Welcome to the Punch Bowl News Readback Podcast.

I'm your host, congressional reporter Max Cohen.

I'm joined here today by a debutante, our new defense reporter, Anthony Adragna,

who is fresh off the launch of our defense vertical this week in the first defense newsletter. Anthony, how you doing?

I'm great. Thanks for having me. Exciting times. Very exciting times. Thanks for being on the show.

Let's dive right into it. It's as you write in your reback newsletter item, a very exciting time

to be covering defense. We have oil tankers being seized off the coast of Venezuela. We have

Secretary for Pete Hegseth in the news all the time. And of course, the NDAA made its way through

the House and over to the Senate this week. So so much to choose from. I'll turn over to you,

though, first. What caught your eye this week in defense policy up on the hill? Oh my gosh, it's been everything. The thing you left out was this FBI investigation into the

six Democrats who recorded this video imploring military service members to not follow unlawful

orders. That's been dominating the topics up here on Capitol Hill,

outside of hearing on the deployment of troops. And then, yeah, the nuts and bolts, the meat and

potatoes, the NDAAs, the last must-pass piece of legislation of the year. The last train

leaving the station is probably the most overused phrase that I've heard up here this week.

But yeah, so it's been a lot. It's been a really

exciting time. It's a mix of both, you know, really interesting dynamics here domestically,

but then also kind of these international crises, particularly Venezuela. So yeah, there's a ton

happening. My colleague, Brianna and I have not had a ton of time to take a break, but a really exciting time to launch a newsletter.

And we were thrilled to get the first issue out.

Let's talk about the launch for a second.

You are there at Neds Club in D.C. for our big event earlier this week.

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