Sen. Tommy Tuberville speaks to reporters in the Senate subway at the US Capitol on July 10, 2023
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The Pentagon allowed service members to get reimbursed for leaving the state to access abortion care post-Roe v. Wade.
In response, GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville has blocked more than 300 service members from getting promoted.
In a recent podcast, he doubled down and said “I don’t care if they promote anybody to be honest with you.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who’s singlehandedly blocked hundreds of military promotions in protest over the Pentagon’s abortion policies, said he’s not going to change his mind and doesn’t care that people aren’t being promoted.
After the US Supreme Court reversed decades of precedent in overturning its decision in the Roe v. Wade abortion access case in 2022, the Pentagon announced its plan to reimburse service members who need to travel out-of-state to receive abortion services.
Tuberville, a Republican senator out of Alabama, took exception to the decision and said he’d use his power to stymie any military nominations and promotions he could. Since February, he’s blocked more than 300 promotions.
Appearing on the podcast “The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show” on Thursday, Tuberville doubled down on his promise because the White House and Pentagon have refused to change the policy.
“I don’t care if they promote anybody to be honest with you,” Tuberville said. “We’ve got 44 four-star generals right now. We only had seven during World War II. So I think we were a little overloaded to begin with.”
Speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in July, Tuberville said “there is nobody more military than me” and noted he wouldn’t be blocking promotions if he thought it affected military readiness or recruitment.
As Tuberville downplays the situation, Pentagon officials have said that the hundreds of military vacancies has created “unnecessary and unprecedented” risks for the country.