Truman National Security Project

Truman President Rachel Kleinfeld discusses the issues surrounding Chuck Hagel’s confirmation as the new Secretary of Defense. The pundits are reading the tea leaves and the critics sharpening their knives. What would Chuck Hagel be like, really, as Secretary of Defense? If you want to understand how the SecDef-apparent thinks, however, it’s hard to do [...]

“I couldn’t sleep at night if I were a senator and did not vote for this.” So said Steven Rothstein, a leading advocate for the disabled, to the Boston Globe on the eve of the US Senate vote to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Apparently, 38 Republican senators decided they’d rather lose sleep than lose their [...]

The successful national response to Hurricane Sandy is just the latest evidence of a remarkable turnaround at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Over the last four years, FEMA has supported over 273 major disaster responses all over the country, earning accolades that few would have imagined possible during the post-Hurricane Katrina debates about dissolving [...]

Truman Fellow Jonathan Morgenstein writes on the changing national security strength of the Democratic party in the HIll: Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of last Tuesday’s elections was the Fox News exit poll in Virginia declaring, “Veterans and active military split their support evenly between the two candidates”: Obama 49% to Romney 49%. After decades of being [...]

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief once Election Day is over in hopes life can finally move on. Though the President has won re-election and the Democrats retain control of the Senate, don’t expect this to loosen up the gridlock in Washington. In fact, the political calculus remains generally the same with the President facing [...]