Chris Lange, FISM News
Sen. Tommy Tuberville said recently that he has no plans to stop blocking Biden nominees until the administration stops making Americans pay for abortion tourism.
The staunchly pro-life Republican senator from Alabama vowed to hold up military promotions requiring Senate approval back in February when the Defense Department announced a new “reproductive healthcare” policy requiring Americans to pay travel expenses of troops and their dependents seeking elective abortions in states that don’t ban or restrict the life-ending procedure.
“It’s an illegal policy. They changed it, they can’t do it, so let’s go back to the original policy,” Tuberville told the Washington Examiner in June, arguing that the Biden administration bypassed required congressional approval for the new rule. “If they want to change it, let’s change it here in Congress, like we are supposed to.”
Tuberville, who has so far stalled some 300 nominations, has maintained his resolve in the face of extreme opposition from his Democratic colleagues. That pressure has intensified all the more as the window is running out to confirm Biden’s pick to replace outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley by Oct. 1, when Milley’s term expires.
Tuberville, however, said that if Democrats are banking on Brown’s nomination to break his resolve, they’re in for a big disappointment.
“Milley’s going to have to work overtime then,” the Alabama lawmaker told CNN. He added that, if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) refuses to schedule a vote on Brown’s nomination as leverage, it will only prove that Democrats are “putting politics in front of [military] readiness.”
Schumer has so far refused to bring any of the individual Defense Department nominations to the floor, asserting that capitulation to Tuberville’s demands would set an unwelcome precedent. Democrats also contend that doing so would be too time-consuming.
“It affects the entire military,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, calling Tuberville’s actions “an outrage.”
“If we are asked to go through these nominees individually for promotions, we’ll run out the calendar this year.”
Tuberville asserts that military leaders he’s consulted with assured him that his holds have had no adverse effects on the military.
“I’ve talked to generals and admirals every day. There’s no problem with readiness,” Tuberville said on “Greg Kelly Reports.” He added, “This is my prerogative to be able to put a hold on anything.”
The senator also faces pressure outside of Capitol Hill. The secretaries of the Air Force, Army, and Navy accused Tuberville of “putting our national security at risk” in an op-ed published by the Washington Post earlier this week.
They argued that Tuberville’s “blanket and unprecedented ‘hold’… is about opposition to Defense Department policies that ensure service members and their families have access to reproductive health no matter where they are stationed.” The three went on to write that, in light of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, “this policy is critical and necessary to meet our obligations to the force” and “fully within the law as confirmed by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.”
Tuberville’s tactics have also produced grumblings from some of his fellow Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), though none appear so far to have exerted pressure on him to change them.
“I don’t support putting a hold on military nominations, I don’t support that,” McConnell told reporters in May, as reported by The Hill.
According to Tuberville, the “experts” who pushed for tax-funded elective abortion travel could not name a single complaint concerning a lack thereof over the past three-plus decades when he posed the question.
“They said, ‘no.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s funny. Why would you change something nobody’s complaining about?’”
“And so 60% of the people of this country say that we should not spend one dime of taxpayer money towards abortion,” Tuberville continued, referencing a January 2023 Marist poll. “And so that’s the Democrats and Republicans. So I’m fighting for both sides here,” he said.
According to the senator, the only thing hurting America’s military readiness is the Democrats’ progressive agenda.
“The problem I’m having now is we’re becoming more and more woke every day, and it started under Obama,” he said. “It’s sad to see this happen. Let me tell you if we lose the military … we’re in huge trouble, and we’re headed in that direction because the problem we’re having right now with readiness is not coming from anything other than all these woke policies that they’re pushing.”
This article was partially informed by a Life News report.