All posts tagged: Tuberville’s action

Senators Need to Stop Abusing the ‘Hold’ Procedure

Senators Need to Stop Abusing the ‘Hold’ Procedure

What is a “hold” in the Senate? This is not a question that many casual observers of American politics would normally ask. But Tommy Tuberville, the senator from Alabama, has made it a more urgent one with his blanket hold on all key military promotions that have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Tuberville’s action, now in its seventh month, has kept hundreds of military leaders, including top officials, in limbo, doing real harm to the nation’s armed forces. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told CNN, Tuberville is “playing Russian roulette with the very lives of our service members by denying them the opportunity to actually have the most experienced combat leaders in those positions to lead them in times of peace and in times of combat.” The three top service secretaries wrote jointly in The Washington Post earlier this month, decrying what Tuberville is doing. No specific rule created the Senate-hold procedure; it is a custom, but one that flowed from the rules of a legislative body that values consensus …