U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to step down

The White House announced that Obama will make a personnel announcement from the White House State Dining Room at 11:10 a.m. The New York Times reported Monday morning that Obama asked Hagel to step down last Friday, seeking to reassure critics of the President's foreign policy with the move. The move, White House officials told the Times, was meant to acknowledge that the new national security threats facing the nation - most notably the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - call for a different kind of leadership in the Defense Department, CNN reports. "The next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus," an administration official told the paper. A critic of the Iraq war, Hagel was brought on to oversee withdrawal from Afghanistan and a smaller Pentagon budget than ever before. Hagel wasn't fired, a White House official told the Times, but rather mutually agreed with the president that it was time for him to go. But Hagel's aides have said the Defense Secretary, the last remaining Republican on Obama's national security team, had planned to serve out his full four years in office. Hagel, a former Republican Senator from Nebraska, has been in office since February 2013.