Breaking Defense reports that “under pressure from Sen. John McCain, Acting Army Secretary Eric Fanning will step aside until the Senate confirms his nomination as secretary. The official reason is a 1998 statute about nominees not being allowed to do the job de facto before they’re legally confirmed for it. The real reasons, however, may be Guantanamo Bay and the famously combative senator.”  

“According to a Pentagon statement this morning, unspecified ‘members of the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed some concerns about his [Fanning’s] designation as Acting Army Secretary pursuant to the Vacancies [Reform] Act.’ Passed the last time a Democratic president was bitterly at odds with a Republican Congress over nominations (and everything else), the 1998 law says that ‘a person may not serve as an acting officer for an office under this section, if…. the President submits a nomination of such person to the Senate for appointment to such office.’”