President Trump Gets Personal About the Opioid Crisis

The Trump administration is finally providing guidance on new Russia sanctions passed by Congress in August, issuing long overdue details on which entities tied to the Russian government will be targeted.

The State Department made the move Thursday afternoon, shortly after Foreign Relations committee chair Bob Corker called Foggy Bottom to inquire about the delay. CNN reports:

The notice, required by the law, was due Oct. 1 and is meant to put potential stakeholders—including U.S. companies—on alert in advance of the implementation in January. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent the list to Congress Thursday, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

“This is something that’s been in the works for quite some time,” Nauert said. “So when Capitol Hill said to the State Department, ‘Provide us this information,’ we were given about two months to pull it together, which is a relatively short period of time to be able to work through all of this, work across the interagency, to determine the types of entities, the type of industry that would be affected, and to work out all those details.”

Perhaps two months is a “relatively short period of time,” but one criticism I hear from elsewhere in the administration is the degree to which understaffing at the State Department frustrates processes such as this one.