Pompeo announced a $113 million fund to support digital, energy, and infrastructure connectivity, countering concerns about the administration’s underappreciation of diplomacy and development in U.S. foreign policy.

But set against the trillion-dollar scale of the Belt and Road initiative, this new fund will struggle to compete.

Additionally, Pompeo did not explain how the U.S. would leverage its diplomatic ties across the Indo-Pacific to further its stated goals. He emphasized the importance of private-sector investment, but said nothing about support, or even diplomatic endorsement, from other interested countries.

Source: U.S. economic strategy for Indo-Pacific doesn’t stack up to China’s – Axios

U.S. infrastructure cooperation with Japan and Australia would dovetail with the Trump administration’s evolving national security policies, which have cast the U.S. as in “long-term, strategic competition” with China and Russia.

Beijing’s BRI calls for half a trillion dollars in investment in infrastructure along trade routes to China, which is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy before 2030.

Source: U.S.-Led Infrastructure Aid to Counter China in Indo-Pacific – Bloomberg

First filed in 2015 by a group of young Americans in Oregon, the lawsuit claims that the federal government’s refusal to address climate change threatens the constitutional rights of young people and future generations who will come of age in a world of greater scarcity and danger.

As Pacific Standard reported in 2016, the 21 plaintiffs allege that “the U.S. government’s knowing inaction on climate has violated their right to ‘life, liberty, and property’ as enshrined in the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

Source: The Supreme Court Refuses to Halt a Climate Change Lawsuit Brought by Children and Teenagers – Pacific Standard