The Republican senator from Alabama is now six months into his stance of placing “holds” on DOD promotions in response to the department’s ramped up abortion policy.
After last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave states the power to enact their own abortion laws, many states immediately set out making it much more restrictive – including states that house large military bases. The new policy allows service members to receive up to three weeks of paid leave to travel to less-restrictive, abortion-friendly states for abortion services. Travel costs are also paid. The benefit applies not only to service members seeking an abortion but to spouses and dependents.
Reacting to that policy, Tuberville has said he is not simply disagreeing with a Pentagon policy but says the new policy is actually illegal under current federal law. It flagrantly violates the Hyde Amendment, which says taxpayer money cannot be used to perform abortions.
In light of an illegal policy, Tuberville has said he’ll end his holds if Austin simply reinstates the previous policy which would pay for abortions in cases of rape, incest or the endangered life of the mother.
“I told them, just take the policy back. Go back to the old policy. Bring it to a vote, and whichever way it goes, I’m fine. They don’t want any vote on this because there would be bad votes on the Democratic side,” Tuberville told Fox News host Laura Ingraham this week.
The list of personnel seeking promotions has grown to 300-plus while Tuberville holds firm and while his critics who support and defend abortion claim he is hurting military readiness.
What has gone unmentioned in many media stories is the current holds do not mean promotions can’t be approved. What they prevent is the ability for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to have the promotions approved swiftly by batches in one sweeping unanimous consent. Instead, approval now means Schumer can choose to devote time on the Senate floor for debate as each promotion is considered individually.
“We’re building up to an election next year. This is a political ploy, and if they think Sen. Tuberville is going to back away from this and give them what they want, he is not, I can assure you. That man is a strong man,” retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, the Family Research Council’s executive vice president, said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
Three DOD heavyweights blast Tuberville
In a frontal assault on Tuberville, three DOD heavyweights went on the attack against Tuberville this week. Army Sec. Christine Wormuth, Navy Sec. Carlos Del Toro, and Air Force Sec. Frank Kendall appeared together with Jake Tapper on CNN.
“I would argue that Tommy Tuberville, what he’s actually doing, is that he’s playing Russian Roulette with the very lives of our service members by denying them the opportunity to actually have the most experienced combat leaders in those positions to lead them in times of peace and in times of combat,” Del Toro said.
Del Toro’s stance makes one think, “If the subordinates of 300 commanders are better qualified, why haven’t they already been leading?”
That may be an oversimplified rebuttal but Boykin insists it’s a valid question.
“The guy just told me that our military has not been ready, that we haven’t had the very best that we could put into the jobs that they’re trying to fill now,” Boykin told show host Tony Perkins.
“If they say to us one more time, ‘This is hurting our readiness,’ as far as I’m concerned the administration and the armed services committees should be taking a really close look at why our readiness is being hurt by leaving someone in a job who has been there, who has been commanding we would presume successfully, and now all of a sudden because they’ve got something on their agenda that they want to accomplish, we’re hurting readiness? That is simply not the truth,” Boykin said.
Military leaders expressing concern now for hardships placed on families were strangely silent when jobs were lost, and families were disrupted because a service member refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine.
“This is the biggest hypocrisy that I have seen coming out of the Department of Defense. Where were these people who cared so much about their soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines when they were putting over 8,000 of them out of the military because they wouldn’t take a jab which was something they objected to in many cases on religious grounds,” Boykin said.
Boykin said the impact of the holds means many “senior officers are not being able to get out of the military and go chase the million dollars they will get for sitting on boards.”
Alabama pays political price, too
Tuberville’s stance has not come without cost for his state.
The Alabama attorney general is calling for an investigation into why President Joe Biden reversed his decision to place Space Command headquarters in Colorado Springs rather than in Huntsville, Alabama.
Tuberville wrote on Twitter in June that the top general in charge of Space Command told him that Huntsville was actually the preferred location for the new headquarters.
The executive committee of the Alabama Republican Party in August passed a resolution with 99% support that condemned Biden and showed support for Tuberville in his on-going fight.
Eagle Forum, a conservative public policy group in Alabama, has also expressed support for Tuberville.
Not really 'unprecedented'
What Tuberville is doing is not unprecedented, though that’s been alleged by Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin in a letter to Congress.
Schumer has said the same thing. “Blocking military choices is unprecedented – unprecedented! It hasn’t happened before, and it could weaken our national security,” the Democrat leader recently said.
Boykin says the claims are bogus. Just three years ago, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) announced she would block more than 1,100 senior military promotions in an effort to force then-Defense Sec. Mark Esper to promote Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.
Vindman, a supposed White House whistleblower, became an overnight hero to the Left when he accused then-President Donald Trump of harming Ukraine by demanding information about Hunter Biden.
Despite the hysterics and political theatrics, senators know holds on promotions have long been part of the Senate playbook.
But it’s not the only play to call. Seven former defense secretaries, four of them Republican, expressed their concern in a May letter to Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Senators should leverage the numerous means available to them to challenge and change DOD policy, such as introducing legislation, conducting oversight hearings, or amending the annual National Defense Authorization Act,” they wrote.
William Perry, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis and Esper signed the letter.
