Joe Gould

At least three lawmakers are using the nominees as bargaining chips in talks on various concerns.

On Congress’ agenda when members return from the July 4 recess: late-arriving defense spending and policy bills as well as President Joe Biden’s pick for Navy secretary, among other Pentagon nominees.

The Pentagon says fewer than two dozen civilians were killed in overseas anti-terrorism operations last year, but a pair of lawmakers doesn’t believe them.

House appropriators proposed $1.7 billion more for weapons procurement and $1.6 billion less for development and testing of cutting-edge technologies meant to deter China.

Leaders of the House’s Blue Dog Coalition say they oppose calls to fund any less than the requested $753 billion national defense budget.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to take up a bipartisan measure to repeal the 2002 and 1991 war authorizations for Iraq in mid-July.

Top defense officials have completed multiple trips to Capitol Hill to defend President Joe Biden’s flat defense budget request, and now the task of tailoring that request falls to Congress.

President Joe Biden is set to nominate the chief executive of the U.S.-Russia Foundation and a former National Security Council official on Russia to be the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs on Tuesday.