Tuberville Drops Opposition to Almost All Military Promotions

WASHINGTON — Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., announced Tuesday that he would drop his opposition to nearly all military promotions, a blockade he imposed to protest the Pentagon’s decision to ensure abortion access to service members.

Tuberville had placed holds on just over 440 military promotions. Tuberville’s acquiescence means the Senate can now start confirming them as early as tonight, and could run the table on the entire list before the end of the year. [Update: Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., moved more than 400 nominations en bloc via unanimous consent Tuesday night.]

Though he appeared to be folding to mounting pressure on Tuesday, Tuberville said he would still keep holds in place for “10 or 11” four-star generals.

“Those will continue,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Tuberville continued to assert he “did the right thing for the unborn and for our military,” he was facing a bipartisan effort to use a procedural gambit in the Senate to simply go around his monthslong opposition and vote on the majority of appointments he’d blocked.

In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the chamber “must put a stop to a grave abuse carried out by the senior senator from Alabama.”

“The blockade of hundreds of military nominees, to push the hard-right view on abortion, is something that the majority of Americans do not support,” Schumer continued. 

Tuberville’s “brazen” opposition, the majority leader said, “has cost our military preparedness dearly. It has thrown the lives of hundreds of families into limbo.”

“Members on both sides of the aisle are reaching a boiling point with Sen. Tuberville, and before the year is out we are going to act to bring his blockade to an end,” he said.

Schumer vowed to bring a resolution already approved by the Senate Rules Committee to the floor that would break the deadline.

He said at the time that he hoped all Republicans “who care about military preparedness” would wind up supporting the measure. In the alternative, he said, he hoped the resolution would get Tuberville to back down.

“If every senator did what Sen. Tuberville has done, and held up military confirmations because of this or that partisan issue, no matter how deeply felt, it would grind the Senate to a halt,” Schumer said. “It would be a catastrophe for our military. We dare not go further down that road. We’ve gone too far already.”

With that, the pressure on Tuberville evidently became impossible for him to ignore, as his Republican colleagues in no way wanted to have to make a choice between service members and abortion.

“We fought hard,” Tuberville told reporters. “We did the right thing fighting back against executive overreach.

“I have no control over anybody else putting a hold on somebody. But for myself, they are released as we speak,” he added.

In a statement released by the White House Tuesday night, President Biden said, “After 10 months of undermining military readiness and the morale of our troops, Senator Tuberville of Alabama has finally lifted his politically motivated hold on hundreds of military nominations.

“Four hundred, twenty-five highly-qualified, patriotic military leaders have now been confirmed by the Senate to perform their duties as they fulfill their sacred oath to keep our country safe,” the president continued.

“These confirmations are long overdue, and should never have been held up in the first place. Our service members are the backbone of our country and deserve to receive the pay and promotions they have earned,” he said. “In the end, this was all pointless. Senator Tuberville, and the Republicans who stood with him, needlessly hurt hundreds of servicemembers and military families and threatened our national security – all to push a partisan agenda. I hope no one forgets what he did.
 
“Those who serve this nation deserve better. Thankfully, military leaders will finally be able to take their next post. Military families who for months have been in limbo will finally be able to make plans to move, start new jobs, and enter new schools,” the president said. “Our servicemembers and military families put everything on the line for our country. I thank the Senate for quickly confirming these appointments and urge them to confirm the remaining appointees swiftly.”

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue