A pending Senate bill would suspend funding for the Office of Vice President next year unless Vice President Cheney agrees to comply with the oversight provisions of the executive order on classification, something he claims he is not obliged to do.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services, included language in the pending appropriations bill to suspend the funding after the Vice President failed to respond to the Senator’s June 25 letter (pdf) urging compliance with the executive order.
A similar measure to cut funding for the Office of Vice President, introduced in the House last month by Rep. Rahm Emanuel, was narrowly defeated on June 28 by a vote of 209-217.
J. William Leonard, the Information Security Oversight Office director whose oversight activities were rebuffed by the Office of Vice President, will testify tomorrow, July 12, at a House Intelligence Subcommittee hearing on classification policy. I will also be among the witnesses at the 1 PM hearing in Rayburn 2216.
With summer 2025 in the rearview mirror, we’re taking a look back to see how federal actions impacted heat preparedness and response on the ground, what’s still changing, and what the road ahead looks like for heat resilience.
Satellite imagery of RAF Lakenheath reveals new construction of a security perimeter around ten protective aircraft shelters in the designated nuclear area, the latest measure in a series of upgrades as the base prepares for the ability to store U.S. nuclear weapons.
It will take consistent leadership and action to navigate the complex dangers in the region and to avoid what many analysts considered to be an increasingly possible outcome, a nuclear conflict in East Asia.
Getting into a shutdown is the easy part, getting out is much harder. Both sides will be looking to pin responsibility on each other, and the court of public opinion will have a major role to play as to who has the most leverage for getting us out.