Still No Classified Trump Presidential Directives
After nearly six months in office, President Trump has not yet issued a classified presidential directive on national security.
On June 16, Trump issued an unclassified National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) on US policy towards Cuba, reversing or limiting some of the steps towards normalization of relations with that country that were undertaken by the Obama Administration.
The version of the Memorandum that was published on the White House website was unnumbered, but a White House official said last week that it is formally designated as NSPM-5.
Since the first four Trump NSPMs are also unclassified public documents, this means that at least as of June 16 there were still no classified or unreleased presidential directives on national security.
That is unexpected, and it is a departure from past practice in previous Administrations.
The explanation for the lack of classified NSPMs is unclear.
It is possible that President Trump is using some other instrument for issuing policy directives on classified national security matters (though that would be at odds with the definition and purpose of NSPMs). Alternatively, he may have delegated certain aspects of national security decision making elsewhere, as with the authorization for the Secretary of Defense to determine troop levels in Afghanistan.
Or it could be that there just are no other Trump national security directives because there is no other Trump national security policy to speak of. The Administration may still be so understaffed that it is incapable of launching significant new policy initiatives.
The June 16 NSPM-5 directed the Secretary of State to publish it in the Federal Register. But three weeks later, even that simple task has still not been carried out.
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.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.