Senate Confirms Rubio in Unanimous Vote

UPDATE: The Senate unanimously voted to confirm Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. 

JUST IN - Senate confirms Marco Rubio as Secretary of State in 99-0 vote. pic.twitter.com/kC3RGEg8kQ

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Original Post: 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously on Monday to advance Marco Rubio’s nomination to be Secretary of State to the full Senate, where he expected to be confirmed by the end of the night. 

The vote comes just days after the Florida Republican appeared before his former colleagues in a cordial, five-hour confirmation hearing. 

Rubio already has meetings lined up with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, and Japanese Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi on Tuesday, all of whom were in D.C. for Trump’s inauguration. 

The so-called Quad grouping is a main component of the U.S. strategy to blunt increasing Chinese influence and aggression in the Indo-Pacific, an initiative that Trump had championed during his first term in office but was elevated to the leaders’ level by outgoing President Joe Biden. […]

The leaders of the Quad countries met with Biden near the U.S. president’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, in September. They agreed to expand the partnership among the four nations’ coast guards to improve interoperability and capabilities, with Indian, Japanese and Australian personnel sailing on U.S. ships in the region.

All the countries are worried about China’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, and the U.S.-China rivalry is set to intensify after Trump takes office. (Associated Press)

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Rubio warned during his confirmation hearing that China is the “most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted."

“They have elements that the Soviet Union never possessed,” he continued. “They are a technological adversary and competitor, an industrial competitor and economic competitor, geopolitical competitor, a scientific competitor now in every realm,” Rubio said.