We were sad to learn, belatedly, of the recent deaths of two familiar figures in the rather small world of government secrecy policy.
Jeanne Schauble, the longtime director of declassification at the National Archives, died last October. She helped oversee and implement the declassification of more than a billion pages of historical records since 1995. Her NARA colleague Michael Kurtz said last year that “she set a high standard for government service.”
Michael Resnick was Senior Director of Information Sharing Policy at the White House until his death from cancer in February. If the current policy on Controlled Unclassified Information is not a disaster — and so far, it’s not — that is largely because Mr. Resnick was willing to engage in sometimes heated discussions with public interest groups and to reconsider his own position.
As far as we could tell, no obituaries for Ms. Schauble or Mr. Resnick appeared in any national newspaper. They weren’t famous. But they were honest, honorable and skilled public servants. Anyone who crossed their paths will remember them.
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.