Senate Armed Services Committee leadership on Tuesday criticized the Trump administration’s new National Defense Strategy, including for its absence of stance on nuclear weapons, and pressed Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, to explain the document’s priorities.
“Previous National Defense Strategies, authored by both Republican and Democratic administrations, have been sober, analytical assessments of the threat environment. This one is instead littered with partisan commentary,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), ranking member of the committee, said. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the committee, said the “most troubling” was that the document is “nearly silent” on the role of nuclear weapons.
“The U.S. faces an unprecedented set of strategic threats,” Wicker said. “They are worsening every day as we move toward a world with Russia and now China as nuclear peers. The lack of any significant statement on these developments raises the question: are we ignoring the existential dangers that China, Russia and North Korea pose to our way of life.”
Jordan Gillis, the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment and the Pentagon, said the Army is in the “middle” of source selection for the Janus program in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee.
“We’re a little bit in the middle of source selection in our Janus program, talking to companies that submitted proposals,” Gillis said in response to a question by Rep. Derek Schmidt (R-Kan.) about nuclear generation at Fort Riley. “But I can tell you that the process is once we have narrowed down the companies that we want to do business with, we will match them up with installations where it makes sense and where we have willing utility partners, willing states, and then we’ll have our list of companies and installations. And so more to follow, and we can brief you on that as the project progresses.”
The Janus program was announced in October by the Army and Energy Department in response to an earlier directive from President Donald Trump for DoD to operate a nuclear reactor at a military installation by September 2028.
The Donald Trump White House nominated Preston Wells Griffith on Monday to be the United States State Department ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s international nuclear watchdog.
If confirmed to the IAEA post, Griffith would take over the role previously held by Laura Holgate. Holgate was ambassador to the IAEA and the Vienna Office of the United Nations from 2016 to 2017 and again from 2022 to 2025. Holgate was initially nominated by Barack Obama in 2015 and Joe Biden in 2021.
The White House also nominated Griffith to be the U.S. ambassador to the Vienna Office of the United Nations. Griffith served in the first Donald Trump administration, holding several senior roles at the Department of Energy and National Security Council. He was also appointed as the undersecretary of energy during Trump’s second term in July 2025. Wells Griffith endured a short term in that role after being forced out in October 2025. Politico reported that Wells Griffith was sidelined after butting heads with Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee voted largely along party lines Wednesday morning to advance President Donald Trump’s nominees for under-secretary of energy as well as director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) .
Both Trump nominees Kyle Haustveit for under secretary of energy as well as Steve Pearce for BLM were passed out of committee in 11-to-9 votes.
Pearce is a former Republican Congressman from New Mexico whose district included the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Haustveit is a professional petroleum engineer and former assistant secretary of energy for fossil fuels, also advanced to the full Senate floor for a vote at a later date. If confirmed as under secretary of energy, he would replace prior Trump appointee Preston Wells Griffith, who reportedly was forced to resign from the Department of Energy last fall.