Policy & Strategy

Subcommittee markups begin this week, and the intense work will soon gear up. Here are five things to watch.

The announcement came one day before North Korea reportedly fired three short-range missiles from its east coast.

Recent deliveries of advanced Russian missiles to Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces could embolden the regime into making a critical "miscalculation," triggering a regional war. 

The Joint Chiefs chairman and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to endorse any specific measures from Congress.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Friday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel needs to show more leadership in dealing with sexual assault cases in the military.

“I think the president has taken strong leadership on this issue and I am urging Secretary Hagel to do the same,” Gillibrand told MSNBC’s Andrew Mitchell. “Secretary Hagel has … said he wants to remove from the chain of command the ability to overturn a verdict. We would like to add to that the ability of the commander to actually decide whether or not to got to trial.”

More than two-thirds of Americans – 69 percent – believe the issues raised by the congressional hearings on Benghazi, Libya, “involve serious matters that deserve to be investigated,” according to a Gallup poll released Friday.

The poll suggests a sharp partisan divide between those who take the issues that Republican lawmakers are raising about last year's terrorist attack on the U.S. mission seriously and those who think they're politically motivated. While 86 percent of self-identified Republicans said it's important to probe the Obama administration's role in the security lapses prior to the attack and its response, only 49 percent of Democrats agreed the story raises serious questions.

The poll of 1,022 adults was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, just as the White House began to ramp up its efforts to dismiss the Republican focus on Benghazi. President Obama called the issue a “sideshow” on Monday, and the White House released 100 pages of internal documents showing the development of talking points late Wednesday.

The president vowed action to stop sexual assault in the ranks, calling it “dangerous to our national security.”

The Topline: President Obama and Vice President Biden sat down at the White House Thursday with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the Joint Chiefs as the White House, Pentagon and Congress decide how to deal with a rise in military sexual assaults.

The meeting came a week after Obama called on the military to do more to fix the problem as the Pentagon’s annual reports showed an estimated 26,000 assaults in 2012 — an increase of more than a third.

The White House has followed up on Obama’s call with two meetings thus far, first with lawmakers last week and now with the military leaders.

Obama hasn’t endorsed any specific proposals, but it’s abundantly clear that he — and lawmakers — want to show signs of progress on the issue.

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America's over decade-long fight to dismantle al Qaeda and other Islamic militant offshoots will continue to be a fact of life of U.S. national security for decades to come, a top Pentagon official told Congress. 

Lawmakers claim the Obama administration's wide-ranging authority to target terror groups worldwide gives the White House a legal loophole to wage war without congressional consent.