The U.S. Senate voted to confirm John Phelan as the next Secretary of the Navy.<\/p>\n
Phelan, the founder of a private investment firm and a major donor to former President Trump\u2019s campaign, was confirmed by a 62-30 vote in the full Senate.<\/p>\n
Despite having no prior military experience, Phelan secured bipartisan support for the role.<\/p>\n
While Phelan did not face direct opposition during his nomination hearing, some lawmakers voiced concerns over his lack of military service or experience managing any civilian branch of the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
Phelan, however, contended that his private-sector background uniquely positions him to address the Navy\u2019s persistent challenges, including failed audits, workforce issues, cost overruns, and delays in shipbuilding.<\/p>\n
He is the founder and chair of Rugger Management LLC, a Florida-based private investment firm, and previously served as managing partner of MSD Capital, a private equity firm.<\/p>\n
During his confirmation hearing, Phelan stated that his outside business experience would aid the Navy in urgent need of reform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe U.S. Navy is at a crossroads, extended deployments, inadequate maintenance, huge cost overruns, delayed shipbuilding, failed audits, subpar housing, and sadly, record high suicide rates are systemic failures that have gone unaddressed for far too long, and frankly, this is unacceptable,\u201d he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n
Phelan told the panel the Trump administration\u2019s top priority for the Department of the Navy was shipbuilding, which is years behind schedule and experiencing major cost overruns, especially for submarines and large capital warships like aircraft carriers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I could say shipbuilding enough times,\u201d he told the panel during his confirmation hearing when asked about President Donald Trump\u2019s priorities, USNI noted.<\/p>\n
He committed to reviewing the Navy\u2019s current contracts and ensuring a clean audit for the Department of the Navy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Senate voted to confirm John Phelan as the next Secretary of the Navy. Phelan, the founder of a private investment firm and a major donor to former President … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":564,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/checkthenews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}