Tuberville’s blockade of promotions is over. Military trust gap lingers.

Just hours after Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama agreed to lift his monthslong hold on U.S. military promotions for admirals and generals Tuesday, the Senate confirmed more than 400 of them by voice vote.

The hold had been in place since February – when the Republican senator started a personal protest against a Department of Defense policy on access to abortion. Roughly a dozen four-star officers still await confirmations, which appear likely to move forward by individual Senate votes.

The challenge ahead, analysts say, will be rebuilding trust with a U.S. military community that had been deeply affected by the political move, but that suffered largely in silence for fear of jeopardizing their loved ones’ chances of moving up through the ranks.

At issue in the dispute was a Pentagon policy, adopted last year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, that offers travel funds for troops and their dependents who seek abortions, when the procedure is no longer legal in the states where they live. Senator Tuberville blocked high-level officer promotions as a form of protest. (He argued the travel funding violates the Hyde Amendment, which largely bars the federal government from paying for abortions).  

The top officer of the United States, Gen. C.Q. Brown, warned lawmakers last July that in the midst of a recruiting crisis, Senator Tuberville’s block on promoting top talent could prompt dedicated officers to leave the service, in part due to nudges from their families.

In the intervening months, examples of that have come to pass, says Kathy Roth-Douquet, co-founder and chief executive officer of Blue Star Families, an advocacy group that has surveyed some 100,000 service members and their spouses since 2009.

Most recently, the organization has seen an increase in the likelihood of officers saying they are considering leaving the service. 

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (left) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer arrive at the Senate Rules Committee, to work on the monthslong blockade of military promotions by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 14, 2023.

They have also become less inclined to encourage their children and other family members to serve – a particular problem given that recruits are far more likely to sign up when they are close to someone who’s been in the military.

These shifts are “frustrating and poignant,” Ms. Roth-Douquet says, and point to a “pervasive sense of discouragement that our military cannot afford to have.” 

She describes how some have seen their spouses, for example, quit their jobs in anticipation of a move only to find themselves staying put and unemployed. In other cases, subordinates – also affected by the holds – have sold their homes and are scrambling to find expensive temporary housing.

Ms. Roth-Douquet recalls one family whose high school-age child couldn’t join the sports team at his prospective new school because of these delayed moves. This in turn could prevent him, and other military children, from getting recruited for college sports scholarships. Others have struggled to find care for children with disabilities, which requires advanced planning and often navigating long wait lists. 

Allison Jaslow, an Iraq War veteran and CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, recalls an encounter she had this summer with Senator Tuberville as she endeavored to explain these sorts of experiences to him.

“He was very dismissive. He tried to minimize the number of promotions within the larger population of the force,” she says. “But if you’re one of those officers or one of those families, it means a lot to you. ... These are the best among us, and they were caught in the middle of a Washington political fight as punching bags.”

Many military officers and affected family members have declined to speak on the record about the issue. 

This is not only because they don’t want to jeopardize promotions their loved ones have worked their entire careers to achieve, but also because “we don’t want to draw attention to the fact that this makes us less safe,” as holds have left some military units awaiting top leaders at sub-optimal readiness levels, Ms. Roth-Douquet adds.

Now that the holds have largely been lifted, elected officials need to work to rebuild trust, advocates say.

“I think [service members] probably have a pretty well-formed opinion of Senator Tommy Tuberville at this point, but I hope they can feel a little better about his colleagues who helped resolve this,” Ms. Jaslow says. 

Ms. Roth-Douquet, for her part, suspects that Senator Tuberville is a “decent man.” But, she adds, “I believe he simply doesn’t know the pain” and damage the holds have done, reflecting the oft-cited civilian-military divide between the fewer than 1% of Americans who serve in the armed forces and elected officials who by and large do not.