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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said a Republican senator’s delay in fast-tracking nearly 200 military promotions poses a “clear risk” to the nation’s military readiness and directly affects the lives of families of service members.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) in March vowed to delay approval of those promotions because of his objection to the Defense Department’s abortion policy. His decision, Austin warned in a letter last week to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), “harms the national security of the United States and hinders the normal operations of the Pentagon.”
“The United States military relies on the deep expertise and strategic expertise of our senior military leaders,” Austin wrote. “The longer this control persists, the greater the risk to the U.S. military in every theater, every domain, and every service.”
Austin has urged the Senate to move forward with the promotions, telling members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in March that the block on military promotions caused a “ripple effect on the force that makes us far less prepared than we we need”.
His letter to Warren was in response to a request from the senator, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee’s personnel subcommittee, to describe how Tuberville’s control directly affects national security.
Withholding, he said, can create feelings of uncertainty among military families because it prevents rising officers from “predicting promotion and rotation windows.” This, he warned, may increase “pressure to leave the military in favor of greater stability.”
Military children can’t transfer to new schools until promotions are confirmed, Austin said, and military spouses can’t accept new jobs “because they can’t predict when they might start.”
The defense secretary explained that officials in key positions, including the chief of staff of the Army and the director of the National Security Agency, will be out of work by rotation in the next four months and that, without promotions, the military cannot replace them. The tenure of service chiefs in the military is limited by law, meaning that incumbents must leave their posts at set times.
Their positions, he said, oversee more than 1.2 million active duty and reserve service members, and, “without these leaders in place, America’s military will incur an unnecessary and unprecedented degree of risk in a time when our adversaries may try to test our resolve.”
“Failure to confirm leaders in key roles shifts strategic risk up the chain of command and forces our units to operate with less experienced decision makers,” Austin wrote. “By destabilizing the senior military rotation and promotion process, we put our short- and long-term readiness at significant risk.”
In March, Tuberville said he would require military promotions to be approved one at a time, rather than in batches — what Congress calls unanimous consent — to protest. a policy approved by Austin that grants three weeks of paid time off and travel reimbursement for service members and dependents if they travel out of state for an abortion.
The move followed last year’s Supreme Court ruling that ended constitutional protections for abortion access granted 50 years earlier in Roe v. Wade.
The freshman senator said Defense Department policy allows the use of taxpayer dollars to terminate pregnancies despite a congressional block on such spending through a decades-old law known as the Hyde Amendment. Tuberville previously said that if the Pentagon wants to spend money on such initiatives, it should be included in the department’s annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act.
Austin, meanwhile, has said the policy is necessary because women make up nearly 20 percent of the military and don’t get to choose where they are stationed.
In a statement Wednesday, Warren said Tuberville is “jeopardizing military readiness and putting our troops at risk.”
“The Secretary of Defense has made it clear that Senate Republicans are harming America’s national security by treating military families as political football players,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) said Austin’s letter to Warren confirms what Democrats have warned: that Tuberville’s scrutiny “is reckless, unprecedented and damaging for our military preparation.”
“Our national security is not a bargaining chip for radical right-wing politics,” he said in a statement. “It is shameful that MAGA Republicans are so determined to eliminate reproductive choice that they are willing to jeopardize America’s standing abroad, the livelihoods of service members, and our military readiness.”
A bipartisan group of seven former defense secretaries, including two who served in President Donald Trump’s administration, said in a letter to Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last week that military preparedness and national security are harmed by Tuberville. maintain defense promotions.
While Democrats have criticized Tuberville’s stance, some Senate Republicans have applauded his effort.
In one piece published on RealClearPolitics on Tuesday, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) said Tuberville is “doing all Americans who value life a great service” by protesting the Pentagon’s abortion policy and “promising to stop promotions at the Pentagon until it stops.”
Azi Paybarah and Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.
