New or updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.
Keystone XL Pipeline Project: Key Issues, December 2, 2013
Mountaintop Mining: Background on Current Controversies, December 2, 2013
Burma’s Political Prisoners and U.S. Sanctions, December 2, 2013
Latin America and the Caribbean: Fact Sheet on Leaders and Elections, December 3, 2013
The 2013 Cybersecurity Executive Order: Overview and Considerations for Congress, November 8, 2013
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.