The NPR Politics Podcast - Republicans Turn On Tuberville Over Military Blockade

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Senate colleagues are frustrated with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who continues to block appointments to the military chain of command as a form of protest over policy allowing servicemembers to reproductive care.And, efforts to castigate three House members fell short.This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, political correspondent Susan Davis, Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman, and congressional reporter Eric McDaniel.The podcast is edited by Casey Morell. It is produced by Elena Moore and Jeongyoon Han. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. This is Jack here in Washington, D.C., and after six months of applying and more than 100 job applications, I still do not have a full-time job. This podcast was recorded at 12.53 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, November 2nd, 2023. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be applying all over and hoping for some good news soon. All right, enjoy the show. Oh, I hope a ship comes in soon. I hope so, man. Yeah. I graduated during the recession and look, I made it through.

Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Tom Bowman. I cover the Pentagon. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And today we're going to take a look at Congress, where there's always seemingly something going on. We'll start in the Senate, where a battle continues to wage over appointing military leadership. Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, is holding things up, much to the continued annoyance of the rest of the Senate and increasingly his own conference. Sue, why don't you tell us the backstory here? What's he up to?

So Senator Tuberville has used his power to block now hundreds of military promotions and appointments, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the military or national security. It's been an active protest against the Biden administration's abortion policy as it pertains to service members. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and many states have now enacted essentially near total bans on abortion services, the Biden administration announced a policy that would allow service members to time off and reimbursement if they had to travel out of state to receive abortion services. Tommy Tuberville opposes this. He does not believe that the president had the

authority to do that, that it should take an act of Congress to enact that kind of policy. And as a result, he has had this blockade on military promotions, which he says he will not let up on until the Biden administration rolls back that policy. The Biden administration is not going to do that. And despite increasing and continued pressure, Senator Tuberville says the blockade will hold. Yeah. And I'm assuming some Senate rules like weirdness is afoot here. But how is it that one person can hold all of this up? Oh, the beauty of the United States Senate. You know, each senator has power to gum up the works and he is putting a hold, a personal hold on all of these nominations and promotions. What's controversial about this, and all senators at various times will use this power, is doing it in mass and doing it on, I would say, relatively non-controversial nominations. Senators in both parties tend

to not like to use the military as a political issue on other debates. And so his move has kind of offended the sensibilities of the Senate and of senators in both parties. But what he's doing is a pretty standard power that all senators have. And Tom, is this having like any real impacts on the leaders here? Well, you know, it is. There are two issues here. There's readiness, which is, is the military trained and ready to fight and lead? That's one of the big issues. So for example, you have someone like General Eric Smith, top Marine Corps officer, doing his job and then his deputy's job at the same time. And then you have people trying to retire, others being told stay put because a replacement can't move to a new job. They haven't

been confirmed by the Senate. And then we're told, for example, a senior officer slated for promotion, get this, is thinking about just retiring because he's done with all of this. It's been going on for nine months. So it is disruptive. The other issue is families. And people tell me that's even worse because you can't plan. So, you know, if I'm supposed to get a job, if I move from Norfolk, Virginia to Hawaii, my spouse might have a job teaching and now they pulled a plug on that. So the spouse has to reject the job and you can't put your kids enrolled in a new school because you thought you're going to Hawaii, but you're not. So they just multiply that times hundreds.

And it's very disruptive for the family. So there are two reasons, readiness as well as family problems. Tom, can I ask, though, is it fair to say, because Senator Tuberville has made this argument, that military readiness is not affected by his blockade. But what you're saying is there does have almost a morale effect, an HR effect, an internal effect on the military. Right. Well, first of all, he's never served in the military. He really doesn't know. And I'm talking to generals group, you know, a number of weeks ago, he said, listen, I work from 530 in the morning to 1130 at night. This is, his word, unsustainable. He had a heart attack a few days ago. And the families asked for privacy.

They say he's in stable condition. But Senator Jack Reed, the Democrat, the Armed Services, he said there's no question that his working two jobs contributed to his heart attack. Yeah. And, you know, you had mentioned, Sue, that, you know, his Senate colleagues are a fan of him using the military sort of as a pawn in this larger political fight. But I assume also the public's not really a fan of that either. I think this has largely been an inside the beltway argument for now. But when things like the commandant of the Marine Corps having a heart attack happen, it does refocus the conversation. I think that's why we're having this conversation now, because... Let's be brutally honest. The only reason they're going to the floor, the Republicans, and making this argument and getting really steamed up about it is because the commandant had a heart attack. So the bottom line is this. A senior officer

has a heart attack. So basically, the Senate can finally do its job. Yeah. But even now they can't because a group of Republican senators did go to the floor. They did try to create sort of a push, an internal party push against Senator Tuberville trying to bring up these nominations. He continued to block them all. And so he really is sparking a lot of anger, increasing amounts of anger from senators like Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Senators, I would note that unlike Senator Tuberville, do have some element of military service. Right. And again, this heart attack pushed this issue. So finally, today, the Senate approved Admiral Linda Franchetti to be the top Navy officer. She was just approved. And the

census today, they will approve Officer General David Alvin to be the top Air Force officer. And also, it looks like they're going to also approve Lieutenant General Chris Mahoney. It looks like they will approve him as well to be the number two Marine officer. So there is movement. And Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he will hold votes on just some of the most important officers. So that's what we're seeing now. And that's an important distinction. It's not that the Senate can't bring any of these to the floor. They can. But when senators are invoking these powers, they just slow it down tremendously. When you're not giving unanimous consent to move through

big swaths of them, it could dominate the Senate floor. Well, Sue, that makes me wonder, like, what is the way out of this? I mean, is it really just up to Tuberville changing his mind? Well, if it's up to Tuberville changing his mind, I don't think that's going to happen. I mean, he's already been under a sustained pressure campaign for weeks and weeks and months and months, and he does not seem interested in budging. What Senate Democrats are looking at is potentially changing the rules of the Senate. They do have a resolution that would allow the Senate to basically push through a lot of these military promotions in short order. It would only be a rules change for this Congress, so it nine Republicans to cross parties and join support. Right now, they don't have those votes. Could that change if this pressure campaign, if things continue to build, if Republicans start to feel pressure from, you know,

many people in the military, many of them they're very close with? So it's possible that could happen. But as of today, it doesn't seem quite yet like Republicans are willing to break ranks and join with Democrats on a rules change. And also one other thing, too, this issue of reimbursing service members for abortion procedures, this is not going to go away because the House defense bill, which was already passed, that includes a prohibition of reimbursing for travel. The Senate bill does not. That'll have to be worked out in conference. But it's possible we could not have a defense authorization bill. And one of the problems there is you have $15 billion in military contracts that cannot be approved. And there are a lot of Republicans who

don't like the politics of saying a defense bill couldn't get passed over abortion policy. Well, that's a good place to leave it. Okay, Tom, thanks for being here. And thank you for your reporting. Awesome. Sue, you stick around and we'll be right back after this. And we're back. And now we're going to head over to the other part of Congress, the House of Representatives, and we're going to bring in NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. Hey, Eric. Hi there. Should we make a bigger deal about this being Eric's first time on the podcast? I don't think I can just like let this go without noting.

Well, on the other side of the podcast, yeah. We should note, Eric McDaniel, first time on the NPR Politics podcast. Guys, I'm happy to be here. And we're here to talk about the House that is back to work after electing a speaker last week, and they took up two different measures last night to try and punish their own members. Let's start with New York Republican George Santos. There was an attempt to kick him out of the House altogether. That failed. Eric, why don't you tell us what was behind that? So as you might know by now, Representative George Santos, he's a freshman Republican from

New York, and he has been federally indicted on an array of fraud charges. And so some of the first term congressmen in New York, first term Republicans, introduced a resolution to try to fire him from Congress Congress, and it didn't even get a simple majority. It seems to me like members want to wait until they either see some results for the criminal process or at least Congress's own ethics investigation. There was a letter that came out earlier this week from the notoriously quiet Ethics Committee that said they have a report coming out later this month on Santos. Sue, I know you can probably speak to this, but I don't know that know you can probably speak to this, but, you know, I don't know that the New York Republicans who introduced this necessarily thought it was going anywhere. No, it is important to note a couple of things. One, that this was driven by fellow New York Republican freshman lawmakers, many of whom will face

potentially competitive races next year. And the Republican apparatus in New York has essentially abandoned Santos, called for him to leave office. They think he could be a political anchor for their own reelection ambitions. So there was a bit of some self-survival politics going on here that were beyond Santos. And look, members of Congress just don't get expelled. This is not a typical thing that happens in America. Only in the House of Representatives, only five lawmakers have ever been removed by the will of the people. That is why elections happen every two years. There's an argument that, you know, obviously the courts are going to have their say, but voters ultimately should have the say on who represents them. And it might be up to the voters of New York to decide whether or not George Santos should continue to represent them,

because his trial date isn't going to be until late 2024. So unless they do successfully vote to expel him before then, he is likely to be running for reelection. And that is not something that anyone can prevent him from doing. Yeah. And then it'll be up to voters. And then there was another measure introduced by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to censure Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. A censure, by the way, is basically a way for the House to openly criticize members, not exactly, you know, kick them out. What were the grounds for censuring Congresswoman Tlaib? So Green was upset about some remarks the Congresswoman made to a protest group at the Capitol. Tlaib was criticizing Israel, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In the end,

though, this push by Green didn't even come up for a vote on the censure itself. There was a move to table it from Democrats, which passed because 20-some Republicans joined along with the Democrats in the vote to table, setting it aside. Afterwards, Greene was upset. She turned to X to put her colleagues on blast, you know, naming and shaming them for sort of supporting Democrats. Part of what's funny about this is that she's attacking people like Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, saying that they're not sufficiently Republican enough. Like a lot of these Republicans who voted to table it are clearly very conservative lawmakers. One could also argue that traditional conservatives have pretty broad views about the freedom of speech. And that was one of the defenses here. Look, like Rashida Tlaib is a member and there

is a view among lawmakers that like, look, this is what they're allowed to do. Like members are allowed to have views that you disagree with. They're allowed to have views that might publicly be distasteful, but censuring them and censure by design is supposed to be one of the more shameful ways you can punish a sitting member of Congress without removing them from office. It doesn't ultimately have any effect, but it's by design is supposed to be a sort of a public shaming. And this idea that you start censuring lawmakers every time they say something that the opposing party doesn't agree with is similarly like a very slippery slope for Congress to get into. So in some ways, tabling this resolution and not expelling George Santos combined is like cooler heads prevailed in a lot of this recriminations and anger on Capitol Hill, like doing the impulsively angry thing didn't succeed this week. And ultimately, that's probably the better thing for the institution. On the other side of this, though, Ashley, I'm not sure it's a great sign for the mood of the House Republican Party right now. No one is going to be surprised that they face some chaos over the last three or four weeks as they try to select a speaker. And yes, Marjorie Taylor Greene is already known as sort of a firebrand. But now they have to do hard things like pass an Israel aid bill, keep the government open.

And the House Republicans are going to have to stick together to do that. And here's Greene sort of calling them out one by one online. So how unusual is it for a member of Congress to be censured? It's more common than expulsion, but it usually is pretty rare, although it's happening with more frequency. They've seen it just this year. Republicans voted to censure Adam Schiff, the Democrat from California, for the way he had spoken about Donald Trump in relations to Russia in the past. That has been a key focal point for Republicans and obviously the former president. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, was censured by Democrats in the prior Congress for posting things on social media that showed violence towards Democratic member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So it has certainly become more common, but I think it's also become more common as relations between the two parties have broken down, especially since the January 6th

attack on the Capitol. What do you think it says that all these things failed? Does this mean like everybody loves each other now? Bipartisanship is back. The Congress is going to be devoid of chaos from here on out. Yep, that's exactly what it means. One of the things that I think is important on Santos is the expulsion vote failed now, but it doesn't mean that it will fail forever. Normally, and when I say normally, there are two modern examples of this. In order to actually expel a member from Congress, it usually requires one of two things, and usually both. A criminal conviction in a court of law,

which has not happened yet for George Santos, and he continues to plead not guilty. And the court resolution on that could take some time. Or an official recommendation by the Ethics Committee. It is a bipartisan, evenly divided panel. And if they put out a report on Santos that says, we have done our own investigation, and we as a bipartisan committee recommend expulsion from the chamber, that is also the basis that Congress could use to have another expulsion vote. Now, if ethics puts out a report and says we have concluded that this person is bringing disgrace upon the House and should not serve even before a court weighs in, then that vote could fundamentally change because it would give lawmakers a justification to vote to expel.

I would say that I think the ethics committee would probably be reluctant to recommend expulsion before someone has had their day in court. That is also a pretty uncomfortable precedent that a lot of lawmakers are looking around thinking maybe that's not the standard they want to set. But ethics has said that they're going to put out a report in a couple weeks. So there might be an answer to this question sooner rather than later. Yeah, we'll keep an eye out. All right. Well, let's leave it here for the day. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Eric McDaniel. I cover Congress.

And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.