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Tuberville Refuses Responsibility but Says He’s Blocking 300 Military Promotions Because ‘We’re Not a Communist Country’
U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville‘s list of blocked military promotions has now reached over 300, he’s being rebuked by Democrats and Republicans alike, including GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and now he’s refusing to take responsibility for the blockade while insisting he’s put the hold on hundreds of officers because “we’re not a communist country.”
The Alabama freshman Republican Senator, who single-handedly has been blocking the required Senate confirmations since February for what reportedly are now 319 promotions, says Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is to blame. He told Bloomberg News each military officer’s promotion takes two hours of voting by the Senate, which could take them up individually despite his block. Tuberville said voting on all the promotions would take “no time at all” to complete.
“I want to ask you another question about national security and the readiness,” a Bloomberg News reporter told Tuberville. “Though we do have at the moment a position that is affected by this, it has to do with a new task force when it comes to intercontinental ballistic missiles. There is a name that has been floated for a nomination and even if it is not that individual is to two star general position, which means the Senate would have to vote on it. Isn’t that quite concerning, given what we are seeing from the position of what’s happening in Russia and as well as what’s happening in Beijing?”
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“Yeah,” Sen. Tuberville responded, “it’s quite concerning. Bring him to the floor. And it take two hours to confirm it. I mean, that’s all I’m asking. Chuck Schumer needs to do his job. You know, when everything doesn’t go perfect for you. When I was in coaching, it’s not a perfect job. Things are gonna go wrong. You’re going to make adjustments, make this adjustment. Let’s bring them to the floor. We can do them every two hours. We can have these done in no time. They don’t want to do it. They do not want to do it.”
The Alabama Reflector notes, “voting on the 319 nominees would take hundreds of hours of floor time just as Congress must pass numerous bills to avert a government shutdown and lapses in federal programs before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.”
“Any attempt to blame the vacancies of these confirmed positions on Sen. Schumer is embarrassing,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said, according to the Reflector. “We don’t mind voting on people, but the implication is, ‘Why not vote on the top brass and just punish all the people below them?’ That seems to be the offer.”
Tuberville then lashed out at the Pentagon for discharging 8000 service members who refused to get vaccinated.
“They call readiness. How about the 8000 military people and their families that they ran out of the military because this vaccine mandate they pushed on ’em a year ago?” he asked Bloomberg News. “That’s what I talked about readiness. That’s what I call a travesty is when you run 8000 people out at one time because they won’t go by mandate that they pushed on the military.”
Tuberville has claimed his blockade is over the Pentagon’s post-Roe v. Wade policy of reimbursing service members for necessary out-of state travel to obtain abortion services. In his Bloomberg interview he said the policy came from “a memo from the White House.”
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“We’re not a communist country. Everything this made policy and law goes through Congress. And I told them that if you change it, I’m gonna block your admirals and generals. What at that time, there was one or two. Now we’re up to 300. I think they’re starting to believe me,” he bragged. “That meant what I said. And again, they could be clear in these nominations one at a time, two hours each. They don’t want to do that. Democrats have not been told no since they’ve been up here for two, two and a half, almost three years. Since the code. President Biden was elected. And now they can’t handle it, but we’re not gonna have any movement on my side. Unless they change this back and let’s vote on it. Let’s just vote on it. And if it passes, passes, done.”
“They have no clue of what this policy is,” Tuberville also said. “They just wanted to change it to let the American people know, ‘hey, we can do what we want to,’ and I’m not gonna allow them to do it. Now if they continue to do it. We’re gonna have the same people in places admirals and generals. Again, there’s no readiness problem. We got people in place that are doing their jobs, and sooner or later, I think they will start to come around but right now we’ve got a standoff.”
Last month NPR reported if Tuberville does not release his holds 650 military officers’ promotions may be “in limbo” by year’s end.
Watch short clip of Tuberville’s remarks below or at this link.
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Roughly 140 Environmental Protection Agency employees have been placed on administrative leave after signing a letter warning of political interference in the agency’s work—prompting critics to accuse the Trump administration of ignoring their First Amendment rights.
Calling the letter “a remarkable rebuke of the agency’s political leadership,” The New York Times reported on Monday that more than 270 EPA employees had signed the public letter “denouncing what they described as the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize, dismantle and sideline the main federal agency tasked with protecting the environment and public health.”
On Thursday, the Times reported that 144 workers had been suspended, other news outlets put the number at 139.
In that public letter, signatories said they are joining in “solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies,” and that they “stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise.”
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They detailed their five primary concerns, including, “Undermining public trust,” “Ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” “Reversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities,” “Dismantling the Office of Research and Development,” and “Promoting a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and well-being.”
On Thursday, the 140 or so employees who allegedly had signed the letter with their official titles received emails saying they had been placed on leave for two weeks “pending an administrative investigation,” The New York Times reported.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” Brigit Hirsch, an EPA spokesperson, said in a statement, according to Bloomberg Law News.
“The letter, addressed to EPA head Lee Zeldin, alleged the agency has used its communication platforms to ‘promote misinformation and overtly partisan rhetoric,'” Bloomberg added. “One example the signatories cited was a March statement laying out the administration’s deregulatory agenda, in which Zeldin referred to ‘the climate change religion.'”
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Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 704, called the move “blatant retaliation,” The Hill reported.
“We don’t swear an oath to the Trump administration, we swear an oath to the Constitution and so we don’t feel like we violated that oath or that we did anything wrong by signing this letter,” she said.
Cantello, on social media, wrote that EPA workers “have the right to freedom of speech, just like every other American.”
Addressing EPA Administrator Zeldin directly, she said: “See you in court.”
Some denounced the administration’s move.
Attorney Mark Zaid, who handles national security and whistleblower cases, wrote: “Apparently retaliation has already begun. This is what defines this Administration.”
He also offered to “provide pro bono consultation to examine current situation.”
The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel asked, “What First Amendment?”
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Image of Lee Zeldin via Shutterstock
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in an apparent attempt to prevent the Republican Speaker, Mike Johnson, from passing President Donald Trump’s massive budget bill in the dead of night, has been delivering a speech on the floor for over six hours, and may break the record of 8 hours and 32 minutes set in 2021 by then GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker Johnson reportedly allowed minimal time for debate on what Trump calls his “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which cuts Medicaid by about $1 trillion, and forces cuts to Medicare and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, by hundreds of billions of dollars while carving out tax breaks that largely favor the wealthy. An estimated 17 million people could lose insurance as a result of the legislation.
Once Leader Jeffries concludes his remarks—which he began around 5 AM—Johnson will put the bill to a final vote, and he’s anxious to get the legislation to the President’s desk before Trump’s arbitrary July 4 deadline.
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“What is contemplated in this one big, ugly bill is wrong,” Leader Jeffries said, as NBC News reported. “It’s dangerous, and it’s cruel, and cruelty should not be either the objective or the outcome of legislation that we consider here in the United States House of Representatives.”
Jeffries also called it “cruel” to cut Medicaid.
“Republicans are trying to take a chain saw to Social Security, a chain saw to Medicare, a chain saw to Medicaid, a chain saw to the health care of the American people, a chain saw to nutritional assistance for hungry children, a chain saw to farm country and a chain saw to vulnerable Americans,” Jeffries added.
Speaker Johnson, speaking to reporters, appeared displeased.
“If Hakeem will stop talking, we’ll, we’ll get the job done for the American people,” Johnson, using the Democratic Leader’s first name, told reporters.
“It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the truth,” Johnson claimed. “So he’s really spinning a long tale in there, but we’re excited. The people will see the effect of this bill—the extraordinary legislation.”
Johnson offered no evidence to support his accusation.
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“It’s going to get the economy humming again, really, at a record pace, and it will help every American,” he added.
“So the sooner we can get to it, the sooner the Democrats will stop talking, we’ll get this bill done for the people, and we’re really excited about it.”
Critics blasted Speaker Johnson.
Walter Kimbrough, a three-time HBCU president, responded by posting a meme quoting the famous historian Alexis de Tocqueville, that reads: “It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Speaker Johnson: “If Hakeem would stop talking, we’ll get the job done for the American people. It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the truth. So he’s really spinning a long tale in there.” pic.twitter.com/ih931XJnjE
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) July 3, 2025
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Image via Reuters
Well-known veteran Democratic strategist James Carville is out with a second dire warning about President Donald Trump and the 2026 midterm elections.
Earlier this week, Carville, a political consultant and strategist since the 1970s and now a political commentator, warned that Trump might try to rig the 2026 elections in one way or another—including, he suggested, by possibly trying to cancel them.
On Wednesday night, he offered up another possibility: martial law.
On NewsNation (video below), Carville predicted a “Democratic blowout” in this November’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, and that President Trump will be forced to see the writing on the wall.
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“I think he’s gonna read the election,” Carville said. “And I think he’s going to see this big, beautiful bill, is about 25 points underwater. It’s going to be 30 points underwater,” Carville added, referring to the Republican budget bill that guts Medicaid and Medicare, and is likely to pass the House and head to Trump’s desk for a July 4 signing.
“He’s going to see a massive defeat coming, and he’s going to try to do anything he can to extricate himself in that defeat,” Carville warned.
“And I would not put it at all past him to try to call martial law or declare that there’s some kind of national emergency in the country, or anything like that, because the hoofprints are coming, you can hear ’em, and they’re gonna get a shellacking in November of ’26.”
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Mediaite noted that “Bill O’Reilly and Stephen A. Smith also joined the panel discussion, with O’Reilly mocking Carville’s mention of ‘martial law,’ calling it a ‘scare tactic’ and arguing the economy will dictate the midterms.”
On Tuesday, Carville spoke about Trump with former CNN journalist Jim Acosta.
“I don’t put anything past him, nothing,” Carville warned. “To try to call the election off, to do anything he can. He can think of things like that that we can’t because we’re not accustomed to thinking like that.”
“You know people come up to me all the time and say, ‘James. I’m really scared,’” Carville told Acosta on “The Jim Acosta Show.”
“I said, ‘you should be, you have every reason to be scared. Don’t kid yourself,’” Carville added.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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Democratic Strategist Warns Trump Could Try to Impose Martial Law Before 2026 Midterms
Trump Appeared Unaware His Budget Bill Cuts $1T From Medicaid: Report
‘Every Reason to Be Scared’: Strategist Worried Trump Could Try to Rig or Cancel Midterms
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