Senate “Coach” Tuberville Halts Pentagon Promotions And Heads To Biggest Ever Career Loss

Angered that the Pentagon helps America’s warriors and their dependents obtain reproductive care options that are unavailable in certain states, Senate “Coach” Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), is pushing back on America’s military, rebelling against the time-honored, efficient Senate process of “unanimous consent,” where high level military promotions are approved in batches. His gambit puts America’s military in a readiness bind, posing a real risk to national security.

With Tuberville objecting to all military and civilian nominations before the Senate, the Senate has few options than to vote on each officer promotion individually, and that, if current Senate procedures hold, will effectively bring all other Senate business to a halt.

For the Senate, the simple act of voting on military nominees—outside of all the rest of the Senate’s obsolete and time-consuming parliamentarian gobbledygook—would take months. It took the Senate about 2.5 hours to vote on the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. If that vote stands as an example, the Senate will need 40 weeks to vote—just to vote—on the estimated 650 flag and general officers requiring Senate confirmation this year.

And, even if the Senate starts marching through the nominations in some sort of accelerated fashion, there’s no guarantee that a nomination will progress. The process of getting a Senate nomination to a floor vote is still dependent upon other “unanimous consent” agreements that offer Tuberville one chance after another to object, forcing clock-eating “time outs.”

Tuberville, with his obstruction, is protesting a Pentagon policy that lets America’s proud service members request an administrative absence for “non-covered reproductive health services” for themselves—or to accompany their partners—for reproductive health services that could include abortion. The policy provides America’s warriors a transportation allowance to travel to states where, as Alabama’s primary newspaper delicately puts it, “reproductive care is more expansive.”

Reproductive care for the military is a significant need. One in five service members are women, and 80,000 are stationed in areas without access to non-covered reproductive healthcare.

Republican regulation of reproductive healthcare is a big deal for military personnel of all types. For the roughly 369 personnel in Kootenai County, Idaho, those working at the Navy’s critical and secretive Acoustic Research Detachment, will see their reproductive care options shrink in half as Bonner General Health in Sandpoint halts obstetrical services in mid-May. Soon, their only option is to travel south, to the city of Coeur d’Alene, for care. Pregnant Air Force families based in Texas or other states that have restrictive abortion rules (like the family pictured above), shouldn’t worry that, if their pregnancy became medically complicated, they would be without viable care options.

Many of America’s young warriors, at the start of their military career, have few options. With nearly one in four of America’s active-duty warriors experiencing “low food security” and struggling to put food on the table for their families, the modest financial support America’s soldiers get for reproductive health services is a big deal.

Will Tuberville Cause More Damage Than Fat Leonard?

With “up-and-out” rules ready to force non-advancing officers into retirement, the U.S. military depends upon an efficient promotions process. By gumming up the Senate’s confirmation machinery and forcing each flag or general officer promotion to go through a full Senate approval process, Tuberville risks endangering the career of hundreds of deserving officers, hurting military readiness, and harming America’s national security. More than 180 general and flag officer nominations are currently pending, with some 650 general and flag officers requiring Senate confirmation by the end of the year.

Now, Tuberville might be forgiven for overlooking the damage he risks inflicting upon the military by blocking the Senate’s confirmation machinery. In 2013, when the Navy’s “Fat Leonard” scandal—an investigation into bribes paid out to Naval personnel by the corrupt ship support contractor—exploded into public view, it halted promotions for any Navy officer with Pacific Ocean experience. Tuberville, suffering through the final, ignominious stop in a college football career that dropped off sharply after his successes at Auburn in the early 2000s, probably wasn’t paying attention.

For the Navy, the Fat Leonard scandal was catastrophic. While Coach Tuberville took the Cincinnati University Bearcats to a dismal 1-7 record in the American Athletic Conference, investigatory holds were halting the careers of some 450 Navy officers, leading hundreds of hand-picked officers, locked into the Navy’s “up or out” promotion practices, to leave the Navy as they lost their window of opportunity to advance.

If Tuberville’s hostage-taking continues for any length of time, the Senator will end up doing more damage to the Armed Services than Leonard Glenn Francis, the instigator of the “Fat Leonard” scandal. In total, the “Fat Leonard” scandal derailed the careers of sixty admirals as the Navy reviewed their records for a hint of misconduct. Many other officers, their careers in limbo, simply left the service.

A decade later, the losses still rankle, as many consider the Navy lost a generation of experienced leaders to the slow-moving investigatory logjam. With some 650 officers at risk, Tuberville is risking a real catastrophe.

DoD: Throw a Flag on Tuberville’s Play

To defend itself—and to reduce the temptation of other Senators to tinker with military promotions in the future—both the Pentagon and the Democratic Senate leadership should push back by, at first, talking about impacted officers and highlighting their achievements. As military leaders make the rounds through Congress for budget hearings, every question should be met with an explanation of how promotional delays will impact one worthy officer after another.

The Senate, for its part, can start by moving to promote Captain Paul Lanzilotta, the hard-working skipper of the persnickety USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) supercarrier—showing just how hard it is to get a single deserving officer through the promotional process.

The Navy needs Captain Lanzilotta. After completing one of the toughest command tours in the Navy, Paul Lanzilotta deserves promotion. For two hard years, Captain Lanzilotta turned the troubled ship around, leading the aircraft carrier through a barrage of high-profile tests and trials. Hhe finally got the new supercarrier certified for the ship’s “regular” deployment, and, upon the ship’s triumphant post-certification arrival in Norfolk earlier this month, Captain Lanzilotta should have been able to pin on his star and promote to rear admiral right there on the pier, surrounded by his family and crew. It was a heck of an achievement, and Lanzilotta, with his composure and get-it-done attitude, did both the Navy and Nation a great service.

He deserves better.

Without a promotion, Lanzilotta’s future is uncertain. The USS Ford is set to deploy in May, backing up NATO at a critical time. Will the carrier get a new Captain before it deploys? Will Lanzilotta solider on, leading the carrier through a real-world deployment? What will the Navy officer who was tapped to serve as the USS Ford’s next Captain do? Sit in purgatory and watch his career slip away? What will the families do as they sit in limbo? The Navy has yet to answer these questions, but they should, in a very public way, detail the readiness cost, career uncertainty and emotional toll Tuberville is inflicting upon America’s most committed warriors.

If Tuberville continues holding up the Pentagon’s orderly promotional process, both the Senate and the U.S. military have options. While the Pentagon won’t collapse as quite as fast as the Tuberville-led 2008 Auburn Tigers, the Department of Defense should make it very clear—in detailed, personally-relatable ways—that Tuberville’s grand-standing will have real readiness consequences. To do this, the Pentagon should be employing every available public messaging tool they have to explain the costs of Tuberville’s political gamesmanship to America.

Passivity or appeasement will not work. With no push-back or other public consequences, Senators will find the temptation to tinker with the Pentagon’s promotional processes hard to resist. Already, several Senators have moved to support Tuberville’s egregious disservice to worthy service members. According to the Washington Examiner, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Deb Fischer (R-NE), John Thune (R-SD), Ted Budd (R-NC), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Steve Daines (R-MT), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Joni Ernst (R-IA) have all signaled their support. And, now, the standoff shows every sign of dragging on indefinitely, with no plan for a resolution.

There’s a reason why, when ESPN convened “a blue-ribbon panel of 150 media members, administrators, and former players and coaches” to elect the “150 Greatest College Football Coaches of All Time,” Tuberville was left off the list. For Tuberville, showy tactics trump strategy, and has, true to form, embarked on his latest play with no real plan to win. It’s why the Senate’s self-described “Coach” might be headed for another big loss—a loss that only China and Russia will cheer.