When Tommy Tuberville was elected to the Senate in 2020 after four decades as a college football coach, the rookie lawmaker had a few gaps in his grasp of Civics 101.
Asked in an interview to name the three branches of the federal government, the Alabama Republican offered up “the House, the Senate, and the executive,” giving double billing to the legislative branch and missing the judiciary altogether.
FRUSTRATION MOUNTING OVER TUBERVILLE’S BLOCK ON SENIOR MILITARY PROMOTIONS
But after more than two years on the job, the wily old coach has figured out a thing or two, including how to use the arcane rules and customs of the Senate to give his political opponents fits.
Currently, he’s got the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress tied up in knots over his use of the “hold” to block the routine promotions of more than 180 of the military’s most senior officers. It’s a list that could soon include the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“It is outrageous,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fumed.
“Holding up the promotions of every single senior military nominee isn’t democracy; it’s extortion,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said on the Senate floor.
“Sen. Tuberville has mounted a profound assault on the professionalism of the military of the United States,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who accused Tuberville of turning military leaders into “political hostages.”
Tuberville’s beef is with a Pentagon policy, announced last year but implemented this year, that gives female service members stationed in states or overseas locations where abortion is banned paid leave and travel expenses to obtain abortions in states where they are still available.
That, Tuberville strongly believes, is illegal, citing the Hyde Amendment, a legislative provision enacted annually since 1976 that prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions, except in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
“The Biden administration has turned our Department of Defense into an abortion travel agency,” Tuberville argued. “Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin did it using a memo — without congressional approval.”
The legal question is in dispute, with Austin relying on a Justice Department opinion that the “plain text” of the Hyde Amendment only bars federal funds from being used to “perform abortions” but “does not prohibit the use of funds to pay expenses, such as a per diem or travel expenses, that are incidental to the abortion.”
Typically, when there is a disagreement over the meaning or application of a particular law, someone sues, and courts resolve the dispute.
Tuberville, who it should be noted skipped over the judiciary when asked about the three branches of government, believes he knows the law, that Congress has the last word, and that it’s a hill he’s willing to die on.
“Nothing in the law allows Secretary Austin to facilitate elective abortions,” Tuberville said on the Senate floor on April 25. “So this was Secretary Austin’s choice. Secretary Austin thought abortion is more important than his highest-level military nominations. Secretary Austin could end the policy today, and I would lift my hold.”
Tuberville’s unyielding stance has infuriated Democrats who are fellow members of the Armed Services Committee.
“One senator is personally standing in the way of promotions for more than 184 of our top-level military leaders, holding up pay raises for men and women in uniform, blocking key senior military leaders from taking their posts, and jeopardizing America’s national security,” Warren complained in her floor speech. “If he wants to press for votes to reverse DOD’s healthcare policies, he can do that. I will oppose him, but if I lose, and Congress changes the law, then DOD will change its policies. That’s how democracy works.”
Warren’s speech prompted Tuberville to suggest that perhaps the real problem is the U.S. military has too many admirals and generals.
“Today, we have more admirals than we have ships. Yet the Democrat side of the aisle is in a panic that we don’t have enough admirals. It just doesn’t make sense,” Tuberville said. “When my dad served in World War II, we had one general for every 6,000 troops. … Now, we have one general for 1,400 military service members. That is more than four times the ratio of generals to troops.”
That prompted Warren to question his logic.
“I had not been aware that it was a controversial view that our military needs officers in charge of the 5th Fleet or the 7th Fleet,” Warren said. “If the senator from Alabama thinks there should be fewer high-level leaders in the armed forces, he can advance legislation to reform our leadership structures, but blocking leaders from taking the jobs to which they’ve been assigned is reckless.”
Tuberville, who graduated high school in 1972 as the Vietnam War was ending, never served in uniform, but he says his 40 years as a college coach taught him how to build an effective team. (His Senate webpage lists him first as Coach Tommy Tuberville, then as a senator.)
And he rarely misses an opportunity to rail against what he considers divisive “woke” policies promulgated by the Pentagon, including recently complaining that too many Navy ships are named for “politicians and activists” rather than “great Navy battles and heroes of our past.”
“We have a USS Carl Vinson but no USS Enterprise. We have the USS John P. Murtha, but where is the Yorktown?” Tuberville said at a recent Senate hearing in comments directed at Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro.
“In your capacity to name ships, I hope in the future that we get back to naming ships after heroes, people that’s actually done something,” Tuberville told Del Toro. “Our history is told through our battleships and the things that we put names on. Our sailors need to hear and see all these stories.”
Tuberville didn’t mention which “activists” he was objecting to, but the new John Lewis class of replenishment oilers have been named for the late senator and civil rights leader, as well as for Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California; former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth; suffragist and abolitionist Lucy Stone; and Supreme Court Justices Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
At the same hearing, Tuberville expressed his displeasure over a video of a sailor, Lt. j.g. Audrey Knutson, who read a poem she wrote for an “LGBTQ spoken word night” event while deployed on an aircraft carrier.
“This nonbinary officer said the highlight of her deployment on the USS Gerald Ford was reading a poem to the entire ship. I hope we train our officers to prioritize their sailors, not themselves,” Tuberville complained to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday.
Gilday replied that the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier has to build a team “grounded on dignity and respect.”
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“And so, if that officer can lawfully join the United States Navy and is willing to serve and willing to take the same oath that you and I took to put their life on the line, then I’m proud to serve alongside them,” Gilday said.
To which Tuberville replied, “The problem that I’m having is the obsession with race, gender, sex. It’s focused on self; it’s not focused on team. … We don’t need to have a Bud Light moment in the Navy. I mean, we have to build a killing and fighting machine.”
