Stevenson’s army, August 4

– SFRC will vote today on legislation repealing the 1991 and 2002 AUMFs on Iraq.

– Administration officials signaled support, but with caveats.

– David Ignatius says Biden hit “sweet spot” with Iraq.

– Senate Homeland Security Committee has bipartisan report criticizing agencies’ cybersecurity.

– CNO blasts lobbying by defense firms.

I’ve long argued that you can’t write a good paper on Congress using Google because the best information is behind paywalls. Lobbyists pay $5K to $10K a year for access to Politico Pro and similar sites. Now it looks like Axios is joining the fray. See this from a competitor:

Axios executives plan to jump into the policy journalism market this fall with new mid-and high-priced subscriptions products, according to a person briefed on the plan. 

This represents an effort by the D.C.-based news outlet to take on Politico Pro, and jump into a market with Bloomberg owned B-Gov and CQRoll Call. 

Axios plans to start offering mid-range products for investors and private equity firms first, and then higher-priced ones that are designed to challenge Politico Pro. Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz — Axios’ founders — started Politico Pro, and have long toyed with a similar product at Axios. They have intimate knowledge of the business and would seek to create a modernized version. VandeHei had no comment. 

Disclosure: We all worked at Politico with VandeHei, Schwartz and Mike Allen, and we now compete against them.