President Joe Biden issued a strong condemnation of Sen. Tommy Tuberville's (R-AL) hold on Department of Defense nominations that is leaving hundreds of positions vacant.
Since February, the Alabama senator has denied the Senate the ability to confirm military nominees via unanimous consent due to a Pentagon policy that pays for the travel expenses of troops or their dependents seeking an abortion out of state due to restrictive laws where they are deployed.
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Tuberville's hold, which has prevented roughly 250 promotions to date, reached new significance this week as the head of the Marines, Gen. David Berger, retired, leaving his deputy, Gen. Eric Smith, to handle both roles until he's confirmed to lead the service branch.
Biden, who was in Finland on Thursday meeting with Nordic leaders, said he'd meet with Tuberville "if I thought there was any possibility he would change his ridiculous position."
He urged Senate Republicans to apply pressure in hopes that Tuberville will relent.
"He's jeopardizing U.S. security with what he's doing," Biden said. "I expect the Republican Party to stand up, stand up, and do something about it. It's in their power to do that. The idea that we don't have a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the idea we have all these promotions that are in abeyance right now, we don't know what's going to happen. The idea that we're injecting into fundamental foreign policy decisions what, in fact, is a domestic social debate on social issues is bizarre."
"I don't recall that ever happening, ever. It's just totally irresponsible in my view," he added.
Biden appeared to confuse Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, whose term ends in October. Biden nominated Secretary of the Air Force Charles Q. Brown Jr. to succeed Milley, and his departure from his current role creates another vacancy among the Joint Chiefs.
Berger's retirement is the first of what could amount to five vacancies on the Joint Chiefs in the coming months, though Tuberville has said he believes Brown will get confirmed.
The Alabama senator has argued the Department of Defense overstepped its authority with the policy it implemented following the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, which quickly resulted in a slew of restrictive abortion bills becoming law in conservative states.
In light of those laws, the department announced a policy in which it would reimburse service members for the travel expenses incurred should they need to travel out of state for an abortion.
The Pentagon is not allowed to pay for the abortions themselves, though Republicans say the policy amounts to a workaround.
Tuberville has maintained that Senate Democrats who are against his protest could navigate around it by voting on each military promotion individually instead of in large batches by unanimous consent.
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Doing so for a handful of promotions, such as the vacancies on the Joint Chiefs, wouldn't take too much time, but Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said this week it would take roughly 84 days to vote through every promotion if lawmakers did so exclusively for eight hours a day.
Neither the department nor Tuberville has shown a willingness to stand down.