Free Republic

As the partial government shutdown stretches on with no clear end in sight, it’s affecting US embassy staff around the world — and making it harder for the US to conduct diplomacy abroad. Many of the State Department’s roughly 75,000 employees — 50,000 are employed locally in US embassies abroad — have found trouble progressing with their work and even, in some cases, struggling to put food on the table while they wait for the White House and Congress to strike a deal. That’s a big problem, since the State Department is America’s leading foreign relations agency. It now means...

"President Donald Trump’s second address to the United Nations reiterated the same point he made last year: His America is a sovereign one, and every nation is on its own. “America is governed by Americans,” he said to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday in one his highest-profile speeches of the year. “We reject the ideology of globalism and accept the doctrine of patriotism.” He also used the opportunity to breeze through America’s national security concerns, such as nuclear talks with North Korea, tensions with Iran, and his trade war with China. But the speech amounted to little more than...