Defense & Homeland Security

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is roiling the Senate immigration debate by offering several amendments that could give him an edge in a future Republican presidential primary.

Washington’s lobbying powers are bearing down on the Senate in an attempt to push immigration reform over the finish line.

A bipartisan effort to declassify key federal court opinions justifying domestic surveillance of American citizens is dead on arrival, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat said Tuesday.

"I encourage this, though I think it is going to be ill-fated," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of the bill being spearheaded by Oregon Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden.

"I just don't see a freight train coming down the track," in terms of getting the White House and Congress behind the Merkley-Wyden bill, Durbin said.

The bill would require the attorney general to declassify significant opinions made by courts operating under the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

If the bipartisan bill was law, it would have required the government to reveal its collection of Verizon phone records and the PRISM Internet data-mining program.

One of the Pentagon’s top strategists said climate change is fundamentally altering how the Defense Department (DOD) evaluates future conflict areas.

Daniel Chiu, the deputy assistant secretary of DOD strategy, said climate change has the Pentagon thinking about impacts on global food and water scarcity, mass migration and the potential for those issues to ignite clashes around the world.

“How we at the Department of Defense need to think about it — not again because we desire any of those to come about — but, frankly, so we can play our part in preventing those types of negative scenarios from emerging in the future,” he said Thursday at an event hosted by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.) is demanding that the Navy face up to fiscal realities by overhauling its shipbuilding plan. 

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are focused on wooing two conservative Republican senators they consider crucial.

The Pentagon wants Congress to funnel funds toward expenses for the Afghanistan war and transportation.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is raising her profile as a leading advocate for changing the way the military prosecutes sexual assault cases.

Asian-American lawmakers and advocates are troubled by changes to family-sponsored visas in the Senate’s immigration bill.

Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee the legislation would “absolutely” improve the security of the nation’s borders.