The U.S. Senate, circumventing holds by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, on Thursday confirmed the nominations of two senior military leaders, including the first female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti was confirmed by a vote of 95-1 to lead the Navy, making her the first woman to serve as a Pentagon service chief and hold a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. David Allvin was also confirmed by a vote of 95-1 to be chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. The Senate was expected to vote later Thursday to confirm Lt. Gen. Christopher Mahoney to serve as assistant commandant for the U.S. Marine Corps.
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, of Alabama, showed no signs of letting up, standing and objecting to each one.
Allvin is the vice chief of staff of the Air Force but has been serving as acting chief, since the previous top Air Force officer, Gen. CQ Brown, became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1. Allvin is a career air mobility pilot with more than 4,600 flight hours and key deployments in Afghanistan and Europe.
A post by another user on this platform a few days ago suggested Tuberville’s true motives were to keep key positions in the military vacant until Trump or another Republican is elected president where they can then fill those positions with loyalists. This is similar to what we’ve seen the GOP do on the Supreme Court.
One might be led to believe then that the ultimate goal is to use the military to support their attempts to retain power indefinitely.
Having the military on side (or at least key figures of it) is absolutely critical to a dictatorship.
The pro-gun people who have promised they’d lay down their morbidly obese lives to prevent it will of course be enthusiastically cheering for the dictatorship, perhaps even firing into crowds of protesters.
What’s so weird about these people is that, when you ask them if we should reduce the military, they say no. If you ask them why they have guns, it’s so to fight against tyranny.
I’m like…why the fuck do you want to further arm your tyrannical government?!
That doesn’t make sense. Trump could make new appointments for all of these positions just as easily as they’re being appointed now (assuming a Republican Senate, which, very, very much to my chagrin, will probably be the case)
Not just SCOTUS. The Republicans were blocking federal judges in huge numbers during the latter half of Obama’s 2nd term.