Schumer takes on Tuberville's blockade, teeing up votes on top military picks

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has teed up votes for Wednesday night to advance three top military nominees who have been jammed up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville — a reversal after the Democratic leader said for months he wouldn’t hold standalone votes on confirmations.

But with the Alabama Republican forcing his hand, Schumer filed cloture, a procedural motion to end debate, on three of President Joe Biden's senior picks — Gen. C.Q. Brown to be Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Randy George to be Army chief of staff and Gen. Eric Smith to be Marine commandant.

The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon to cut off debate on Brown’s nomination, followed by a vote in the evening to confirm him and then pivot to the other two nominees. Schumer locked in the votes after Tuberville said he wouldn’t stand in the way, portraying the Democratic leader’s push to hold votes as a cave.

The move comes as Tubervilleplanned to force his own cloture vote on Smith's nomination to lead the Marine Corps, which could have placed Democrats in the awkward position of blocking Biden’s nominees.

The votes on Wednesday do nothing to help the hundreds of senior officers who remain in limbo, however. Tuberville has for months blocked quick confirmation of general and flag officer promotions in a bid to force the Pentagon to overturn its policy that covers the costs of troops who travel to obtain abortions. The number of frozen nominations now exceeds 300 officers.

The blockade has wreaked havoc up and down the military ranks. Three spots on the Joint Chiefs — the top posts in the Army, Navy and Marines — are being filled temporarily by those services’ No. 2 officers after the service chiefs retired without Senate-confirmed replacements. George and Smith will be confirmed to jobs they’re already holding on an acting basis as the vice chief of staff and assistant commandant, respectively.

Two more Joint Chiefs picks are also caught in the chaos, Adm. Lisa Franchetti to lead the Navy and Gen. David Allvin to be Air Force chief. Both are waiting to advance through the Armed Services Committee before the Senate can confirm them.

Following Schumer’s announcement, Tuberville said he won't block same-day confirmation votes on the trio of Joint Chiefs picks on Wednesday.

“Individually? Let’s bring them tonight,” Tuberville said. “As long as we go through cloture, as long as we do them individually, not as a group, I’m good with it.”

Tuberville, who has argued that Democrats can simply vote to confirm officers individually, called Schumer's move a win. Democrats have until Wednesday rejected the possibility of confirming individual nominees, which would fuel Tuberville’s argument that he isn’t actually preventing anyone from being confirmed. They have also said that approving nominees individually politicizes the moves, and that this is Republicans’ mess to clean up.

“We’ve been saying this for months, we call them out and they blink," Tuberville said. “I asked them to do this and they’re doing it. That’s a win.”

The confirmations would mark only incremental progress toward breaking the larger logjam. The remainder of the nominees awaiting confirmation would still be subject to Tuberville’s blanket hold, creating the logistical burden of holding separate votes on each officer.

Still, voting on all nominees individually would be impractical and require the Senate to do nothing besides confirming promotions that are typically approved in large groups with little controversy.

Schumer said Wednesday's move was done in response to Tuberville's holds, and argued the Alabama Republican is "forcing us to confront his obstruction head-on."

"The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the senior senator from Alabama," Schumer said.

Tuberville’s move to force a cloture vote is rare for a member of the minority party. Arnold Punaro, a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, condemned Tuberville’s move as “a very serious breach of conventions,” noting that typically only the Senate majority leader invokes cloture.

Punaro said the decision to use cloture for military confirmations will set “a bad precedent” and politicize the process.

“I was around when they did cloture for the first federal judge and said ‘we're not going to do it again.’ And now 100 percent are having to go through cloture to get [judges] confirmed in a Republican or Democratic administration,” Punaro said. “We politicized the federal judiciary. We certainly don’t want to politicize the military promotion process, which is sacrosanct.”