Tuberville, who's singlehandedly blocked hundreds of military promotions in protest over the Pentagon's abortion policies, said he's not going to change his mind and doesn't care that people aren't being promoted.
After the US Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent in overturning its decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion access case in 2022, the Pentagon announced its plan to reimburse service members who need to travel out-of-state to receive abortion services.
Tuberville, a Republican senator out of Alabama, took exception to the decision and said he'd use his power to stymie any military nominations and promotions he could. Since February, he's blocked more than 300 promotions.
Indeed. He's just as disingenuous, illogical, and pants-shittingly stupid as his voters. All they care about is the tantrum, and it's about fucking time the military learned that the GOP doesn't give a damn about anything except using them as props.
I cant help but to have noticed a lot of places on Lemmy where autocorrect has clearly gone wrong. We need a phone keyboard that produces options and a squiggly when it wants to correct something, maybe. I turned off my autocorrect for that reason, which raises its own set of problems lol.
Conservatives are known to be pro war, but no promilitary and have never been strong supporters of military veterans since Vietnam. In fact most Veterans end up in Govt service because Republican businessmen refuse to hire veterans.
Liberals view the military as a public service, to be used when all else fails. They would view military use for the protection of U.S. interests as necessary but are unlikely to commit a large force to accomplish the mission.
They have always been this way, they pander to the military because too many of us in the military and veterans eat that shit up with a smile, but when it comes time for raises, better housing, lawsuits, the massive rape and harassment problem, the gang problems, pollution, and so many other problems they turn a blind eye to, instead they want to kick out people for being gay.
He's an ass, but this isn't single-handed. He only has this power because his fellow Republicans (and Manchin, and probably Sinema) are allowing it. If a handful of Republicans wanted to fix this, they absolutely could.
The current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has made it clear he considers Tuberville's blockade an abuse and an outrage. The GOP's McConnell has also said he does not support the "blanket hold" on military nominations. Both have acknowledged the pleas coming from the Pentagon and from the ranks, and they have done what they could to encourage Tuberville to stand down.
But the leaders cannot simply bulldoze the senator from Alabama. Their power is restrained by Senate rules and traditions and by the sentiments of their respective caucuses.
If the issue here were an ordinary piece of legislation, the leaders would seek a unanimous consent agreement that would bring that matter to the floor. Individual senators may object to that with a notice that they seek "extended debate" on that legislation. This is an implicit threat to filibuster, and the majority leader routinely files a cloture petition and holds a vote.
If cloture fails, the legislation does not go to the floor. If three-fifths of the Senate supports cloture, the legislation can be brought to the floor with time limits on debate.
Presidential nominations have been largely exempt from this since 2013 when a Democratic Senate majority decided only nominations to the Supreme Court would be subject to filibusters. In 2017, a Republican majority decided to extend that exemption to include Supreme Court nominations.
Nonetheless, Tuberville's maneuver has the effect of freezing confirmations for the current backlog presidential nominations because they are submitted in batches for group consideration and approval. The batching procedure itself requires unanimous consent, allowing even one senator to stand in the way.
The Senate majority leader could bring the nominations to the floor one by one for consideration by regular procedure, but that would require two to three days for each. Had the Senate tried to individually process even the first 150 promotions Tuberville blocked back in February, it could have done little else in the months since – and it would still be far behind on confirmations. That is scarcely practical when the military alone submits hundreds a year and the larger executive branch far more.
Moreover, just as the Pentagon bristles at having a single senator dictate its personnel policy, so the Senate leaders are loath to have individual senators deciding when and if the Senate can proceed with normal business using its usual procedures – such as the batching of nominations.
Translation: there's nothing really stopping us from going around Tuberville, but we feel the senate's stupid arcane rules are more important than national security and having responsible people in charge if Trump tries to do a coup again.
I believe that there is an active conspiracy to destroy the USA from within and this is proof of that. Follow the money and you'll uncover who is behind it. My guess, China, Russia and maybe some Oligarchs around that.
If the dems were smart they would use this to campaign to military people, along with the dozens of things Trump has done to piss them off.
But the dems are physically incapable of advertising themselves to the Republic core audience, while simultaneously harping on about compromise and reaching across the ilse.
I doubt most military people care. Those positions are being filled by acting commanders until people are promoted to fill them permanently, in most cases by the people nominated to fill them. They aren't just vacant.
Retired military here, and I just can't get too worked up over someone filling that position is getting 2-star pay instead of 3-star pay, or Colonel pay instead of 1-star pay.
Yeah that's the thing here. Congress promotes officers. The enlisted corp ain't gonna give a flying fuck. Promotion rates for enlisted have been shit for a couple years now
I mean, why not just make YouTube ads for them? Should be easy enough to grab snippets, add audio voice over and put them on the Internet and target red leaning people
Why are other republicans quiet on this one? Why they don’t tell Tubertool to fuck himself and vote on those promotions?
Entire GOP is complicit in destroying the military preparedness. Republicans all are harming the armed forces, Tubertool is just a tool they are using.
Because someone is undermining the ability of the Biden administration to do things, and when it is reported most people will juat blame Biden instead of paying attention to the actual problem.
This absolutely does not save the government/taxpayers any money, quite the opposite. When they lose qualified staff to attrition over bullshit like this, it's very expensive to replace them. And given enough time, it will start to impact military readiness across the board, if it hasn't already.
I wonder what his constituency thinks. I mean, the ones with more than 2 brain cells to rub together. Surely his phones should be ringing off the hook. I know he doesn't care but I hope there's some noise being made
I mean, the ones with more than 2 brain cells to rub together.
He's from Alabama if that answers your question. Congress is on summer recess, he's been back in Alabama at various events, and the reports I've seen is that he's had a hero's welcome.
In Alabama the only shot a Dem has of winning in a Senate seat is of the Republican is a literal pedophile, and even then just barely as we've seen. A Republican Senator's only real risk is a primary from the right. This kind of bullshit plays well with the Republican base. So here we are.
Dems need to force this issue, either hold a vote to change the rule allowing quick passage of promotions, or start having 20 hour a day sessions 7 days a week to vote on each promotion individually. All this complaining about Tubberville and the harm he's causing the military only plays into his hand of allowing him to cast himself as the lone warrior against the godless woke whatever the fuck.
They apparently don't even care that he doesn't even live in Alabama. It's also very telling when a man insists on being referred to as "coach" instead of "senator".
Now that it's impacting military readiness the executive has made it possible for those awaiting promotion to act in the role that they will eventually have. So, effectively, what Tuberville is doing is removing Senate oversight from the process. It's a self-own and he's super proud of it.
We’re all aware that republicans don’t give a fuck about optics but this is a really bad look for them. Tommy Teletubbie is truly trying to destroy America for the sake of Trump and Russia and Republicans are letting him do it.
What a stupid and fucking disgusting hill to die on. This guy was just a fucking football coach and now this rosacea ridden mother fucker is holding our military back. Fuck him and fuck the gop.
Don't make fun of medical conditions. Plenty of people have rosacea and shouldn't be shamed for it. He's got plenty of actually bad qualities that we can focus on.
This wouldn't be that hard to fix - would only need 16 Republicans to join every Democrat in passing a temporary rules change to eliminate the ability for any one senator to block UC requests for military promotions; could automatically expire at the end of this Congress, so it wouldn't be permanent, and they could still block it them with 2 senators if there was any particular promotion they had a problem with.
So part of me suspects that the Democrats are just as happy to have this in their pockets, because if there's some sort of election-threatening military setback in 2024, now they can blame it on the GOP and Tuberville.
Sane, no, but sufficiently rah-rah troops / in the pocket of defense contractors to care about getting military promotions through in a timely fashion, yes, I think there are.
I knew from then, if an officer was not promoted on a regular basis they were, I think, asked to resign. This guy is not only slapping officers in the face, he is actually reducing the number of officers in the military.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who's singlehandedly blocked hundreds of military promotions in protest over the Pentagon's abortion policies, said he's not going to change his mind and doesn't care that people aren't being promoted.
After the US Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent in overturning its decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion access case in 2022, the Pentagon announced its plan to reimburse service members who need to travel out-of-state to receive abortion services.
Tuberville, a Republican senator out of Alabama, took exception to the decision and said he'd use his power to stymie any military nominations and promotions he could.
Appearing on the podcast "The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show" on Thursday, Tuberville doubled down on his promise because the White House and Pentagon have refused to change the policy.
Speaking with CNN's Kaitlan Collins in July, Tuberville said "there is nobody more military than me" and noted he wouldn't be blocking promotions if he thought it affected military readiness or recruitment.
As Tuberville downplays the situation, Pentagon officials have said that the hundreds of military vacancies has created "unnecessary and unprecedented" risks for the country.
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