Patrick Pexton

Sen. John McCain had countless interactions with members of the press during a career on Capitol Hill that spanned more than three decades. CQ's Patrick Pexton and Megan Scully along with Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski share personal anecdotes that reveal a more personal side to the late Arizona senator.

Show Notes: • John McCain, Arizona and What It Means to be Home • McCain vs. Trump: Can the President Give Up the Spotlight? • Google ‘Prematurely’ Renames Russell Senate Office Building for McCain

Space is the “next battlefield,” Vice President Mike Pence said this week. CQ editor Patrick B. Pexton talks with reporter Andrew Clevenger about all the steps needed to create the Space Force. The biggest challenge? A just-passed, two-year defense authorization bill that’s on the president’s desk awaiting his signature. That bill has no extra funds for such an ambitious enterprise that critics say isn’t even necessary to protect the U.S. from space-based threats.

President Donald Trump's decision to cancel his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un marks a failure of communications and messaging by both sides, says Jenny Town, managing editor of the think tank 38 North, a website that tracks developments in North Korea for the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank. Town explains what needs to be done for the two sides to negotiate in good faith while CQ cybersecurity editor Patrick Pexton explains how it's playing on Capitol Hill.

Show Notes:

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the United States and its allies are in a new Cold War with Russia that he calls a “shadow war” every bit as serious as the 20th-century struggle, but one using new indirect and amorphous tools and weapons.

America, Warner said Thursday, needs to bring this new war into the open and use all the new tools of technology to fight back hard.