The coach won’t give up. And he has a little MAGA minion helping him now.
Republican Senators Tommy Tuberville and Mike Lee maintained the Alabama Republican’s hold on military nominations despite a group of Republican senators who attempted to push through nominations when they returned to the Senate floor in the wee hours of Thursday morning.
Sens. Dan Sullivan, Joni Ernst, Lindsay Graham and Todd Young began their effort to confirm nominees around 12:15a.m. ET and wrapped around 3:45a.m. ET.
Tuberville was joined by Lee, who objected to confirming every nominee brought up for consideration. Once it became clear that Lee would speak at length every time he objected, the group of senators began reading the resumes of each of the nominees rather than attempting to confirm them one at a time.
As he objected, Lee acknowledged that he understood his colleagues’ concerns about military readiness and politicizing the military and noted that he wouldn’t necessarily have chosen the same approach as Tuberville. However, he insisted that he needed to “defend” the Alabama Republican.
“Notwithstanding the fact that it’s not the particular tactic that I would have chosen, he’s chosen a tactic that’s legitimate, that he has every right to deploy under the rules of the Senate,” said Lee.
Tuberville’s nine-month hold is now affecting nearly 400 military officials looking for Senate confirmation for their promotions. Typically, the nominees are confirmed quickly by voice vote. But Tuberville has placed a hold on all of them until the Pentagon changes its abortion policy unless Congress passes legislation to codify it.
Tuberville says he wants the Pentagon to scrap its post-Roe v. Wade policy providing reimbursements for service personnel who travel out-of-state for reproductive services, including abortions. Sullivan, Ernst, Graham and Young all emphasized that they also disagree with the policy — but attacked Tuberville for objecting to “nominees that have nothing to do” with the Defense Department’s abortion policy.
[…]
GOP senators have threatened to cut a deal with Democrats on a temporary change in Senate procedures to work around Tuberville and approve the nominees as a bloc. The effort would require at least nine Republicans to succeed.
Graham warned that he would vote with Democrats to temporarily change the Senate rules, allowing the Senate to bypass the hold, if Tuberville continues to block quick confirmations.
“I will work with Senator Tuberville and Lee and anybody else and everybody else to find a solution that’s acceptable to them to get us back on track,” he said. “But I promise you this – this will be the last holiday this happens. If it takes me to vote to break loose these folks, I will.”
Great. Why doesn’t he just do it then?
Graham pushed for Tuberville to find an offramp that would allow them to push back on the Pentagon’s abortion policy while still confirming nominees – namely, he said they can challenge the policy in court.
“I want to right the wrong of having abortion paid for by public taxpayer dollars from the defense coffers – I think it not only violates the Hyde Amendment, it’s bad policy,” he said. “You say it’s illegal, I tend to agree with you – go to court.”
Lee pushed back, arguing that there is no way they could win this case in a court of law. “They have crafted this thing so deliberately, so maliciously, so carefully, as to make it nearly impossible for anyone – who even could establish standing, which they can’t – to succeed on the merits,” he said.
What utter bullshit. The reason it won’t past muster in court is because the policy doesn’t have taxpayers paying for abortions in the first place! All it does is give service members paid time to go where abortion is legal. These people want women on the military to either go AWOL or give birth against their will. There is no law against the Pentagon allowing their members paid time off for any reason they want to do it.
Fergawdsakes this is just brain dead.