Las Vegas, Nevada Correspondent I read budget hearings for pleasure, which is a confession, and I want to begin with the thing that nobody covering this shutdown has bothered to say, which is that 2018 was the best year for the federal appropriations process in a decade. Five of the twelve spending bills, including the … Continue reading What does the year-end government shutdown over border-wall funding suggest about the state of budget negotiations and immigration politics in Washington?
Weekly Correspondents’ Forum 2018
How has the #MeToo movement evolved in 2018 beyond high-profile cases, and what lasting institutional changes, if any, has it produced in workplaces and public life?
Long Island, New York Correspondent I have worked in and around the law for thirty years, in a district attorney's office, a school district, and a practice that handles the letters people write when they discover the rules apply to them, and I want to answer this question by pointing to the one change this … Continue reading How has the #MeToo movement evolved in 2018 beyond high-profile cases, and what lasting institutional changes, if any, has it produced in workplaces and public life?
What do the California wildfires and other extreme weather events of 2018 indicate about the readiness of governments and insurers for climate-related disasters?
Clermont, Florida Correspondent I follow insurance and property markets for a living, and I want to start with a fact that explains more about readiness than any climate report: a small insurer in California called Merced Property and Casualty was declared insolvent on Monday because it wrote homeowners policies in Paradise and Paradise is gone. … Continue reading What do the California wildfires and other extreme weather events of 2018 indicate about the readiness of governments and insurers for climate-related disasters?
Is the growing migrant caravan from Central America primarily a humanitarian, security, or political issue, and what policy responses does it demand?
Prescott Valley, Arizona Correspondent The question gives me three boxes to choose from, and I taught long enough to distrust any question that comes with its own boxes, so let me say at the outset that the caravan is all three and that the order in which a person ranks them tells you more about … Continue reading Is the growing migrant caravan from Central America primarily a humanitarian, security, or political issue, and what policy responses does it demand?
Is the United Kingdom on a sustainable path toward an orderly Brexit, or is the process heading toward deeper political and economic disruption?
Sydney, Australia Correspondent Australians have a particular stake in this question, and not the sentimental one. Britain is the country that left us behind once already, in 1973, when it joined the Common Market and gave up Commonwealth preference, and the Australian economy spent a decade reorienting toward Japan and then China as a result. … Continue reading Is the United Kingdom on a sustainable path toward an orderly Brexit, or is the process heading toward deeper political and economic disruption?
What are the implications of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia?
Cheyenne, Wyoming Correspondent F.E. Warren Air Force Base is on the west edge of this city, and under the prairie around it, in three states, are a hundred and fifty Minuteman missiles that the airmen stationed here drive out to tend in all weather. Those are intercontinental missiles; the treaty the President says he is … Continue reading What are the implications of the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia?
How should the United States and its allies respond to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the evidence pointing to Saudi leadership?
Long Island, New York Correspondent I spent ten years watching prosecutors build cases, and the thing I learned about a suspect who changes his story is that the changes tell you more than any single version does. A man who says he was never there, then says he was there but left, then says there … Continue reading How should the United States and its allies respond to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the evidence pointing to Saudi leadership?
Is the escalating U.S.-China trade war more likely to produce a new equilibrium on trade or lasting economic damage for both sides?
Novi, Michigan Correspondent I manage supply chains for a living, so let me tell you what the trade war looks like from the inside of a purchasing meeting rather than from the inside of a cable news panel. It looks like a spreadsheet with a column that did not exist a year ago, and that … Continue reading Is the escalating U.S.-China trade war more likely to produce a new equilibrium on trade or lasting economic damage for both sides?
How is the deepening political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela affecting regional stability and migration patterns?
Sheffield, Jamaica Correspondent Venezuela is six hundred miles from Jamaica, and for most of the past two decades it has been the country that sold us oil on credit. Under the Petrocaribe arrangement that Hugo Chávez created in 2005, Jamaica and a dozen other Caribbean states bought Venezuelan crude on terms that let us defer … Continue reading How is the deepening political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela affecting regional stability and migration patterns?
How has the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy and the resulting family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border affected both domestic politics and America’s international standing?
Tyler, Texas Correspondent I write policies for people who would rather not read them, so let me start with the part of this story that nobody in Washington wanted to read either. Zero tolerance was not a new law. It was a decision, announced by the Attorney General in April, to prosecute every adult who … Continue reading How has the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy and the resulting family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border affected both domestic politics and America’s international standing?
