Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville ® said he voted against the nomination of the Pentagon’s next Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman over the military officer’s push to promote “woke policies.”
Tuberville said he objected Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr.’s efforts to recruit and promote racial minorities in the ranks. He argued that such equal opportunity efforts threaten military readiness.
“I heard some things he talked about, about race and things that he wanted to mix into the military,” he told Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power” on Tuesday. “Our military is not an equal opportunity employer. We’re looking for the best of the best to do whatever. We’re not looking for different groups, social justice groups. We don’t want to single-handedly destroy our military from within.”
Tuberville’s comments are not entirely accurate, as the U.S. military since 1948 has had an equal opportunity policy, signed into law by President Truman via an executive order. The effort desegregated the military and guaranteed “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”
In the Senate, things like military promotions are generally done through a process called “Unanimous Consent”. Meaning “We all agree, we don’t need to vote on this.”
This is important for things like military promotions where there may be hundreds of them per year, if the Senate stopped to vote on each and every one of them, nothing else would get done.
BUUUUT… there’s that word “Unanimous”. It has to be all 100 Senators agreeing to move forward and in this case, Tuberville is that 1 in 100.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/15/1187530846/tuberville-senate-rules-abortion-military
So, as far as removing him… There’s a couple of problems with that:
He’s playing by the Senate rules, there’s nothing saying he CAN’T do this, he’s just being an asshole about it.
The only way to remove a sitting Senator is by a 2/3rds vote of the Senate and nobody has a 2/3rds vote. 67 is a high bar and in most cases, they can’t get the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster on a vote.
Oh I see. Very interesting. So he is literally the only one holding it up, it’s not like a group. 99 vs 1.
Quite the predicament. Holding on I dare say in hope a certain Cheeto returns so they can put in their own guys?
That’s the going theory, but also this:
Tuberville is one of the Senators from Alabama, a state known for being notoriously racist.
One of the highest ranking people being blocked is this guy. Huh, you don’t say…
Fortunately the rest of the Senate decided to hold a vote and confirm him anyway, because the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff just can’t be allowed to remain vacant.