Tom Temin: And it is a never-ending job, isn’t it? And I mean, just give us a sense of what CRS is being asked to do these days because Congress deals, it seems like each generation more and more issues.

Karen Donfried: Well, CRS is the place where Congress returns first for its needs in understanding the complex policy issues that every member of the House and every member of the Senate confronts today. So they could reach out to CRS for an in-person briefing, consultations. They could ask for a confidential memo on a topic. They could look at any of the many CRS reports that are not only available to members of Congress, but are also available to members of the public on a public website as well. So we try to use all kinds of different means to help members of Congress understand these challenging policy issues.

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Tom Temin: I imagine artificial intelligence and anything connected with this new medium of social media and the whole online world is so different even than it was five years ago. And this has come before Congress in a various contexts. Is that something that’s in demand right now, that kind of research?

Karen Donfried: Sure. There are lots of reports that we have on artificial intelligence. That is an area that will be with us surely for the coming years. We have new foreign policy challenges. If you look at the recent fall of the regime of Assad in Syria and what that means for the Middle East, the role of Iran, we have ongoing war, Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. So there are a whole host of issues that are confronting Congress today. But then there are also these issues, which are always present in the work of members, whether it has to do with health care for Americans, whether it has to do with Medicaid or Medicare, environmental policy. So whatever the issue is, there are experts here at the Congressional Research Service that are ready to share that knowledge in a nonpartisan and objective and confidential way with members.

Tom Temin: And give us a sense of the extent of the staff. And you sort of answer to my next question, and that is, are they subject matter experts because there’s no limit to the people you need in some sense in that case, or are they experts in finding out things and being able to distill from research that they go ahead and do?

Karen Donfried: So the Congressional Research Service has about 620 employees, and the vast majority of those are policy analysts, legislative attorneys, research librarians who are doing that research and analysis for members and their staff. And then the rest of the organization is folks who are involved in publishing that material, in supporting the research that is done here, editorial staff, production staff, administrative staff, all of these folks who comprise the Congressional Research Service are fundamental for the work that we do.

Tom Temin: And in conducting complex research. There are many, many federal sources from the agencies have extensive material on different topics. And then there’s the Library of Congress. How much work are you able to do just looking at what’s already available throughout the government, let alone from the public sources?

Karen Donfried: So we absolutely work with our partners in the executive branch and also at the state level, at the level sometimes at the constituent level to answer these questions for Congress. So there are many sources we turn to. It is not that the Congressional Research Service is the primary source in answering many of these questions. We have experts who know an issue extremely well, take AI, and they are going to understand from their own backgrounds what the key elements of that issue are. They will be up to speed on every piece of legislation that has been introduced in Congress on AI. They will know the external sources that they would consider objective that they will rely on for their work. So yes, members of Congress and staff, we’re going to rely on the experience of those CRS analysts and attorneys and librarians for the answers that we produce.

Tom Temin: Right. I guess we should point out you are part of the Library of Congress. I guess that didn’t make that clear.

Karen Donfried: That is correct. So we are part of the Library of Congress. We do have an independent budget from Congress, but we very much benefit from being part of what is the largest library in the world. So there it’s a wonderful place for us to be situated. And of course, we are right across the street from the Capitol and from House office buildings and just a walk across the Hill from all of the Senate offices.

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Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Dr. Karen Donfried. She’s the new director of the Congressional Research Service. And you’ve toggled a little bit between the congressional and executive branches recently arriving from State Department, where you were Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Tell us more about yourself and what you bring to this and kind of an interesting career.

Karen Donfried: So, Tom, for me, becoming director of the Congressional Research Service, I stepped into this role in September, I should say. So I’m almost at my three-month anniversary, represents a wonderful professional homecoming because I started my career right after graduate school as a Europe analyst here at the Congressional Research Service. I worked at CRS for 10 years and then went to the nonprofit sector. I was at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. I’ve served in various executive branch functions. I also have had the opportunity to spend some time at Harvard University as a senior fellow. You asked specifically about my role at the State Department, where I from 2021 through 2023 was the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, as you mentioned. And what’s so fun about that job is the first time I met Tony Blinken, currently Secretary of State Blinken, is when I was at Congressional Research Service earlier in my career because he then worked for a senator who was very focused on foreign policy named Joe Biden. So it’s just wonderful to be coming back to this institution that I think plays such an important role in our democracy in terms of providing that research and analysis to the first branch of government.

Tom Temin: And how much contact do you and the senior staff or maybe the staff have directly with the members in the day-to-day work?

Karen Donfried: So it depends on what your role in the organization is. When I worked here as a Europe analyst. Most of my contact was with key congressional staff members. I would say in my first two years at CRS as an analyst, I was doing a lot of writing. I was writing reports and there were different kinds of reports at the time, answering requests that came in through the main request system. But then once you sort of hit two years, congressional staff get to know you. So most of the requests were then coming over the phone, folks, I’d done a lot of work for. And not surprisingly, I did a lot of work for the staff on the committees of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And that, of course, is going to be different for each analyst and what their subject matter is. Now that I’m here as director, I have an enormous amount of contact with members of Congress directly. I’m touching base with as many of them as I can, wanting to understand if we’re meeting their needs and are there things we should be doing differently. So it depends on what your role in the organization is, what the topics are that you cover. But even as an analyst, you often will brief members in person, for example, in the foreign affairs role before they go on a congressional delegation to another country. That would be in a point where often you might in fact do that in-person briefing as an analyst. But again, it’s going to depend on what you’re covering and what the issues are.

Tom Temin: And most of them, especially when they’ve been there a while, are used to being listened to. Are they capable of sitting down and listening?

Karen Donfried: It’s so interesting. When I meet members of Congress and introduce myself, they say, ‘the Congressional Research Service, I love CRS.’ And you hear that across the political spectrum. And that is so important for CRS because it says to me, CRS is a trusted source for members of Congress. They know they can come to us and confidentially ask whatever question they have. And we are not advocates for policy. We are here to explain complex policy issues. So we will give them an understanding of the entirety of the debate. What are the different perspectives on this? What are the downstream effects of certain policy decisions? And I think that relationship of trust that we have, which for members is based on an understanding that we work for them and only for them, we are not pushing for a particular policy solution. That’s their job. We are trying to equip them with the knowledge they need to formulate their policy position.

Tom Temin: And a final question. What is to be learned in Syria? Because it looks like something has emerged that’s a big hairball that nobody can quite sort out.

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Karen Donfried: Well, I should preface this by saying I have always been a Europe analyst, not a Middle East analyst. But I do think the implications of what is happening in Syria are profound for the region and beyond. I think we’re seeing right now a global struggle between liberal small democracies and autocracies. In my part of the world, the part of the world I know best, which is Europe, We see Russia continuing to engage in this brutal war against Ukraine. Russia’s ability to maintain that fight are in large part because of the support Russia is gaining from China. Russia was also a very important external actor in Syria. And it’s always interesting when regimes like Assad’s break. They always break at some point. But we’re very bad at predicting when that point is going to come. And it reminds us of the power of individuals. And the Syrian people have now spoken and have overthrown Assad. And that has implications not only for Syria, but also for Russia’s role in the region and no doubt for Russia’s further actions in Ukraine. And we can debate that. Does it mean they’ll come down harder on Ukraine? It may well, but it also has implications for the Middle East for the role of Iran. And you see the extreme engagement of U.S. policymakers’ interest from members of Congress because it is clearly in the national interest of the United States that we try to influence how what is happening in Syria plays out. Vacuums are always filled and we don’t want a vacuum in power in Syria to be filled by terrorists and others who surely do not have America’s best interests at play. So we are living in a time with lots of change, lots of instability, and all of that, again, means the mission of the Congressional Research Service is as important as it’s ever been in providing that sort of objective research and analysis to our one client, which is Congress.