A former GOP congressman tapped by President Donald Trump to oversee the country’s nuclear arsenal is facing a grilling before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday on his road to confirmation.
Brandon Williams, nominated to become Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security, is a Navy veteran who formerly chaired the energy subcommittee for the House Science, Space and Technology Committee during his brief stint in Congress.
He brings with him thousands of hours of experience supervising the operation of a nuclear power plant and propulsion plant on a nuclear submarine, and he’s undergone rigorous training to supervise two naval reactor designs, sources tell Fox News Digital. Tom D’Agastino, a former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration himself who served under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said Williams’ nomination comes at a critical time for nuclear deterrence.
“There’s no question in my mind that he has what it takes from a technical expertise, technical competence and technical leadership standpoint, because he’s already proven it,” D’Agastino told Fox News Digital. “He’s proven it in the Navy. And just having gone through and made it through the nuclear propulsion program, which is the heralded program started by Admiral Rickover over 50 years ago, I have absolutely no doubt at all that he could run this organization.”
REPUBLICAN LAWMAKER SAYS ENERGY ‘UNDERPINS EVERYTHING WE DO’
Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., at a news conference to introduce the No Fortune For Fraud Act outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, March 7, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“It’s obviously proven time and time again, that electricity, power provides, you know, lifts the standard of living for all that have it,” D’Agastino said. “And so having a somebody at the helm of the NNSA, which isn’t a commercial nuclear power organization, it s a national security power organization, but there are…
