After months of blocking, Senators have confirmed the nomination of General Charles Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The delay is affecting 230 nominations because of a Republican senator from Alabama, who blocked the nominations for months in opposition to Pentagon efforts to assist troops who must travel to receive reproductive health care that is unavailable where they are stationed…
US senators voted Wednesday to confirm General Charles Brown as the country’s next top military officer, one of hundreds of nominations that have been stalled by a lawmaker’s protest against Pentagon abortion access policies.
President Joe Biden selected Brown, who is currently chief of staff of the US Air Force, in May to become chairman after General Mark Milley retires on September 29, and the Senate usually approves military nominations quickly through unanimous consent.
Brown was approved 83-11 and will become the second Black officer to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — after Colin Powell from 1989-1993 — at a time when the Pentagon is headed by Lloyd Austin, the country’s first Black secretary of defense.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer also moved to set up votes on the nominations of General Randy George as chief of staff of the Army and General Eric Smith as commandant of the Marine Corps.
“They should already be serving in their new positions. The Senate should not have to go through procedural hoops just to please one brazen and misguided senator,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, voicing his frustration with Senator Tommy Tuberville.
But Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama who voted against Brown, has blocked that option for months in opposition to Pentagon efforts to assist troops who must travel to receive reproductive health care that is unavailable where they are stationed.
Because of Tuberville’s actions, the Senate can only approve military nominations individually, which takes far longer, calculated to be a total of about 30 days and 17 hours for all of them if lawmakers worked the entire period without stopping, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said in an August 23 memo.
The Defence Department issued the policies earlier this year in response to the 2022 Supreme Court decision striking down the nationwide right to abortion.
They allow service members to take administrative absences to receive “non-covered reproductive health care” and established travel allowances to help them cover costs.
Tuberville still refuses to back down, saying that his “hold will remain in place as long as the Pentagon’s illegal abortion policy remains in place.”
“If the Pentagon lifts the policy, then I will lift my hold,” he said, something the Defence Department has previously insisted it will not do.
Miroslava Salazar, with AFP
