Joe Gould
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
All Stories By Joe
Republican budget plan will ‘undermine’ US security, warns Biden admin
The Biden administration is portraying plans from Republicans to gut the federal budget as jeopardizing national security.
McCain offers Afghanistan strategy amid Trump’s indecision
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain has announced his own strategy for the war in Afghanistan, he says, because the Trump administration has fallen behind.
McCain warns Trump to watch his words after North Korea ‘fire and fury’
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said Tuesday that President Donald Trump has to watch his words after the president threatened North Korea in a potential nuclear standoff.
Fact-checking Trump's tweet on the US nuclear arsenal
Amid nuclear tensions with North Korea, the president boasted America's nuclear arsenal is “far stronger and more powerful than ever before.” But is it?
Thorny fiscal deadlines await Congress’ return
The Trump administration and Congress face a trio of high-priority budget items when lawmakers return from recess in September. And if they stumble, it could lead to a partial government shutdown.
US House approves security spending bill with $1.6B for Trump border wall
The House on Thursday passed a four-bill, $789.6 billion federal spending package that sets up a showdown in the Senate over its inclusion of border wall funding and because it tops defense budget caps by $63.5 billion.
Congress' defense budgeting headed toward 'colossal crackup'
The U.S. House on Wednesday took up a defense appropriations bill that proposes tens of billion of dollars in new spending for the Pentagon. The problem is that it breaks budget caps set in law.
McCain returns, but DoD’s policy bill faces health care road block
After a dramatic return to the Senate to cast a vote on the GOP’s Obamacare overhaul Tuesday, Sen. John McCain said he hoped to soon shepherd through the chamber's 2018 defense policy bill. But there are more questions than answers about when and how.
Senators sending lofty Space Corps hopes down to Earth
Rep. Mike Rogers, the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee chairman and Congress’s chief advocate for a new branch of the military focused on space, issued a dire warning to fellow lawmakers. The United States faces very real threats from Russia and China, he said, and “war-fighting has become absolutely dependent on space.”
McCain diagnosed with brain tumor
Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who fought in the Vietnam War and against tough political adversaries, is facing the fight of his life against cancer.
