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President Donald Trump is using his last months in office to stack America’s national security and intelligence agencies with leaders loyal to him. Yesterday Trump fired Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs, who led efforts to defend the 2020 election against foreign interference. Last week he terminated Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and four more senior staffers left the Defense Department, reportedly under pressure or in protest. In their place, Trump appointed people whose main attribute seems to be not policy experience but personal fealty.
These are dangerous decisions for an outgoing president, says University of Massachusetts Lowell security studies professor Arie Perliger. “According to the 9/11 Commission, the unusually short transition period between the Clinton and Bush administrations – truncated by the dispute over the election’s outcome – resulted in some of the intelligence and policy deficiencies that allowed Al-Qaida to attack and kill close to 3,000 Americans,” he writes. This politicization of U.S. security and intelligence services isn’t just risky, says Perliger – it also undermines their history of apolitical work.
Also today:
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Catesby Holmes
International Editor and Politics Editor
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Marines at Camp Post, Afghanistan, Sept. 11, 2020, on the 19th anniversary of the terror attacks that began the U.S. war there.
Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images
Arie Perliger, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Investigations of the 9/11 attacks show that a short, unstable transition between two presidents can weaken US security. Trump's sweeping staff changes compound the risk, experts say.
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Health + Medicine
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Zoë McLaren, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing across the US. Testing has ramped up over the past few months, but increasing hospitalizations, deaths and test-positivity rates show that the virus is out of control.
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Hilary A. Marusak, Wayne State University
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Politics/Election '20
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Mirta Galesic, University of Potsdam; Wändi Bruine de Bruin, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
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Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino
'Mind your manners' isn't just something your mother told you. Manners – and civility – are an essential component of how things get done in government, and the Founding Fathers knew it.
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Caren Morrison, Georgia State University
Reform-minded prosecutors across the US notched victories against traditional law-and-order candidates by running on progressive platforms to reduce mass incarceration and tackle police misconduct.
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Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, University of California, Irvine
Mink, the first woman of color in Congress, brought a racially and historically aware brand of feminism into lawmaking and ran for president in 1972. But women's history largely overlooks her.
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Seppe Deckers, KU Leuven; Jan Nyssen, Ghent University; Sil Lanckriet, Ghent University
Food security in Tigray was becoming critical even before the current armed conflict.
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Science + Technology
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Sanjay Mishra, Vanderbilt University
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Economy + Business
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Robert Boatright, Clark University
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Stewart Clem, Aquinas Institute of Theology
When Trump leaves the White House in January, many American evangelicals will feel that they've lost their protector in chief.
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Rodney E. Rohde, Texas State University
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Lincoln Mitchell, Columbia University
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