Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) claimed victory Wednesday over Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) after the upper chamber voted to confirm Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — circumventing Tuberville’s months-long blockage on military promotions.
“I forced his hand, and we’re going to do two more tomorrow, which will be good,” Tuberville said in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, referring to two other votes on military promotions that Schumer teed up for Thursday. “But still I have my holds on, and they’re going to have to change this policy, or we’re going to go through a long, drawn-out process.”
For the last seven months, Tuberville has had a hold on more than 300 military promotions, as a protest against a newly enacted Pentagon’s policy covering travel expenses for service members traveling across state lines to seek abortion care.
These military promotions are often advanced en bloc via unanimous consent, allowing any senator, in theory, to object to the advancement. While the Senate can advance the promotions one at a time, that would take an exorbitant amount of time and stall any other Senate business for the near future.
With outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley set to leave his position at the end of the month, Schumer made the surprise announcement that he would tee up votes on three military nominations this week, including Brown’s. Schumer’s announcement came after Tuberville threatened to force a cloture vote on one of the nominations.
Still, however, Democrats have remained steadfast in their refusal to bring up all military promotions individually, and Schumer said in floor remarks Wednesday that, despite the votes on three military promotions this week, Tuberville has not accomplished anything — the abortion policy will not change, and the Senate will not continue bringing up individual nominations.
Tuberville responded to Schumer’s comments in his interview with Ingraham.
“I accomplished, No. 1, I showed people what we’re doing. They can do them one at a time, and we taught Schumer how to go back to the floor and actually bring somebody to the floor so we could vote and confirm them.”
“I think a lot of people thought, hey, I am holding them up no matter what,” Tuberville continued. “No. Schumer can bring them up one at a time, we’ll probably vote for most of them, they’ll get confirmed, but they’ve waited 220 days, Laura, to do the first one. 220 days, they’ve pushed all this stuff back on me, but now it’s on them. People know now that they can confirm them. And so we’ll just sit back and see if he brings … anybody to the floor.”