Maxwell School News and Commentary

Bill Smullen, director of the National Security Studies program, is concerned that the U.S. State Department could receive less funding to accommodate the proposed 10 percent hike in military spending. "I am a big advocate of making sure that the diplomatic arm of the United States is as strong as it can possibly be," he says.

According to Professor of Political Science Grant Reeher, "A lot of prominent Republicans, the usual suspects, either aren't interested or they were critical of the Trump campaign so therefore, they are not being looked at."

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks explains how a special prosecutor gets appointed. The explanation comes after lawmakers demand for a special prosecutor investigation on President Trump associates to Russian operatives.

"This was sort of a post-partisan moment, and quite different than many of his prior speeches in that respect," says Corri Zoli, director of research at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism. She adds, "this was one of the most well-developed, programmatic speeches...putting numbers on things like infrastructure, development, working families and national security issues."

“If I’m an ally and I hear that I’m not going to get as much foreign aid as I had anticipated or that I had been receiving because money is going to be diverted to the defense department, I’m not going to be very happy with that,” says Colonel F. William Smullen, director of national security studies at the Maxwell School.

"The goals of nativist enclave policies and a robust job-creating economy are fundamentally at odds with one another. A full-throated embrace of nativism at this point will mean that we are walling ourselves inside our nation only to discover that we have walled in the very people that enclave nativists sought to eject," writes Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science.

"From the far right to the far left, we all hate Mr. Trump," said Professor Rafael Fernández de Castro, who served as an adviser to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon. "I have never seen this consensus in Mexico. Mexicans are rallying around it."

"These are the folks who actually attempt to implement the policy changes that the administration is trying to push down from above," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, about the importance of political appointees below the Cabinet level.