NDAA VOTE TODAY: The Senate is set to hold a final vote on its version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act this evening at 5:30. The chamber will wrap up work on the must-pass policy bill after political wrangling last week scuttled floor votes on most individual amendments. Efforts by some senators to block President Trump’s trade tariffs on steel and aluminum and to end the indefinite detention of terror suspects fizzled.

HAPPENING TODAY: Diplomacy is not just about flexing military muscle, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is scheduled to deliver remarks titled “America’s Economic Revival” to the Detroit Economic Club today. Pompeo’s speech is set for 12:40 p.m at Ford Field in Detroit, and will be streamed live on www.state.gov.

BACK TO THE WAR: For one brief moment it appeared that just maybe Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s olive branch to the Taliban might be a small step toward peace talks. The Taliban agreed to a three-day cease-fire coinciding with the Eid al-Fitr holiday, and after some Taliban fighters and Afghan citizens hugged and danced in the streets, Ghani offered an extension for nine days.

But on Saturday, a suicide bombing killed 36 people in Jalalabad, followed by a second attack yesterday that killed 19. The Islamic State may have been behind the attacks that happened while the cease-fire was still in effect. Still, on Sunday the Taliban announced the cease-fire was over, since it was conducted in order to celebrate the holiday, and was not an acceptance of Ghani’s proposal.

Meanwhile, the “Helmand Peace Convoy” arrived in the Afghan capital of Kabul this morning after traveling more than 300 miles over nearly 40 days, according to the Associated Press.  Dozens of Afghan peace activists have been trekking across the country on foot calling for an end to the 17-year war.

SOON IT WILL BE MILLER TIME: The Senate Armed Services Committee is set to hold a confirmation hearing tomorrow morning for the general tapped to take over the implementation of Trump’s new strategy in Afghanistan. Lt. Gen. Scott Miller, who heads U.S. Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., is poised to be promoted and take over from U.S. Afghanistan commander Gen. John Nicholson.

Miller commands U.S. special operators who run clandestine missions against terrorists and other threats around the world. As a young infantry officer, he led elite Army Delta Force commandos during the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia when a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was shot down with a rocket-propelled grenade, stranding troops in hostile territory.

WAR GAMES ANNOUNCEMENT? The United States and South Korea are rumored to be ready to formally announce a “joint” decision to suspend “large-scale combined military exercises this week,” a decision that Trump has already made unilaterally.

“The South Korean and U.S. military authorities have been having close consultations over the combined exercises that U.S. President Donald Trump has said he will stop,” a source told Yonhap News Agency. “This week, the South Korean and U.S. defense ministries will jointly announce the results of their discussions.”

But other sources in South Korea say no announcement is imminent as South Korea’s vice foreign minister Lim Sung-nam headed to Washington for more talks.

ON SPEED DIAL: Trump said Friday he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un now have the ability to get in touch with each other after their face-to-face meeting in Singapore last week.

“I gave him a very direct number. He can now call me if he has any difficulty,” Trump told reporters outside the White House, and he indicated Kim returned the favor. “I can now call him. I can now say, well, we have a problem,” Trump said during a gaggle with reporters north of the West Wing.

SO, PROBLEM SOLVED! The main thing, insists Trump, is that with talks underway there is no longer a threat of nuclear war with the North. “I have solved that problem. Now we’re getting it memorialized and all, but that problem is largely solved, and part of the reason is we signed, number one, a very good document.”

NOT THERE YET: “Solved” might be a bit of an overstatement, said Sen. Lindsey Graham on CNN Friday, shortly after the president’s remarks. “When the nuclear weapons are gone, the missiles are dismantled, when the regime stops threatening the world and killing its own people, we solved the problem. We’re not there yet. I hope we can be. The problem is not solved until they give up their weapons.”

IT’S COMPLICATED: Trump insists by canceling what he calls “provocative war games” with South Korea, the U.S. will save a “fortune.” “I hated them from the day I came in. I said, ‘Why aren’t we being reimbursed?’ ” Trump said Friday speaking to reporters on the White House lawn. “We pay millions and millions of dollars for planes and all of this,” he said. “It costs us a lot of money. I saved a lot of money. That’s a good thing for us.”

But ask the Pentagon how much the joint exercises cost, and more to the point how much is saved by canceling them, and the answer is a firm, “We don’t know.” The problem is separating fixed costs from the extra expense of a particular exercise, and then factoring in the cost of other training that takes its place.

“The costs of the exercises are being reviewed,” Lt. Col. Christopher Logan, told me Friday, as the Pentagon admitted it does not yet have a handle of how much money will actually be saved

WHOSE TERM IS IT? Trump has taken a lot of flak for calling what the Pentagon refers to as “purely defensive routine military exercises” as “war games,” which is more in line the North Korea’s view that they are a thinly-disguised rehearsal for an invasion of the North.

“I call them ‘war games,’ ” Trump said Friday. When a reporter countered, “That’s North Korea’s term,” Trump pushed back. “That’s my term. Look, they might use it. We pay for it. We pay millions and millions of dollars for planes and all of this. It’s my term.”

TO HIS SENSES, NOT HIS KNEES: Earlier in the week, Trump’s pick to be the new U.S. ambassador to Seoul, the former top commander in the Pacific, told senators at his confirmation hearing that Trump was right. Asked directly if he thinks the joint U.S.-South Korean exercises are provocative, retired Adm. Harry Harris said, “I think that they are. They are certainly of concern to North Korea and to China.”

Asked if he would call them “war games,” Harris said, “I will call them major exercises,”

But Harris said taking a break from the high-profile drills was the right move diplomatically. “I’ve spoken in the past about, you know, the need to bring Kim Jong Un to his senses and not to his knees, and I think the president’s efforts in Singapore did just that,” Harris said. “We should give major exercises a pause to see if Kim Jong Un in fact is serious about his part of the negotiations.”

THE VOX POPULI: Was the Singapore summit a success? Depends on who you ask and how you phrase the question.

In one new survey, the Morning Consult/Politico poll, 54 percent of registered voters said the summit was successful, while 24 percent rated it as unsuccessful. The split was higher along party lines, with 79 percent of Republicans viewing the summit successfully, compared to 48 percent of independents and 38 percent of Democrats.

But another poll out this weekend says most people think it’s too soon to render any judgment. A majority of respondents to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 55 percent, said it was too early to tell whether the summit was a success for the United States and an almost identical majority, 56 percent, says it was too early to tell whether it was a success for North Korea.

TRUMP ON TROOP REMAINS: Trump also said Friday that Kim has already begun to return the remains of thousands of U.S. troops that are still missing in the country after nearly six decades. “I said, ‘The remains, I would like to get them.’ He said, ‘Yes, we will do that.’ They are already starting to produce remains of these great, young soldiers who were left in North Korea,” Trump said during an impromptu interview on Fox News outside the White House. “We’re getting the remains. Nobody thought that was possible.”

The repatriation of those missing in action from the Korean War following an armistice in 1953 was part of an initial agreement struck by Trump and Kim during their meeting in Singapore this week. Trump said the North will produce the remains of about 7,500 missing troops. The group Veterans of Foreign Wars estimates that 5,300 remain unaccounted for in North Korea and has been lobbying the president to make the repatriation a priority in negotiations. “We have not heard that the North Koreans have begun to turn over remains but we are very pleased if in fact they have,” Bob Wallace, the executive director of VFW’s Washington office, said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

MATTIS ON PUTIN: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday of working to undermine American values and destroy the Western alliance that has acted as a counterweight to the Kremlin since the end of the Cold War.

“Putin seeks to shatter NATO. He aims to diminish the appeal of the Western democratic model and attempts to undermine America’s moral authority,” Mattis said in an address to graduates at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. “His actions are designed not to challenge our arms, at this point, but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals.”

The sharp criticism by Mattis came on the same day Trump said he might be meeting with Putin sometime this summer, and again defended his call to invite Russia to rejoin the G-7, and make it the G-8 again. “I think it’s better to have Russia in, than to have Russia out,” Trump said. “It’s much better if we get along with them, than if we don’t. So it’s possible.”

INSPIRING WORDS: in his remarks to graduates at the Naval War College Friday and to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on Saturday, Mattis offered some suitable-for-framing words of inspiration.

“Don’t shy away from the hard problems and even tougher solutions by saying that something is above your pay grade. Your nation and services did not invest a precious year of the finest education possible for you to take a timid view of your leadership responsibility,” Mattis said in Rhode Island. “Keep your wits about you. Keep your grace under fire, your civility with subordinates, inspiring those you lead with humility and intellectual rigor in reconciling war’s grim realities with your political leaders’ aspirations.”

And to the merchant mariners: “You’ve got to be the men and women of integrity, of honor, intelligence, dedication, and competence. … You don’t want to be anything less because at the end of the day you’ve got to live up to that standard. You do not want to live down from it.”

“Do not celebrate victimhood. Life as a leader is hard so enjoy it, embrace it, and practice your skill and put it to use when the hard times come, coaching the others to take disappointment in stride. And do not fall into cynicism, which is just another word in the armed services for cowardice.”

THE RUNDOWN

AP: Syria says US-led strike hits troops in east, US denies

New York Times: U.S. Easing Reins On Cyberattacks

Navy Times: One Year After The Fitzgerald Collision, The Families Of The Fallen Grieve And Search For Answers

AP: Trump contradicts US military stance on Korea war games

CNN: Trump attacks Schumer over North Korea remarks, defends summit

Bloomberg: China’s Pacific Islands Push Has The U.S. Worried

The Hill: Spotlight Falls On Russian Threat To Undersea Cables

Defense News: The US Navy is fed up with ballistic missile defense patrols

Agence France Presse: US-Backed Fighters Expel IS From Eastern Syria Bastion

Reuters: Saudi-led coalition conducts air strikes on Yemen’s Hodeidah airport

USA Today: Why Turkey elections could be President Tayyip Recep Erdogan’s biggest power grab yet

Task and Purpose: Colonel Fired For Losing Machine Gun, Grenades Headed To Air Force Special Operations Command

DoD Buzz: Pentagon Policy Bars Marines from Using New Infantry Quadcopters

USNI News: MCPON Giordano Under Investigation for Complaints of Workplace Misconduct

Newport News Daily Press: Is Florida Making Another Run At A Virginia-Based Aircraft Carrier?