Trump picks Dan Driscoll for Army secretary
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President-elect Trump will nominate JD Vance's friend and Yale Law School classmate Dan Driscoll for Army secretary, Trump announced today on Truth Social.
Why it matters: If confirmed, Driscoll would be the civilian leader of the U.S. Army, overseeing the service's annual budget and its workforce of over a million active-duty, National Guard and reserve soldiers, plus more than 330,000 civilian employees.
- Driscoll's close relationship with the vice president-elect also expands Vance's influence at the Pentagon.
Catch up quick: Driscoll served in the Army for three and a half years, including a deployment to Iraq in 2009, before attending Yale Law.
- He later worked in investment banking in North Carolina and ran unsuccessfully for Congress to represent the state's 11th District in 2020.
- The current Army secretary, Christine Wormuth, is the first woman in the job. She also aided President Biden's transition at the Pentagon.
The big picture: The next Army secretary will inherit a service in flux, as it overhauls everything from its backroom networks to its frontline weapons. The service is also shaking up its trying-and-buying models amid questions about U.S. fitness for a fight in the Indo-Pacific.
- Among the reworks are plans to replace Black Hawk helicopters with the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft and Bradly fighting vehicles with the XM30.
- A new Abrams tank, dubbed M1E3, is also slowly taking shape.
Zoom out: Trump's pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, faces an uncertain path in the Senate confirmation process after the release of a 2017 police report detailing an alleged sexual assault.
- Hegseth has denied wrongdoing and said the encounter was consensual.
- A video he shared on social media also suggests he wants to "Make American Lethal Again."
