Elizabeth McElvein is a first year law student at the University of Michigan. Prior to law school, she was an oversight and investigations staffer at the House Judiciary Committee and a research assistant at the Brookings Institution.
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On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will mark up legislation to reauthorize and reform key provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which will otherwise expire on March 15.
Election security appears to have gained momentum on Capitol Hill. Days before lawmakers adjourned for the Easter recess, the Senate intelligence committee rolled out bipartisan policy recommendations and secured funding to shore up election security in advance of the 2018 midterm elections.
Last summer, I wrote about an NBC News/WSJ poll that found barely half of Americans believe that the Russian government attempted to influence the 2016 election.
In his debut before the U.N. General Assembly last week, President Trump vowed to “totally destroy North Korea” if the United States “is forced to defend itself or its allies.” Analysts are divided over whether the president’s message aids or undermines efforts to resolve the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
In an earlier post, I explained how polling data on the Russia investigation underscores the degree to which partisanship taints Americans’ assessment of security politics. When asked about matters related to the Russia investigation, an overwhelming majority of Democrats consistently respond in a fashion that reflects deep suspicion of the activities of President Trump and his advisers.
Recent polling data on the Russia investigation underscores the degree to which partisanship taints Americans’ assessment of security politics. Not only are Americans intensely polarized in their assessment of matters related to the investigation into Russian election interference, but their assessments of the validity of intelligence community analysis are also highly polarized. Taken together, these trends pose risks for the perception of the intelligence community as independent and undermine the notion of a fact-based national security policy.
Elsewhere on Lawfare, scholars have argued that U.S. airstrikes against the Syrian regime are difficult to defend as consistent with international law. John Bellinger writes that “under the U.N. Charter, the U.S.