Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. If you’re not already subscribed, you can sign up here. On this day in 1917, the British military captured Gaza from Ottoman troops, breaking a months-long stalemate in a conflict known as the Third Battle of Gaza.
New on Capitol Hill: a procedural end to Tommy Tuberville’s obstruction could be decided as early as next week. The Senate Rules Committee has scheduled a markup next Tuesday, November 14, for a resolution to allow most military promotions to be confirmed in a bundle, which would effectively circumvent the nearly yearlong hold by former college football coach Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, announced the meeting on Monday. “The resolution, which is led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI), establishes a standing order for the remainder of the 118th Congress to provide for the en bloc consideration of military nominations— with the exception of nominees to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commanders of a combatant command—that have been favorably reported by the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Klobuchar’s office said in a statement.
“Senator Tuberville refuses to heed the warnings of our top military officials,” and “has put a hold on over 350 military officers, from the head of the Pacific Air Command to the director of Cyber Command,” she said. “He refuses to even cooperate with members of his own party who have pleaded with him to lift this hold,” she continued, and said, “This vote in the Rules Committee will allow us to finally move forward with military confirmations, filling critical positions and protecting our military readiness.”
More than six in 10 Americans surveyed by Gallup pollsters in October say neither Russia nor Ukraine is winning after more than 600 days of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale military invasion of Russia’s democratic neighbor. About two out of every five think the U.S. is doing too much to help Ukraine now, and Republican support for Kyiv continues to decline noticeably.
Just four months ago, only 29% of Americans thought the U.S. was doing too much. Now that figure is 41%, and it outweighs the percentage of respondents who think the U.S. is giving Ukraine “the right amount” of support to defend against Russia (33%). Only a quarter of Americans think the U.S. isn’t doing enough, according to Gallup.
When it comes to choosing between a long war and just giving Putin the parts of Ukraine he’s invaded, a majority of those polled (54%) says they still believe “the U.S. should support Ukraine in reclaiming its former territory, even if this resulted in a prolonged conflict.” That number was 66% in August 2022. About 30% felt Ukraine should cede its invaded territory to Russia back in August 2022; that number has risen slowly since January, and is now at 43%. (Reuters found similar results in early October.) Read through the rest of Gallup’s latest data, here.
So is the Ukraine war presently a “stalemate” or not? Ukraine’s top military officer said as much in an interview last week with the Economist. A top official in President Volodymir Zelenskyy’s office expressed his dismay over the claim this past weekend, but seemed to take issue more with the fact that it seemed to hand Russia a victory that Kyiv can ill afford at this stage of the conflict, according to CNN.
President Zelenskyy, too, dismissed the “stalemate” allegation on Saturday, and admitted, “People are tired. Everyone is tired.” He continued, “We all need to get together and resolve the issues, work more with our partners on air defense, unblock the skies, and enable our guys to take offensive actions. This is what we need to think about. Only about this. Not about where we will be tomorrow.”
“Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe,” Zelenskyy said in a recent interview with Time. “And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time,’” he said.
Said one aide to Time: “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling [Zelenskyy] that.”
Still, Zelenskyy maintains an optimistic tone publicly, even as he continues leading through an invasion by the world’s most nuclear-armed military in Russia. “Everyone should think about defending our country,” Zelenskyy pleaded in his Monday evening address to the nation. “We need to pull ourselves together, avoid unwinding and splitting up into disputes or other priorities,” he said.
“The situation is the same now as it was before: if there is no victory, there will be no country. Our victory is possible,” Zelenskyy said in his televised address. “It will come if we all focus on it. Not on politicking or searching for some personal interest.”
Related reading:
Troops' data is for sale. That puts national security at risk, according to researchers at Duke University. They went shopping for sensitive data for U.S. military personnel, including names, home addresses, emails and specific branch information being sold on third-party data-broker platforms. They talk about their findings in Data Brokers and the Sale of Data on U.S. Military Personnel, and you can read a bit more from D1’s sister pub GovExec, here. (Of course, all that is available on everyone else as well, though that might be changing.)
Lastly: A winning idea hides friendly radio calls in a sea of noise. Two soldiers who invented a low-cost decoy emitter won the Dragon’s Lair IX innovation competition—and some nice prizes: Meritorious Service Medals, admission to a military school of their choice, and the chance to spread their idea across the Defense Department. D1’s Jennifer Hlad reports.
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