As a citizen activist in the late 1970s and 1980s working at the Environmental Policy Institute, Robert Alvarez was among the first to document the extreme hazards of managing high concentrations of nuclear waste derived from nuclear weapons production, and as a senior appointee at the Department of Energy, he worked to prevent the department’s […]

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As one of my first tasks early in the first Clinton Administration as the newly appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, I conducted the first (and only) asset inventory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In carrying it out, we departed from the usual reliance on DOE contractors, and established a team of federal […]

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What do Canberra (Australia), Brasilia (Brazil), and Abuja (Nigeria) have in common with Washington, DC?  Like Washington, they are all planned capital cities.  Like Washington, all three cities were results of political compromises. Unlike Washington, their residents have the right to elect voting representatives in their national congresses. The product of a North-South bargain, Washington, […]

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Over the past 12 months, the decades-long push to divert tax dollars toward religious education has reached new heights. As proclaimed by EdChoice—the advocacy group devoted to school vouchers—2023 has been the year these schemes reached “escape velocity.” In strictly legislative terms, seven states passed new voucher systems, and ten more expanded existing versions. Ten […]

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It has become an article of faith in Washington circles that conflict between China and Taiwan is a palpably real near-term concern. Most recently this idea has been given new life because funding for Taiwan is baked into the Biden administration’s massive $105 billion aid bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — even though the […]

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