Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Democrats during their lunch on Tuesday that he will file cloture on three key military nominees, which have been delayed for months due to Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s hold, a Senate source familiar told CNN.
Specifically, he will file cloture on the officers nominated to be chief of Naval Operations, Air Force chief of staff, and, notably, the vice commandant of the Marine Corps, according to the source. The source also said Schumer will file cloture on the nominees by close of business Tuesday.
With the current Marine Corps commandant, Gen. Eric Smith, hospitalized, confirming a vice commandant has become more urgent, a fact Schumer noted earlier Tuesday.
“It’s even more apparent that Republicans themselves should get Tuberville to back off what he is doing now more than ever,” Schumer said. “And I hope that they will. What happened with the Marine Corps commandant shows just the reason we should – we don’t know who the next person is who might get ill or whatever. So we need to do everybody and they got to push everybody and we’ll be pushing the Republicans to do that.”
Tuberville has been holding up military promotions since February because of a Department of Defense policy that reimburses travel costs for military members requiring reproductive care outside of the state in which they are stationed. The department enacted the policy after the reversal of Roe v. Wade last year overturned the constitutional right to an abortion and left the issue to individual states.
Under the hold, the Senate can still confirm individual promotions, which the body has done for a few, recent high-profile appointments, but cannot approve hundreds of promotions at once as a time-saving measure, meaning each confirmation takes up valuable floor time.
CNN’s Sam Fossum and Manu Raju contributed to this report.
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