Tuberville signals new willingness to cut a deal amid GOP tensions over Pentagon blockade

By Manu Raju, Clare Foran and Sam Fossum, CNN

Sen. Tommy Tuberville for the first time began to crack the door open to a deal that would lift his one-man blockade stalling more than 450 military nominees over his demand that the Pentagon eliminate its abortion policy.

But it’s still uncertain whether the issue will get resolved – and some of the new options the Alabama Republican is considering would likely prompt Democratic opposition. Tuberville said after an hour-long meeting with GOP senators Tuesday he would engage in talks with other Republican senators and a Pentagon official over the next day to see if a compromise can be reached.

Until then, he said, he’s not backing down.

“I’m still dug in,” Tuberville told CNN. “I’m standing up for the unborn,” he added, but he noted: “There’s going to have to be some give-and-take here as we go through this, because there’s 450 out there that haven’t had a promotion.”

Among the ideas under consideration: Filing a lawsuit against the Pentagon to invalidate the policy that provides reimbursements for military personnel traveling out of state for reproductive services including abortions, include provisions to scrap the Pentagon policy in the annual defense authorization bill and move forward with some of the key nominees who need to fill some of the most urgent vacancies.

But the Democratic-led Senate and the White House would almost certainly revolt against including anti-abortion provisions in the annual defense policy bill, something Tuberville dismissed.

“If it stays in there and the Senate passes it, he’ll sign it or we won’t have an NDAA,” Tuberville said of the National Defense Authorization Act, calling it a “bargaining chip.”

Tuberville’s comments come amid a growing pressure campaign from Republicans who have gone public with their concerns that the Alabama senator’s stand is hurting military readiness and undermining national security. And as GOP senators have threatened to cut a deal with Democrats on a temporary change in Senate procedures to work around Tuberville and approve the nominees as a bloc, Tuberville has signaled a new willingness to reach his own accord and try to extract some concessions.

The shift comes as Tuberville for months has said he would only back off his blockade if the Pentagon eliminated its policy unless Congress passed legislation to formally authorize it.

But on Tuesday, he suggested he was open to the possibility of dropping his hold without the Pentagon removing its policy.

“Well that just depends on some of their actions and how they answer some of the questions that I’m gonna ask them,” Tuberville said of the Pentagon. “But no, I’m not willing to drop them right now, no.”

Tuberville said he would meet with a Pentagon official – whom he declined to name – in the next 24 hours. And then he would engage in talks with several GOP senators – namely Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – to see if they can agree to a plan.

But he continued to dismiss arguments from Republicans and military leaders that his stand is having drastic national security implications in the United States.

“I’ve talked to people in the Pentagon and that’s just recently been out of the Pentagon and I’m not worried about that part. I’m really not,” Tuberville said of military readiness. “I worry about people. OK, I worry about the people in the military because they’re somebody that I deeply care about because I’m a military brat.”

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