Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren is getting fed up with Sen. Tommy Tuberville and his dangerous political games. The Massachusetts Democrat is urging her colleagues to turn the heat up on Tuberville as well as his fellow Republicans who are enabling his destructive quest to change Pentagon abortion policy by blocking hundreds of pending military promotions and nominations.
As chair of the subcommittee for personnel on the Armed Services Committee, Warren has a better idea than just about any other senator about the damage being done by the Alabama senator’s blockade on more than 300 military promotions and appointments. She is putting pressure on her own leadership and fellow Democrats to fight Tuberville’s block more forcefully.
In a Wednesday conference meeting, Warren pushed Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and leadership to more aggressively push back against Tuberville, Punchbowl News reports. She’s been advocating for months for the Democratic majority to push a change in Senate rules to stop Tuberville’s unprecedented hold. A rules change realistically requires Republican support, which will happen only if enough Republicans feel tarnished by Tuberville’s antics.
To make that happen, Warren says Democrats have to make Tuberville the issue. Here she is on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday.
Democrats “have got to stand up and continue to talk about this,” she said. “I think it’s time for us to turn up the heat on that and for all of the Democrats to be involved.” She added that “there is no dissension” from her Democratic colleagues on this. “The Democrats absolutely understand that what Sen. Tuberville is doing is undermining our national security, and he is playing politics with our military and our safety in a way that we cannot, cannot, cannot reward.”
Warren had a quick response to Tuberville’s charge that this is getting too personal, and that it’s “disappointing” that he’s being attacked. “He deserves every ugly term that gets thrown at him,” Warren said.
As Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson previously explained, “All of this is over Tuberville’s opposition to a Pentagon policy reimbursing service members and their families for travel expenses if they need to leave the state where they’re stationed to get abortion care.”
The Pentagon has also stepped up a pressure campaign, with the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force taking the rare step of publicly talking about the threat posed to national security as the blockade drags on. That has increased pressure on Tuberville’s Republican colleagues, and they’ve resorted to trying to blame Schumer for the hold. It’s “entirely within Sen. Schumer’s control,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told NBC News. He and fellow Republicans argue that Schumer could just decide to move each nomination individually.
That’s absolutely ridiculous. It could take the Senate weeks to work through each nomination, even if they were devoting all day, every day, to process them. That’s why the Senate normally takes up these routine promotions and nominations in blocs, with voice votes that are unanimously approved. All it takes to throw the whole process into chaos is one Tuberville who says “no.”
All it would take to stop him is his Republican colleagues telling him to knock it off. They’ll be under even more pressure to do that this month because the nation’s top military officer’s term expires on Oct. 1. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is retiring and Tuberville’s blanket hold is keeping his replacement, Gen. C.Q. Brown, from a confirmation vote.
Tuberville doesn’t care. “Milley’s going to have to work overtime then,” Tuberville told CNN. He also said, “If I thought I was really harming our military, I wouldn’t be doing this.” The former college football coach who never served in the military believes he knows more about it than Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
As Warren says, Tuberville deserves everything Democrats can throw at him, as do the Republicans who are enabling him.
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Tuberville’s hold on military promotions is undermining national security, defense secretary says
Why does it seem like Republicans have such a hard time recruiting Senate candidates who actually live in the states they want to run in? We’re discussing this strange but persistent phenomenon on this week’s edition of “The Downballot.” The latest example is former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, who’s been spending his time in Florida since leaving the House in 2015, but he’s not the only one. Republican Senate hopefuls in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Montana, and Wisconsin all have questionable ties to their home states—a problem that Democrats have gleefully exploited in recent years. (Remember Dr. Oz? Of course you do.)
