Democrats Uncertain They’ll Take Shot to Block Gen. Mattis From Trump’s Cabinet by Byron Tau, Wall Street Journal
President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis to be the next secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense has put Capitol Hill Democrats in a bind.
Gen. Mattis has not been out of uniform long enough to qualify for the job in the Trump administration without special approval from Congress to circumvent a rule put in place to preserve civilian control of the military.
As a result, Gen. Mattis’s nomination to the position may effectively require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate to overcome a procedural hurdle, as well a separate vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to grant him a special exemption from the law requiring military officers to have been out of uniform for at least seven years before taking the job of defense secretary…