Senate Bypasses Tuberville, Approves All Military Promotions

The Senate on Saturday approved, by unanimous consent, all nominations for military promotions on the Secretary’s desk for the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.

According to the Senate Record, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for the unanimous consent motion “with no intervening action or debate, that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations,” and that President Joe Biden be “immediately notified of the Senate’s actions.”

The Senate Record lists hundreds of names of the promoted military members.

The move sidestepped a months’-long block from Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., over the Defense Department’s abortion-access policies. It comes as Schumer in recent weeks has been working around Tuberville’s objections by bringing individual nominations for full Senate votes, including last week when Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. of the Air Force was confirmed as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The move was reported on X, formerly known as Twitter, Saturday night by the Senate Press Gallery.

Tuberville has not yet commented on the Senate’s actions, but late last week, he told Newsmax that he would keep up his protest against military promotions for another year, if necessary, to fight “wokeness” in the Pentagon.”

“They have not been told no for three years since Biden’s taken office and [Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer has been the leader,” Tuberville said of Senate Democrats. “But that being said, they got to learn how to take no, because I’ve not changed my mind.”