Pentagon seeks to increase pressure on Tuberville to break hold on military nominations

By Oren Liebermann and Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — The Pentagon is seeking to increase pressure on Sen. Tommy Tuberville in an attempt to break the Alabama Republican’s one-man hold on hundreds of senior military nominations.

The effort includes back-channel conversations with Congress and members of the key oversight committees, but also a public campaign to increase awareness of the effects of the holds on the military and its families.

“Hill leadership knows this is a problem,” a Defense official told CNN.

As of July 7, Tuberville’s hold was impacting 265 senior military officers. An internal assessment put together by the Pentagon and obtained by CNN says the holds affect the families of 84 officers awaiting confirmation, including officers who have paid out of pocket to move their families, military spouses who have left their jobs anticipating new assignments, and children unable to enroll in new schools.

The Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, Sabrina Singh, highlighted several of these examples at a press briefing Monday.

“This is having an incredible impact not just to our general and flag officers but to our families,” Singh said, “and we certainly urge Senator Tuberville to lift these holds.”

The assessment has been shared with lawmakers and is expected to be updated weekly as the number of holds grows. By the end of the year, Defense officials expect more than 600 senior officers to be up for nomination, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other top military leaders.

Publicizing the assessment and the effects the holds have on military families is a way of generating awareness of the blocked nominations, the defense official said, and the military services are compiling the increasing the numbers.

“We obviously keep up the pressure, because we don’t want anyone to forget about it,” the Defense official said.

Speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday, Tuberville insisted he is not blocking confirmations and that the Senate had plenty of time to take up the nominees.

“I’m just stopping them from confirming hundreds at a time,” Tuberville said. “They can confirm as many as they want, during the day. We’re just sitting around, twiddling our thumbs most of the time during the week and should be confirming people.”

Though Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has only spoken once with Tuberville, the senator said, the Pentagon’s legislative affairs team has been in regular contact with the Hill and the Senate Armed Services Committee, where the nominations are stalled. Tuberville has not backed down from maintaining his block on nominations as he protests the Defense Department’s reproductive health policies, claiming there is no impact on national security and no risk to US military readiness.

“I’m not gonna change my approach,” Tuberville said Monday.

Instead, Defense officials are trying to get Republican senators to put pressure on Tuberville to lift his holds. Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday that “We need these officers in place.” Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, has said in the past that Tuberville’s hold “is not the best way to go about it.”

But the criticism has done little to shift Tuberville’s position.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a US Army veteran who sits on the Armed Services Committee, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on “AC360” that while she wishes more of her Republican colleagues would speak up, it may not push Tuberville off of his stance.

“Now listen, Republican leader McConnell has spoken up and said that he does not support this, so I don’t think you can have a more influential Republican than the leader of their own caucus in the Senate, and yet [Tuberville] has rejected that,” she said.

The Illinois Democrat added that “at a time when we have troops who are in harm’s way defending and protecting our nation, to not have a commandant of the Marine Corps who can exercise his full duties of commandant is destructive to this nation’s national security, and it all is laid at Sen. Tuberville’s feet.”

The hold disrupts what is typically a routine process of confirming hundreds of military nominations at once known as unanimous consent. With Tuberville’s hold in place, the Senate would need to take each nomination to the floor for an individual vote, which could take months and hundreds of hours of floor time to complete. 

“It’s a Senate question, and it’s really a Republican question,” the Defense official told CNN.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown, whose nomination to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is on hold, was asked about the effects of the holds repeatedly in his confirmation hearing Tuesday. Brown spoke about the impacts on military readiness and retention, as well as the cascading effects on junior officers who can’t get promoted because of a blocked spot.

“The area that hits us, I think that we do need to think about is how it impacts our families, because it has an impact not just for the senior officer, but you know, all their staff and all those below them it has an impact,” Brown said in response to a question from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

On Monday, Austin reiterated those concerns at the relinquishment of command ceremony for Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps Commandant. Berger’s nominated successor, Gen. Eric Smith, has not yet been confirmed alongside the more than 200 other military officers stalled in Tuberville’s hold. 

Austin said Monday that smooth transitions of leadership “are central to the defense of the United States,” and crucial “for our military readiness” and “our military families.” 

“[O]ur military families give up so much to support those who serve. So they shouldn’t be weighed down with any extra uncertainty,” Austin said. “We have a sacred duty to do right by those who volunteer to wear the cloth of our nation. And I remain confident that all Americans can come together to agree on that basic obligation to those who keep us safe. I am also confident that the United States Senate will meet its responsibilities.” 

This story has been updated with additional details.

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CNN’s Jack Forrest contributed to this report.