MILITARY/NOMINATIONS/SENATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Senate Thursday [7-25-19] overwhelmingly voted 89 to 1 to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley. Milley is currently serving as chief of staff of the Army…The chairman is the highest-ranking military officer in the country and serves as the principal military adviser to the President. The lone dissenting senator was Democrat Jeff Merkley of Oregon. A spokesman for Merkley told CNN that the senator ‘was concerned by Gen. Milley’s stated support for building up the US’s nuclear arsenal and deployments’ and ‘voted no accordingly.’ The current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, who took on the role in 2015, is expected to serve out the remainder of his term which will finish at the end of September…Trump took the unusual step of announcing his pick to replace Dunford on Twitter back in December, nearly a year before the end of his term.”
–Ryan Browne, “Senate confirms Gen. Mark Milley as next chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, July 25, 2019 5:09 pm