Trump: No, Climate Change Is Not a Security Threat

President Trump on Monday unveils his first blueprint for national security as president, and the Federalist reports that it will break from his predecessor's vision in at least one key way: Trump will drop climate change from the list of national security threats facing the nation. As the site notes, Trump as a candidate had mocked President Obama's decision to include climate change in his own National Security Strategy of 2015, and a draft statement suggests that Trump will shift thinking in the opposite direction. "US leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to US economic and energy security interests,” the draft statement reads. It also states that "much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”

Trump's national security strategy also will emphasize the threat posed by the "revisionist" powers of Russia and China, reports the New York Times. But while the strategy talks about confronting Beijing's growing economic clout around the world, it does not deal in detail with the cyber warfare that Moscow is accused of waging, notes the newspaper. The national security strategy will be "as much an economic document as a defense strategy," per USA Today. The newspaper notes that previous presidents have sometimes given the strategy document short shrift, but that Trump is signaling that he's "personally invested" in this one by deciding to unveil it himself in a speech. (More national security stories.)