affairs budgets & appropriations.

Here are Charlie’s weekend items from yesterday, October 2:

– Politico has an updated version of “I’m Just a Bill.”  Enjoy!

-Defense One notes that the administration is relying on 2001 AUMF for its continuing strikes. See DOD transcript.

-Will we sanction India over its S400 purchase?

– FP says Erdogan might be quite sick.

– Bloomberg says WH Sit Room needs updating.

– Are we really turning against each other? Sad story from Idaho.

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).