Senate sidesteps Tuberville's hold and confirms new Navy head, first female on Joint Chiefs of Staff
Source: Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate circumvented a hold by Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Thursday and confirmed Adm. Lisa Franchetti to lead the Navy, making her the first woman to be a Pentagon service chief and the first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Franchetti’s historic confirmation as the chief of naval operations comes as Tuberville has drawn bipartisan criticism for holding up almost 400 military nominations in an effort to protest Pentagon abortion policy. In a remarkable display, several Republican senators angrily held the floor for more than four hours on Wednesday evening and called up 61 of the nominations for votes, praising each nominee for their military service. Tuberville showed no signs of letting up, standing and objecting to each one.
The Senate confirmed Franchetti with an overwhelming 95-1 vote. Senators are scheduled to confirm two other top officers on Thursday — Gen. David Allvin to be chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force and Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney to serve as assistant commandant for the U.S. Marine Corps.
-snip-
BY MARY CLARE JALONICK, TARA COPP AND LOLITA BALDOR
Updated 1:22 PM EDT, November 2, 2023
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/military-nominations-senate-tuberville-holds-0c3a5441fb94887fdb0e1b1b65a399f5
= new reply since forum marked as read
He is useless; why let him take up space?
Not Pentagon,
The Coast Guard is part of DHS.
The Coast Guard's Commandant is
Admiral Linda L. Fagan
https://www.uscg.mil/Biographies/Display/Article/3048180/admiral-linda-l-fagan/
Semper Paratus!
https://www.uscg.mil
Adm. Lisa M. Franchetti will make history as the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
By Dan Lamothe
Updated November 2, 2023 at 5:14 p.m. EDT | Published November 2, 2023 at 3:19 p.m. EDT
Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti speaks during a Senate confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 14. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The Senate on Thursday confirmed three more senior military officers in its latest move to bypass an expansive blockade on President Biden’s nominees imposed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in a bid to gain leverage in a fight over the Pentagon’s travel policy for troops seeking abortions.
Approved by lopsided margins were Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who will become the first woman to lead the Navy and join the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. David W. Allvin, nominated to lead the Air Force; and Lt. Gen. Christopher J. Mahoney, who will be promoted to four-star general, become the Marine Corps’s No. 2 officer and step in as the caretaker commandant in the absence of Gen. Eric Smith, who suffered apparent cardiac arrest on Sunday. Smith, 58, was in stable condition on Wednesday evening with an unclear long-term prognosis.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, the Pentagon’s No. 2 political appointee, appeared to link the hold on Thursday directly to Smith’s condition. ... “We’ve said many times in the last six months that the hold is unnecessary, unprecedented and unsafe, and that it’s bad for our military and bad for our military families, and it’s bad for our country,” she said. “We have seen tragic effects of that stress, but we’ve also seen stress at the individual human level. And I think that’s been well-communicated on Capitol Hill.”
Each of the officers confirmed on Thursday is considered highly qualified.
{snip}
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
By Dan Lamothe
Dan Lamothe joined The Washington Post in 2014 to cover the U.S. military. He has written about the Armed Forces for more than 15 years, traveling extensively, embedding with five branches of service and covering combat in Afghanistan. Twitter https://twitter.com/danlamothe
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