“Numerous” legal challenges to state election laws have been filed during the last few weeks and months, a new report from the Congressional Research Service found, generating new judicial interpretations of those laws.
“For example, there have been recent court rulings affecting the laws regulating early voting, voter photo identification (ID) requirements, registration procedures, straight-party voting, and voter rolls. Accordingly, many such laws have been recently invalidated, enjoined, or altered. Others continue to be subject to litigation.”
The current state of affairs was reviewed in Recent State Election Law Challenges: In Brief by legislative attorney L. Paige Whitaker, November 2, 2016.
Another new CRS report discussed pending efforts in Congress to reconfigure Department of Defense partnerships with foreign military services. See Security Cooperation: Comparison of Proposed Provisions for the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), November 1, 2016.
A federal court for the first time upheld the use of the “social cost of carbon” (SCC) in a cost-benefit analysis by a federal agency, another CRS publication observed. The SCC is a monetary estimate of economic damages that are associated with an incremental increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. See Courts Evaluate How Federal Agencies Put a Price on Carbon, CRS Legal Sidebar, November 1, 2016.
Other new and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.
Foreign Aid and the Education Sector: Programs and Priorities, November 2, 2016
Funding and Financing Highways and Public Transportation, November 1, 2016
Extraterritorial Application of American Criminal Law, updated October 31, 2016
To increase the real and perceived benefit of research funding, funding agencies should develop challenge goals for their extramural research programs focused on the impact portion of their mission.
Without trusted mechanisms to ensure privacy while enabling secure data access, essential R&D stalls, educational innovation stalls, and U.S. global competitiveness suffers.
Satellite imagery has long served as a tool for observing on-the-ground activity worldwide, and offers especially valuable insights into the operation, development, and physical features related to nuclear technology.
This year’s Red Sky Summit was an opportunity to further consider what the role of fire tech can and should be – and how public policy can support its development, scaling, and application.