In case you missed it, Army Secretary Christine Warmuth retired on Friday after serving in the post since May of 2021. At this point, both the Army and the Marines do not have a Senate-confirmed leader, and the ranks of the Joint Chiefs are growing thin. This is because Alabama GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville has placed a hold on all military promotions. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that both troop retention and readiness are at risk because of this logjam. And it’s happening at a time when the military was already missing most of its recruiting goals prior to Tuberville shutting down the process. Considering how close we seem to be to a possible war with another major world power on any given day, this is an unacceptable situation. (Associated Press)

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that troop readiness and retention is at risk as the Army’s chief stepped down Friday, leaving the military’s two ground combat forces without Senate-confirmed leaders for the first time in history.

Speaking during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Austin said the Senate’s failure to confirm the services’ new leaders is disruptive to the force and could impact relationships with allies and partners around the globe.

The confirmation of the next Army chief and Marine commandant are among more than 300 military nominations stalled by Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, over the Pentagon’s policy to pay for travel when a service member has to go out of state to get an abortion or other reproductive care.

Technically, Tuberville has a point when he says that he’s not actually blocking any confirmations. He’s simply objecting to unanimous consent which is how the process is normally handled. He points out that the Democrats could schedule a vote on each promotion and all of those votes would likely pass. The Democrats counter that by saying that holding individual floor votes on all of the promotions currently awaiting approval would take months and block the Senate from taking care of other business.

It’s not that I don’t understand why Tuberville is doing this. He’s protesting the Biden administration’s decision to pay for service members to travel out of state for an abortion if the procedure is banned where they are stationed. Tuberville is strongly pro-life and he probably sees this as the only measure available to him. But the military is under the control of the executive branch, not the legislative, and for better or worse (or much, much worse), Joe Biden is the Commander-in-Chief. Legislative approval of promotions is largely just a formality.

Also, Tuberville’s actions are both ineffective and destructive. Blocking promotions isn’t blocking any military women from traveling out of state to get an abortion. And the only people he is punishing are the service members who are awaiting promotions and new deployment assignments. From the political angle, the Senator is making himself and perhaps by association the GOP less popular with the military. And that’s a small but generally strongly conservative voting block.

Other solutions to the stalemate have been offered, but nobody seems interested in pursuing them. The White House could change the policy slightly to approve paying for travel for “generic OB-GYN medical services” and take the dreaded word “abortion” out of the mix. But the Biden administration apparently doesn’t want to do that because they would rather “own the cons” and shove this in their faces.

Either way, the only people being hurt by this blockade are the men and women in uniform who are losing out on additional pay and career advancement opportunities. Tuberville needs to put an end to this and let the military get back to doing what they do best.