They’re trying to slowly break the logjam that Tommy Tumorville has put into place. Congrats to the new head of the Navy. She has a degree in journalism, interestingly enough.
To be pedantic for the sake of pedantry I’ll point out her position does not lead the Navy.
Just one of the post Trump waves. Wait till Trump is out of the picture. The Freedom Caucus has a limited life.
Republicans belatedly realize humoring The Coach is making them look weak and feckless, and yields the initiative to the Democratic Caucus to Get Shit Done 
Why do we all assume that Tuberville’s holds have anything to do with abortion, or indeed, any policy at all, rather than the possibility that his purpose is to deliberately hamstring the military so that it can’t effectively oppose Russia or China?
“I went to a lot of meetings at [the Conservative Partnership Institute] and took a lot of classes,” Tuberville said. Ah, so the Coach has been coached.
Good point. Smells like treason.
Because there’s no evidence that his purpose is anything other than what he states?
Well, I’ve read more than one article about how Trump & Co. are doing just that. Putting loyalists in top military positions so that if Trump wins again in 2024, he won’t have too much trouble with us pee ons.
I don’t doubt that you’ve read articles fear mongering to that effect, but as I explained up thread, that’s not how military promotions work.
Tuberville’s actions certainly are a boon to Russia or China, but I can’t see any reason why Tuberville would take that on as a goal.
Most likely, Tuberville’s actions are part of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s plan to execute a coup of the executive branch in the event that a Republican is elected in 2025.
Tuberville’s role is to solve the biggest problem that caused the January 6th coup attempt to fail - the military’s refusal to support Trump. By holding these positions vacant, a Republican president elected in 2025 will be able to fill the military with MAGA loyalists. After that, he won’t need to worry about impeachments or elections or term limits. He rules at his own pleasure.
Project 2025. Get familiar with it. This is what’s coming.
In any (outlandish) scenario where Trump is able to fill the top military ranks with lackeys, the positions being vacant won’t matter. Overriding the will of the branches to fill vacancies requires ignoring DoD policy and, in the case of flag officers, congressional law. If he’s already doing that, ignoring policy and law to fire a few hundred officers first isn’t really a hurdle.
I don’t. I reported the suggestion above that Tuberville was holding things up so that the way would be opened for more compliant officers (those open to a newly-re-elected Trump invoking the Insurrection Act) to be installed. I find the arguments against this unpersuasive. In ordinary times that wouldn’t work. But these are not ordinary times.
There is also public perception to think of. Firing a few hundred officers looks overtly like a political purge. Ramming appointments over DoD policy just looks like cutting through red tape, and is totally consistent with Unitary Executive theory. Steamrolling Congress doesn’t look like steamrolling if Congress accedes to it, especially if the corrupt SCOTUS blesses it.
If you find that this plan is so flawed that only a moron would think it would work, well, let me introduce you to Tommy Tuberville, Donald Trump, and the MAGA posse.
To me this reeks of conspiratorial thinking though, where an organization sufficiently powerful to disregard law, policy, and the courts is somehow beholden to “optics.”
A hypothetical Trump administration capable of creating a puppet military doesn’t need Tommy Tuberville to pretend to care about abortions. If the argument is that Tommy Tuberville is so stupid that he thinks he needs to pretend to care about abortions in order to enable a military coup, then fine. He’d be wrong, but fine. But absent any evidence of what’s going on in the moron’s head, I’m content to take his motivations at face value.
Once they gain power, then optics will no longer be a major concern. But in the precarious situation where they’re trying to gain power, every outcome depends on who they can get to go along with them. It’s easy for Congresspeople to hide behind “you people have been screaming about unfilled vacancies; now we’re filling them as required by law.” Less so when it comes to sacking hundreds of military officers for no reason.
As far as Tuberville’s own motivations I don’t think they’re relevant. He thinks he’s playing one game, he may or may not be aware of the broader strategy. But certainly Project 2025 is no conspiracy theory, it’s an overt effort to concentrate Republican power in the judiciary, and I have to think they’re all aware of it at the very least.
But the manner in which you’re suggesting they could fill those vacancies is illegal. It would immediately end up in court. And they would lose in court because the law is very clear, and the scenario you’re concerned about is one in which the federal courts are full of judges willing to ignore the law. It’s a doomsday scenario, and one in which Tuberville’s antics won’t even make the history books because they’re irrelevant.
My only dog in this fight, as someone who worked general officer promotions for 10 years, is to try to explain to people that just because the President approves officer promotion lists (and sends general/flag officer promotions to the senate for approval), doesn’t mean therefore that the President can just create their own list. I think it’s reasonable for people to hear about the process and assume that it’s just like a President filling cabinet vacancies, where they can pretty much pick any human being they want and send it to the senate. Military promotions don’t work like that because Congress has dictated how that process works and carved out a very narrow role for the president in that process. This is not common knowledge and it’s getting lost in the discussion and fear-mongering.
Project 25 is touched on in this Pit thread, but I not only agree; I think it’s worthy of its own thread.
Maybe I’ll take the time to start it.
Let’s say that happened. Who or what enforces the court order in that case? The public optics of the situation are that we have a cadre of flag officers nominated by the Commander in Chief and confirmed by the Senate. Are they going to give up power based on the bleatings of a district court?
I appreciate what you’re saying here, I have learned new things based on what you’ve written above. But I remain less concerned that Tuberville is exploiting a loophole in the normal lawful order (apparently not the case), but rather that he is helping build a permission structure to transition to an abnormal order in which 2/3 branches agree on who is in charge of the military, and nobody has a problem with it except for a federal judge and the political minority. It seems to me that this would stand a good chance of becoming the “new normal”.
Remember Trump & Co are not aiming for a Constitutionally compliant return to power here. They are looking for chinks in the armor, any way they can create public confusion hat can be developed into an exceptional “temporary measure for the duration of the crisis”, and then make sure the crisis endures indefinition.
Well if it helps set your mind at ease about Tuberville, most general officers are non-operational, and there’s little value to a dictator in making sure the handful of executive-level military positions in charge of, say, cybersecurity policy are under your thumb. They’re important, which is why we need to fill those positions, but they’re not gonna command troops during a coup.
If your goal is to have a couple of battalions at your beck and call in order to round up political dissidents, you just need a couple of sycophantic colonels and a handful of officers between them and POTUS willing to look the other way. I’m not an expert in dictatorships but having an “elite” group of loyalists seems more standard than completely purging the “deep state” from military leadership. That’s probably the opposite of setting your mind at ease, but it’s the scenario I’m much more worried about.