The Senate is scrambling to pass its Pentagon policy bill before August, but there’s another mission afoot: Defusing Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) hold on dozens of military promotions.
It’s not a breakthrough yet but on Tuesday night Tuberville sounded surprisingly receptive to the ongoing talks with the Biden administration.
Tuberville said he spoke with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday, the latest in a series of conversations regarding his hold — a protest of the Pentagon’s policy to give paid leave to service members seeking an abortion.
“I’ve got no timetable. They could nix it today if they wanted to and just go back to the regular policy, and then we could work this out,” Tuberville said. At the suggestion that he could also just release his holds, he blanched: “I’m not the one breaking the law.”
Still, Tuberville sounded newly amenable to a solution: “We’re going to work this out. There’s got to be some give and take here.”
The Pentagon will brief the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday regarding the abortion policy.
Senate Republicans are already plotting a push to vote on blocking the abortion policy during debate on the Pentagon bill that’s now on the floor — similar to what’s already passed the House.
Tuberville said he doesn’t “want to hold up” the Pentagon bill over his abortion concerns, but he didn’t rule out the possibility that an amendment vote would move things along. The House-passed language blocking the policy is “pretty strong,” he said.
The politics of that option: If Democrats seek to satisfy Tuberville with a simple-majority Senate vote on blocking the abortion policy — which is hardly a given — they would likely be able to defeat it with full attendance. But it could be a close one.
And Tuberville’s been reluctant to take a failed vote as any sign of progress, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
A version of this initially appeared in the July 19 edition of the Huddle newsletter. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox going forward.