Senate confirms Daniel Driscoll as new Army secretary

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Daniel Driscoll as the next secretary of the Army, putting in place another of President Donald Trump’s picks to run the Pentagon.

Driscoll, 38, is a former senior adviser to Vice President JD Vance and spent four years in the Army, including a deployment to Iraq in 2009. He also completed U.S. Army Ranger school.

Driscoll has not previously served in a senior military or civilian leadership role for the Defense Department. But he still gained more than enough votes for confirmation, with 66 senators backing his new role, including 16 votes of approval from Democratic lawmakers.

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 30, Driscoll told lawmakers that boosting Army recruiting and “reinvigorating the defense industrial base” are his top priorities.

He also vowed to be “the soldiers’ secretary of the Army, not of the generals or of the bureaucracy.” Driscoll said his deployment to Iraq with the 10th Mountain Division helped shape his views of military leadership responsibility.

“I saw firsthand how the decisions leaders made affected the lives of our soldiers, many times decisions which just didn’t make sense,” he said. “We must do better, and we will do better for our soldiers.”

Driscoll has a background in venture capital and private equity firms. He met Vance while the two were classmates at Yale Law School, and has remained close to the vice president over the years.

Unlike some of Trump’s nominees, Driscoll faced only light criticism from Democratic lawmakers during the hearing, and most of it directed at Trump policies rather than his qualifications.

But he did receive pressure from several senators to “follow the law” if presented with potentially illegal orders from Trump, a hypothetical that the nominee rejected.

Driscoll is the first of Trump’s military service secretary picks to be confirmed. The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a confirmation hearing for the president’s pick to lead the Navy, John Phelan, for Thursday.