Sen. Tommy Tuberville\u2019s, R-Ala., colleagues pleaded on the Senate floor early Thursday morning \u2013\u00a0from midnight until nearly 4 a.m. \u2013\u00a0to drop his objection to military promotions, which has placed more than 400 positions in limbo for nine months, over the Pentagon\u2019s abortion policy\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Todd Young, R-Ind., Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, again tried to push a batch of distinguished nominees to top military leadership positions through the Senate just two weeks after their first attempt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, a staunch supporter of Tuberville, objected.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Senators Sullivan and Ernst are making some great tributes to generals and admirals whose confirmations have been delayed,\u2019 Lee posted to X just before 2:30 a.m. on Thursday. \u2018I wish they\u2019d blame President Biden even half as much as they\u2019re \u2013\u00a0quite unfairly \u2013\u00a0blaming Sen. Tuberville.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The DOD\u2019s abortion policy \u2013 which pays for some expenses incurred by an abortion procedure for service members \u2013 was implemented without approval from Congress after the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.<\/p>\n
Tuberville has argued the policy violates the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which limits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion services except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the floor, Graham appealed to Tuberville\u2019s opposition to the policy and signaled his pro-life advocacy, but he opposed the blockade. Instead, he championed taking the policy to court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Generally speaking in America, when you get a legal dispute, you go to court,\u2019 Graham said Thursday morning. \u2018The DoD general counsel has a memo it doesn\u2019t violate the Hyde Amendment. I think they\u2019re wrong. But we\u2019re not a court of law here.\u2019<\/p>\n
The GOP lawmakers took turns praising some of the military leaders awaiting promotions and reading their biographies, and argued they are being \u2018held hostage\u2019 by objections to a policy that they have no control over.<\/p>\n
\u2018We need to fix the policy that \u2013\u00a0the abortion policy \u2013\u00a0that we all disagree with here,\u2019 Sullivan said. \u2018There\u2019s a number of ways that we can do it. Again, I worked with Sen. Tuberville on ways to do that. And I do agree with my colleagues here. This was started and provoked by the Biden administration, but punishing these 450 members and their families is not the best way to go about doing that.\u2019<\/p>\n
Ernst said she and her colleagues are \u2018all pro-life\u2019 but appealed to Graham\u2019s suggestion of changing the policy through the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018There has to be another way to overturn this policy,\u2019 Ernst said. \u2018That\u2019s our jobs, it\u2019s not the jobs of these nominees. It\u2019s our job to make sure the policy is right.\u2019<\/p>\n
Tuberville remained seated at his desk while Lee defended the objection. The debacle occurred just after the Senate voted to pass the House\u2019s bill to keep some government programs funded until staggered deadlines in January and February.<\/p>\n
\u2018We\u2019ve been asked the question over and over again, why punish the innocent?\u2019 Lee said on the floor. \u2018Indeed, why punish the innocent? You know who\u2019s innocent? Babies. You know who doesn\u2019t have a voice in the Senate? Babies. You know who can\u2019t speak for themselves? Babies.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018How many future admirals are going to be aborted by this policy by the Pentagon itself?\u2019 he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democrat senators on the Rules Committee advanced a resolution Tuesday to circumvent Tuberville and confirm the military promotions. The resolution heads to a full floor vote and will need nine Republicans to vote alongside Democrats to codify the measure.<\/p>\n\n
Sen. Tommy Tuberville\u2019s, R-Ala., colleagues pleaded on the Senate floor early Thursday morning \u2013\u00a0from midnight until nearly 4 a.m. \u2013\u00a0to drop his objection to military promotions, which has placed more than 400 positions in limbo for nine months, over the Pentagon\u2019s abortion policy\u00a0 Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Todd Young, R-Ind., Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska and Joni <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}