Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville misses few chances to tout both his career as a college football coach and his love for the military. It’s all the more reprehensible, then, that Tuberville is single-handedly blocking the Pentagon from putting its best team on the field — and harming the country’s security in the process.
Since February, Tuberville has placed a blanket hold on the promotion or reassignment of more than 250 US generals and flag officers. He objects to a Pentagon policy, announced after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, that covers the travel costs of service members who cross state lines for abortions. Tuberville insists that because Congress hasn’t enshrined the travel policy into law, the Pentagon needs to scrap it. He’s vowed to block all top military promotions until that happens.
Due to Tuberville’s intransigence, the Marine Corps lacks a Senate-confirmed commandant for the first time in 164 years. Two more service chiefs are due to retire next month; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, the top military adviser to President Joe Biden, will step down on Oct. 1. As seven former defense secretaries noted in a May letter, the commanders of the Navy’s Fifth and Seventh Fleets — covering the Middle East and Indo-Pacific — as well as the next US military representative to NATO and US Cyber Command’s director of intelligence are also in limbo. More than 600 senior officers may be affected by the end of the year.
