President Trump is continuing to plan to replace his senior intelligence adviser, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and has considered at least one candidate, according to people close to the White House.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) skipped Tuesday's Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Mark Esper, President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of defense.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) aggressively questioned Secretary of Defense nominee Mark Esper Tuesday over the ethical implications of his prior lobbying for Raytheon, the defense giant with ties to Warren.
China's military conducted a flight test of an anti-ship ballistic missile in the contentious South China Sea last weekend in violation of a pledge four years ago by President Xi Jinping not to militarize the waterway.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) on Sunday echoed the Iranian government's position on the recent downing of a U.S. drone in a tweet rebuking President Donald Trump.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has withdrawn from consideration to head the U.S. military, President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday, stoking uncertainty about the leadership of the Pentagon at a moment of rising tension with Iran.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) released a plan last month to crack down on corporate lobbying influence at the Pentagon, but she has worked aggressively on behalf of major defense interests in Massachusetts during her time in the Senate.
Nearly two dozen liberal groups on Thursday wrote to all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, pushing them to support massive cuts to the defense budget.
There are at least two problems with the military shifting its focus toward great-power war against Eurasia's two giants at the expense of its capabilities to conduct irregular warfare in the Middle East. First, it seems that, realistically, the next war in which the U.S. is engaged is much more likely to be irregular and involve terrorists and insurgents in Africa or the Middle East, rather than, say, a war with China over Taiwan. Second, regardless of what objective analysis shows to be the most sound, effective defense strategy for the U.S., the political reality in Washington is that the Middle East always seems to dominate the headlines, and lawmakers can never seem to make the strategic shift away from the region.
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President Trump is continuing to plan to replace his senior intelligence adviser, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and has considered at least one candidate, according to people close to the White House. 
