Don’t let one senator hold all military promotions hostage

In May 2023, for the seventh time in four months, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) prevented the Senate from voting on the promotions of about 200 military leaders (with one star or more), a process requiring the unanimous consent of all senators. Seven former secretaries of defense, including Trump appointees James Mattis and Mark Esper, released a statement saying that Tuberville’s blanket hold “is harming military readiness and risks damaging U.S. national security.”

In addition to the disruption of their personal and professional lives, officers waiting for their successors to replace them may not have, or feel comfortable exercising, the authority to name subordinate commanders or approve the acquisition of weapon systems.

The hold has already been applied to, among others, the promotion of Shoshana Chatfield, Navy rear admiral and president of the Naval War College, to vice admiral and U.S. representative to the NATO military commission, and is likely to delay the confirmation of Air Force General C.Q. Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Senate can — and should — restrict or eliminate the obsolete, obstructionist and undemocratic practice of unanimous consent.

Tuberville is blocking the promotions because he opposes a Pentagon program, announced in the wake of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, to reimburse travel expenses and grant up to three weeks of leave for women in the armed forces seeking abortion or fertility treatments and stationed in areas where abortion is restricted. Between 2016 and 2021, Pentagon officials have pointed out, 91 abortions were performed at military treatment facilities on individuals whose lives were endangered or whose pregnancies resulted from rape or incest. The Defense Department reports that 17.3 percent of active-duty armed services personnel, 231,741 individuals, are women.

Tuberville has indicated he will lift his hold only if Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ends the policy or the Senate votes on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (or a stand-alone bill) to rescind it. Acceding to Tuberville’s demands, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has pointed out, would incentivize other senators to use non-controversial appointments as hostages. And the Senate has already taken up and failed to pass legislation, supported by Tuberville, to reverse the decision of the Veterans Affairs Department to provide abortion-related care.

Nor did Tuberville win friends and influence people when he maintained that the Pentagon’s “left-wing social engineering” was responsible for the decline of military recruits. Or when he declared, in response to a question about whether white nationalists should serve in the armed forces, “Well, they call them that. I call them Americans.” Tuberville then added, “I look at a white nationalist as a Trump Republican.”

To be sure, Tuberville is not the only senator to use unanimous consent to exact political concessions. In 2020, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) held up the nominations of 1,100 military officers until the Pentagon provided evidence that the promotion of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman had not been blocked in retaliation for his testimony at former President Trump’s first impeachment trial. Duckworth’s hold lasted two weeks.

If the Pentagon does not rescind the new abortion policy, and Schumer does not schedule a vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, how will the current impasse end? Bringing up each nominee, invoking cloture, cutting off debate and then voting on one promotion at a time will leave no time for the Senate to conduct any other business, and is not a realistic option.

Senate Republicans are in no hurry to bring their rogue caucus member into line. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has at times, at least rhetorically, been at odds with her GOP colleagues, is fine with a hands-off approach: “I would prefer that Sen. Tuberville focus his hold on political appointees,” Collins said. “They’re the ones who make the policy … but, obviously, the approach he chooses is up to him.” Asked what could be done, another GOP senator replied anonymously, “I do not know, but I’m told he’s very comfortable with where he’s at.”

The most viable path may well rest with a resolution introduced in May by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. The proposal authorizes the majority leader to call a maximum of 10 nominees at a time (excluding circuit judges, Supreme Court justices and Cabinet secretaries) for consideration without unanimous consent. Confirmation of each group “en banc” would require a majority vote.

The Senate has not shown much appetite for reforms of its antiquated procedures. But maybe, just maybe, national security considerations and a dose of common sense will persuade enough of them to take this small but consequential step forward.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.