The White House on Tuesday pounced on Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) hold on hundreds of military promotions, saying that Americans have had enough with him and Senate Republicans playing politics with service members.
“The American people have had enough with the excuses. Senator Tuberville, and all 48 Senate Republicans who are standing by him, owe it to the country to stop playing politics with the lives of those who serve in uniform and their families, and risking our nation’s safety,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a memo.
The memo highlighted that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), a presidential hopeful, criticized the hold Tuesday, arguing that “there’s got to be other ways” to protest the Pentagon’s abortion policy.
It also highlighted a CNN report about hundreds of military families who recently signed a petition for Tuberville to relent, calling his hold “political showmanship.”
The Defense Department’s new abortion policy provides paid leave and travel reimbursement for abortions. Tuberville argues it violates the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion.
The White House memo, titled “The Evolving World of Senator Tommy Tuberville,” also points to Tuberville’s past comments about why he is holding up the military promotions since he began his protest in February.
“For nearly six months, Senator Tuberville’s excuses for holding up the confirmation of more than 300 senior military positions have piled up, with each one weaker than the last,” Bates said.
The memo noted that Tuberville said in February that the abortion policy was an “illegal expansion of [Department of Defense] authority,” in April said “the military is top heavy” and last month said that the freeze is not holding up readiness.
President Biden and other top officials have for weeks been hammering Tuberville about his protest. Last week, the White House called out Tuberville on X , formerly known as Twitter, posting “This you?” and sharing a series of headlines about the issues the holds have caused.
Tuesday's memo is the latest example of the White House recently becoming punchier going into 2024, increasingly jumping in and bashing the GOP. Earlier Tuesday, it issued a statement accusing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of lying in order to cave to the far-right members of the House Republican Conference and their push for an impeachment inquiry into Biden.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) blasted President Biden’s decision Monday to keep the headquarters of the Space Command in Colorado, overturning former President Trump's decision to move it to Alabama.
“As soon as Joe Biden took office, he paused movement on that decision and inserted politics into what had been a fair and objective competition—not because the facts had changed, but because the political party of the sitting President had changed,” Tuberville said in his statement.
Tuberville is locked in a standoff with the Pentagon over its abortion policy, placing a hold on hundreds of Biden's military nominations in protest.
Some officials have said Alabama's restrictive abortions laws played into the Space Command HQ decision, though the White House said it was motivated entirely by concerns that a major move would undermine military readiness.
Tuberville wrote that it was “shameful” the Biden administration waited until Congress was in recess to make this decision, noting it came after the House and Senate passed versions of next year’s defense budget. The two chambers still need to hammer out a final version of the defense budget.
And he claimed that Colorado Springs did not even crack the top three sites for the headquarters in a review by the Air Force, trailing locations in Alabama, Nebraska and Texas.
“This decision to bypass the three most qualified sites looks like blatant patronage politics, and it sets a dangerous precedent that military bases are now to be used as rewards for political supporters rather than for our security,” he wrote.
Trump's initial decision to move the HQ to Alabama also prompted claims of political motivations from Democrats. Alabama overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the 2020 election and has two GOP senators, while Colorado voted for Biden and has two Democratic senators.
Tuberville on Monday said the fight to bring the headquarters to Alabama was “not over,” adding he hopes House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) will continue an investigation into the matter.
“This is absolutely not over. I will continue to fight this as long as it takes to bring Space Command where it would be best served—Huntsville, Alabama,” he said.
Rogers said in a statement that he will continue the committee's investigation into the relocation of the headquarters, also saying the “fight is far from over.”
“The Biden administration’s shameful delay to finalize the permanent basing decision for U.S. Space Command warranted the opening of a Congressional investigation," Rogers said.
"I will continue this investigation to see if they intentionally misled the Armed Services Committee on their deliberate taxpayer-funded manipulation of the selection process. I will continue to hold the Biden administration accountable for their egregious political meddling in our national security."
Other Alabama Republicans, including Sen. Katie Britt and Gov. Kay Ivey, also took aim at Biden’s decision Monday.
“President Biden has irresponsibly decided to yank a military decision out of the Air Force’s hands in the name of partisan politics,” Britt said in a statement. “Huntsville finished first in both the Air Force’s Evaluation Phase and Selection Phase, leaving no doubt that the Air Force’s decision to choose Redstone as the preferred basing location was correct purely on the merits."
“The White House choosing to not locate Space Command Headquarters in Alabama – the rightful selection – is very simply the wrong decision for national security,” Ivey posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “The fact that a CNN reporter is who first delivered the news to Alabama should say all.”
President Biden overturned a decision from the Trump administration to relocate the temporary headquarters of Space Command to Alabama, deciding instead to keep the base in Colorado.
The decision was made because Biden believes keeping the HQ in Colorado Springs, rather than relocating it to Huntsville, would maintain stability and not impact readiness, according to a senior U.S. official.
The senior administration official said Biden consulted with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other military leaders before deciding to keep the base in Colorado permanently.
Gen. James Dickinson, the head of Space Command, also helped to convince Biden to not relocate the base, according to the Associated Press.
U.S. Space Command headquarters is set to achieve “full operational capability” at Colorado Springs later this month, according to the senior administration official.
The official said moving the headquarters to Alabama would force a transition process that does not allow the new base to open until the mid-2030’s.
"The President found that risk unacceptable, especially given the challenges we may face in the space domain during this critical time period," the official said. "Locating Headquarters U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs ensures peak readiness in the space domain for our nation during a critical period."
Biden's reversal is likely to spark the fury of Alabama Republicans who have for months feared the administration would scrap the relocation plan.
Alabama Rep. Mike Rogers (R), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has been investigating the delay behind the relocation plan, which was first put in motion when Space Command was resurrected in 2019.
Former President Trump's decision to temporarily establish a headquarters in Colorado and relocate Space Command to Alabama was criticized as a political choice based upon a more favorable constituency in the Yellowhammer state.
Since coming into office, the Biden administration ordered reviews of the decision, none of which found anything improper in Trump's decision, though they found the former president could have followed better practices in the process.
The delayed relocation reached new heights over the spring when NBC News reported the Biden administration was considering scrapping the relocation plan because of restrictive abortion laws in Alabama.
Rogers and other Alabama Republicans objected to any such plan, saying Huntsville, also known as Rocket City, was selected based on its merits and in a fair process, while pointing to the reviews that found nothing improper.
The House version of the annual defense bill that passed earlier this month includes provisions that slash funding for the Air Force Secretary until the administration makes a final decision. It's unclear whether Rogers will be satisfied with a reversal.
Other Alabama politicians, including Gov. Kay Ivey (R), quickly blasted the the decision as political. Alabama overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the 2020 election and has two GOP senators, while Colorado voted for Biden and has two Democratic senators.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) said the base Redstone Arsenal in Alabama was the correct location based on its merits, arguing "Biden has irresponsibly decided to yank a military decision out of the Air Force’s hands in the name of partisan politics."
"The President’s blatant prioritization of partisan political considerations at the expense of our national security, military modernization, and force readiness is a disservice and a dishonor to his oath of office as our nation’s Commander-in-Chief," she said in a statement.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby reiterated during an interview with CNN on Monday that the president's decision was entirely due to national security considerations, pointing specifically to the rising threat from China.
"This was really a decision based on one thing and one thing only for a president and that was operational readiness," Kirby said. "He took the inputs of many leaders across the Department of Defense that when it came down to it, he believes that it's in the best national security interest of the country if we leave Space Command in Colorado."
Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett (D) joined officials from his state in celebrating Biden's decision.
"Over the past two and half years, we have repeatedly made the case that the Trump administration’s decision to relocate U.S. Space Command was misguided," the senator wrote on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
"Today’s decision restores integrity to the Pentagon’s basing process and sends a strong message that national security and the readiness of our Armed Forces drive our military decisions," he added.
Senate GOP leaders didn't want it to get to this point.
They tried and tried to get Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to lift the holds he's placed on hundreds of military promotions — which have opened Republicans up to attacks from the Biden administration.
But their efforts have failed, and they are now in a situation where the earliest a resolution might be found is September — when lawmakers will also be busy trying to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month.
“It’s hung around for a while. I support his goals,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican. “The challenge obviously is the mechanism he used to get to the result has created some challenges. We want to figure out a way to resolve it and address that.”
“There are conversations now going on, which is good — between him and the military and others. We’ll have some time in August to work on a path forward, and hopefully we’ll find it,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been among those trying to find a resolution, Thune said. Tuberville said he and McConnell discussed the holds Wednesday, hours after the GOP leader froze and felt lightheaded in front of reporters.
“At this point, everybody’s engaged trying to figure out how to solve this,” Thune added.
Tuberville began his holds in early March to protest a new Defense Department policy to reimburse service members who must travel to seek an abortion for those travel expenses.
Six months later, the list of holds has grown to 300. Senate Republicans were hoping to find a solution before leaving Washington for five weeks — five additional weeks during which those military officers will remain in limbo, fueling Democratic attacks and frustrating the Pentagon.
One Senate Republican said finding an offramp agreeable to both Tuberville and those opposed to the holds has become a “recurring discussion” in the Senate GOP conference, and that McConnell has been personally involved in that quest.
“There’s not a lunch that goes by that we don’t talk about it,” the senator said, but added there’s “no chance of a resolution” any time soon.
Aside from the potential political and national security implications of the holds, McConnell is worried about the institutional implications.
The longtime GOP leader recently told reporters at a press conference that he is concerned this could lead to a renewed Democratic effort to change the chamber’s rules.
Despite disagreeing with Tuberville’s tactic, however, he says he recognizes it is the prerogative of any single senator to place a hold on a nominee.
Senators on both sides of the aisle for months have been musing publicly and privately about what it would take to get the Alabama Republican to set his hold aside, but have come up empty at every turn.
Initially, there had been hope that a vote on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would reverse the abortion travel policy could do the trick, and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) led the effort.
But more recently, Tuberville has maintained that not only does any vote have to be standalone, but that the Pentagon would have to reverse its policy before any vote could be taken.
Trying to bridge that gap for lawmakers has become a herculean challenge no one has been able to complete.
Tuberville didn’t comment on efforts by Senate GOP leaders to seek a remedy, but he criticized the Biden administration and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for their lack of outreach in trying to strike a deal. He also hasn’t had any further conversations with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin since their July 17 call and said that the initial series of calls didn’t yield anything productive.
“There’s no conversation from the other side. It’s ‘our way or the highway.’ … How does that help?” Tuberville said. “They’re not worried about it, I guess. … I hate it, for the promotions and all that.”
He added that he has yet to talk to Schumer, who has refused to use up floor time moving the nominees through regular order because he believes it is the Senate GOP’s job to figure a way out of the maze of military holds.
“This is the responsibility of the Republican Senate caucus. … It’s up to them. I think in August, pressure will mount on Tuberville, and I think the Republicans are feeling that heat,” Schumer said late Thursday. “He’s boxing himself into a corner.”
But Democrats are trying to increase that pressure, with President Biden on Thursday night laying into the Alabama Republican and arguing his holds are harming military readiness and creating instability within the ranks of the armed forces.
“This partisan freeze is already harming military readiness, security and leadership, and troop morale,” Biden said in remarks at the Truman Civil Rights Symposium in Washington. “Freezing pay, freezing people in place. Military families who have already sacrificed so much, unsure of where and when they change stations, unable to get housing or start their kids in the new school.”
Senate Democrats also took to the floor before and after the NDAA vote Thursday to criticize their GOP colleague. Since the hold was put into place, Democratic senators have made 12 attempts to move the military promotions in bloc via unanimous request.
Perhaps adding to the difficulty, Tuberville has received a boost in support from voters at home and from conservative corners of the Senate GOP conference who believe he is making the right call, albeit a difficult one.
They also argue that if Senate Democrats truly want to move on some of the nominations, they can start to do so via regular order — a move Democrats have avoided in order to not set precedent.
“Democrats think they have a winning political thing on this. I don’t think they do, and I think Sen. Tuberville morally is in the right position with regard to the issue of abortion,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said. “The [Defense] Department has just as much of a responsibility to find a path forward as any single member does, and I’m not seeing the Department try to work in any fashion other than to simply put pressure on Sen. Tuberville.”
“They’re not trying to find a path forward. They think this is one of those items where if they keep putting pressure on him, he’ll cave, and I don’t think he will,” Rounds continued. “On the issue, he’s correct.”
The Senate passed its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Thursday night with widespread bipartisan support.
Just 11 senators — including six Democrats, one independent and four Republicans — voted against the must-pass defense spending bill, which next heads into the reconciliation process as the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House attempt to find a compromise.
The Senate version largely avoided the culture wars provisions in the House version, which passed almost entirely with GOP support, but it still authorizes a topline figure of $886 billion — a figure that was too high for some senators on both sides of the aisle. The topline figure last year was $816.7, up from $777.7 billion in fiscal 2022.
Here are the 11 senators who voted against the upper chamber’s version of the bill:
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)
Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.)
Braun said Wednesday that he planned introduced several amendments to the defense spending bill, which he argued was driving government glut.
“It’s the most important thing we do here in the federal government, but we don’t do any budgets over there, we don’t do any audits,” he said in a video posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It’s all part of the problem of why we spend too much money and then borrow it from future generations.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
Markey called the $886 billion defense spending package “ridiculous" and claimed that the “bloated budget does not advance our national security.”
“The American people have repeatedly heard from Republicans that we need to cut government spending—for education, for health care, for food assistance—and now they are enthusiastically throwing funding to their defense contractor friends,” Markey said in a series of posts on X.
“While I am grateful that the NDAA passed tonight includes my language to compel the [Department of Defense] to take the overdose crisis among service members and their families seriously, I can’t support a package that inflates military spending at the expense of working and middle-class families,” he added.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)
Merkley similarly described the defense budget approved under the Senate’s version of the NDAA as “bloated.”
“I voted against the excessive military spending in the NDAA,” he tweeted Thursday night. “The already bloated defense budget does not need to be injected with additional billions of dollars.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sanders explained his opposition to this year’s NDAA on the Senate floor Wednesday, pointing to several crises that lawmakers are seemingly overlooking while approving the large defense spending bill.
“We have a planetary crisis in terms of climate change. Our health care system is broken and dysfunctional. Our educational system is teetering. Our housing stock is totally inadequate. And these are just some of the crises facing our country,” he said.
“And what is very clear, I think, to the American people and to many people here in the Senate and those in the House, we’re not addressing those crises," Sanders continued.
He argued that Congress votes to increase the military budget every year with "seemingly little regard for the strategic picture facing our country."
“It just happens,” he said. “We don’t worry about people sleeping out on the street, we don’t worry about people who don’t have any health care, we don’t worry about people who can’t afford prescription drugs.”
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)
Vance said his vote against the defense spending bill was due to its commitments to provide Ukraine with “years of additional military aid.”
“I’ve worked in good faith throughout this process to secure as many wins for Ohio as possible, and I’m proud that many of those priorities have been included in the final version of the NDAA,” Vance said in a statement Friday.
“However, I cannot in good conscience support the broader package, which commits the United States to years of additional military aid for the war in Ukraine,” he added. “It’s disappointing to me that these significant priorities that would benefit Ohioans have been bogged down with such deeply problematic foreign policy proposals.”
The Senate on Thursday night passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), teeing up a looming effort to find a deal on a compromise bill that satisfies the Democratic Senate and Republican House.
Senators voted 86-11 on the bill, which authorizes a topline figure of $886 billion for fiscal 2024, the total that was included in the debt ceiling deal struck between the Biden administration and House Republicans.
The package passed with little drama after the Senate kicked off consideration of the bill and amendments early last week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly called on the chamber to move the process along in a bipartisan fashion.
Six Democrats — Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Peter Welch (Vt.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — voted against the bill, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Four Republicans also opposed the package: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.) and JD Vance (Ohio).
Schumer was trying to avoid anything resembling what took place in the House, when Republicans passed a version of the bill that included a number of GOP-led provisions, turning the normally bipartisan annual affair into a near-party-line vote.
Among them are items that would block the Pentagon's new policy that covers travel costs for military members who seek abortions, take aim at military diversity programs and bar funding for surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops.
“We’ve had an open and constructive amendment process for the NDAA, with both sides … working together in good faith. This is exactly how the process for the NDAA should look: bipartisan [and] cooperative,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday morning.
“What’s happening in the Senate is a stark contrast to the partisan race to the bottom we saw in the House,” Schumer said, noting that many of the items they included have little chance of being included in a final version later this year. “House Republicans should look to the Senate to see how things get done. … They are throwing on the floor partisan legislation that has no chance of passing. The contrast is glaring.”
Included in the bill is a 5.2 percent pay increase for military personnel, $9.1 billion for various measures aimed at competitiveness with China and $300 million for Ukraine.
Schumer on Thursday evening locked in a time agreement in order to finish work as lawmakers were champing at the bit to start the August recess, which will begin Friday and last through Labor Day weekend.
Senators wrapped up work Thursday and voted on a series of amendments, having OK’d 25 amendments overall for the NDAA. Lawmakers also greenlighted a second manager’s package that includes 49 more amendments.
While the process went smoothly this time around, the real show will be in the coming months, as both chambers attempt to reconcile the two proposals and pass an overall NDAA package that can emerge through the Senate with the requisite 60 votes.
Already, things are tilting in the Senate’s direction, as provisions related to abortion and the culture wars are expected to be watered down. A final bill will need to be nailed down by the time members leave for Christmas.
However, the process did not go off without any hitches. An effort led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to attach an item to give permanent residency to roughly 80,000 Afghans who’ve come to the U.S. following the country’s fall two years ago failed over opposition from top Republicans.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) maintained a hold on Klobuchar’s bill, with Senate Republicans arguing that while they support the idea generally, the Minnesota Democrat’s proposal was too broad. Cotton has a bill of his own he is pushing that would create a pathway to residency for Afghan evacuees, but it would hamper the ability of the president to grant humanitarian parole.
“This is our moment,” Klobuchar said on the Senate floor Wednesday night. “We have had two years to show the world whether or not we’re going to stand with those that stood with us. … The decision we make right now of whether we live up to the covenant we made to our Afghan allies is going to reverberate militarily and diplomatically for longer than any of us will serve in this body,”
One Senate Republican told The Hill that while Klobuchar’s Afghan Adjustment bill was unsuccessful this go-around, a limited version will likely make its way into the final NDAA product later this year.
Three former defense officials on Wednesday gave explosive testimony at a House hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), warning that the sightings “potentially” pose national security risks.
The witnesses before the House Oversight subcommittee — a former Navy pilot, a retired Navy commander and an ex-Air Force intelligence official — also stressed that the government has been far too secretive in acknowledging such incidents, prompting calls from lawmakers for the intelligence community to be more forthcoming.
“If UAP are foreign drones, it is an urgent national security problem. If it is something else, it is an issue for science. In either case, unidentified objects are a concern for flight safety,” said Ryan Graves, a former F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot who founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a non-profit group meant to encourage pilots to report UAP incidents.
And all three witnesses replied “yes” when asked if the UAPs could be collecting reconnaissance information on the United States or probing the country’s capabilities.
The hearing seemed to unite lawmakers in a push for answers on a topic that has largely been dismissed by politicians, who for decades have been hesitant to touch on UAPs — also known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs — and other extraterrestrial life lest they become a laughingstock.
A series of reports from The New York Times beginning in 2017 began to change that. The reports — exploring the Pentagon’s secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and DOD-documented UAP sightings.
Lawmakers also worry that the sightings could be tied to military technology owned by adversaries but unbeknownst to most Americans.
“UAPs, whatever they be, may pose a serious threat to our military and our civilian aircraft, and that must be understood,” said the subpanel's ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). “We should encourage more reporting, not less on UAPs. The more we understand, the safer we will be.”
The Pentagon has only given tentative information on UAPs, in 2021 releasing a report which found more than 140 inexplicable encounters.
Videos released by the Defense Department have also shown unexplained happenings, including the now famous “Tic Tac” video, taken in November 2004 on a routine training mission with the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off the coast of southern California.
During the encounter, Navy ships and planes used sensors to track an oval-shaped flying object that resembled a Tic Tac breath mint, with four pilots visually sighting the apparatus that flew at high speed over the water before abruptly disappearing.
Former Navy pilot David Fravor, the commander of the mission and the individual who filmed the video, on Wednesday told the committee that the object “was far superior to anything that we had at the time, have today or looking to develop in the next 10 years.”
He added that he found it “shocking” that “the incident was never investigated” and said none of his crew were ever questioned.
And fellow witness Graves said during the hearing that he had seen UAPs off the Atlantic coast “every day for at least a couple years.”
He said the sightings were “not rare or isolated” – noting that UAP objects have been detected “essentially where all Navy operations are being conducted across the world,” and were also seen by military aircrews and commercial pilots.
But Graves also estimated that only 5 percent of sightings are reported, which he attributed to stigma among pilots who feel it will “lead to professional repercussions either through management or through their yearly physical check.”
But the most explosive testimony of the day came from David Grusch, a former member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency whose previous allegations on UAPs and the government’s efforts to conceal them sparked Wednesday’s hearing.
Grusch claimed that the Pentagon and other agencies are holding back information about UAPs and hiding a long-running program that is attempting to reverse engineer the objects.
Grusch said that he “absolutely” believes the U.S. government is in possession of non-human technology, adding that he knows “the exact locations” of that material.
He also claimed that he has faced serious reprisals for his statements and had knowledge of those who have been harmed or injured as part of ongoing efforts to cover up extraterrestrial technology.
Grusch in the past has claimed that the U.S. government has for decades recovered nonhuman craft with nonhuman species inside.
He repeated similar assertions at Wednesday’s hearing, though he repeatedly told lawmakers he could not share details in a public setting and that his information was based upon what he had been told by others.
Republicans and Democrats now want to get to the bottom of what these incidents mean for U.S. national security.
“There clearly is a threat to the national security of the United States of America,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said. “As members of Congress, we have a responsibility to maintain oversight and be aware of these activities so that if appropriate we take action.”
He later told reporters that lawmakers have “a responsibility now to move forward aggressively to get to the answers of these questions.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told reporters that a bipartisan group of lawmakers will seek a closed meeting with the witnesses to discuss confidential information in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF.
And Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said Wednesday's hearing was the “first of many” on the government's handling of information related to UAPs, which “is an issue of government transparency.”
“I’m shocked, actually, at just the amount of information that came out because all the roadblocks that we were put up against,” he told reporters.
“I think what’s gonna happen now, the floodgates — other people are gonna say, ‘You know, I’ve got some information, I’d like to come swear in,’ and that’s what we’re going to start doing.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) slammed the Pentagon on the eve of a UFO-focused hearing slated to be held by a House Oversight subcommittee on Wednesday.
Fox News’s Martha MacCallum asked Burchett what people should expect from the hearing, where three witnesses will address the Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs. MacCallum also showed footage of the so-called “Tic Tac” videos that were released by the Department of Defense of suspected unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).
“So this — the Tic Tac videos, which you showed earlier ... The military denied that that even existed, and then it was put out and they said they were fakes and then they eventually came around," Burchett said.
“The Pentagon is coming around because they smell dollars, man, the war pimps at the Pentagon, all they want to do is drain more dollars from us,” he continued. “We don't need any more dollars. All we need is transparency. That's the job of you all in the media and us in Congress.”
When reached for comment, Burchett doubled down on his criticism of the Pentagon to The Hill.
“You hear me talk about them all the time,” he said. “The industrial war complex always wants to hit a lick so they can go fail another audit or misplace the money. The Pentagon loses over a billion dollars a year. We can’t have that.”
During the hearing, titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency,” lawmakers are expected to hear from three witnesses: David Grusch, the whistleblower who has accused the government of withholding information related to UFOs, Ryan Graves, the executive director of Americans for Safe Aerospace, and Rt. Commander David Fravor, the former commanding officer of the Navy’s Black Aces Squadron.
Frustrated lawmakers have been demanding more information on UFOs and UAPs after Grusch claimed that the government is holding some back.
Burchett, who has been a leading voice on getting more information on UFOs, said Tuesday that members have spoken to pilots who destroyed evidence in connection to the UAPs.
“We need to turn loose the files, and we need to quit with all the nonsense,” he said. “This is ridiculous. We have Mr. Grusch is a — he's a combat veteran and apparently he's decorated. You know up here in Washington that doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot obviously, but in Tennessee it sure as heck does. We value our veterans and we value their opinion.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign and former President Trump this week rolled out dueling plans for the U.S. military, with both GOP candidates' proposals light on details and heavy on gripes over Biden administration efforts.
While DeSantis’s proposition took aim at Pentagon diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, recruiting woes and policies impacting transgender service members, Trump’s plan focused largely on seeking reimbursements for U.S. aid to Ukraine, lambasting Europe for what he decried as only a “tiny fraction” of what Washington had contributed.
But as both candidates strive to stand apart from each other’s messaging, choosing to focus on different aspects of national security, experts say there appears to be little difference between the two proposals.
“There doesn't seem to be very much daylight between the two of them on a couple of different fronts,” said Katherine Kuzminski, an armed forces expert and society at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
Former President Trump pumps his fist as he departs after speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, on Saturday, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“I think there's a real focus on bringing resources back to the U.S. and not extending American leadership abroad. And then, certainly, when it comes to the domestic politics, the pushes for reform within the Department of Defense when it comes to DEI policies and transgender policy,” she said.
“There isn't really a debate between the two of them on these specific issues ... When you look at their policies, they're not actually all that different,” Kuzminski said.
Here are both candidate’s messages on the U.S. military and national security:
DeSantis’s culture war complaints
DeSantis’s plan, unveiled at a brief news conference last Tuesday in South Carolina, doubled down on past campaign promises to “rip the woke” out of the U.S. military and overhaul the institution.
The “Mission First” proposal includes potential six-month performance reviews for all four-star generals and admirals, and possible dismissals should anyone be found to have “promoted policies to the detriment of readiness and warfighting.”
He also pledged to rescind Biden’s executive order that allows transgender individuals to serve under their preferred sex, rip out DEI initiatives in the services or military academies, end Pentagon efforts to combat extremism in the ranks and reinstate personnel who were dismissed for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine as well as give them backpay.
In addition, he promised to end programs meant to prepare military installations and troops for future climate change, bashing the Pentagon for shifting, in part, to electric vehicles.
In an interview with CNN the evening after the press conference, DeSantis claimed his policy targets Pentagon efforts that hinder recruitment and said the military is currently suffering from America’s loss in confidence in the institution.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rolls out his military policy proposal during an event for his 2024 presidential campaign on Tuesday, July 18, 2023, in West Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
“At this level, everybody has acknowledged these recruiting levels are at a crisis. ... I think it’s because people see the military losing its way, not focusing on the mission and focusing on a lot of these other things,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis isn’t straying far from his policy proposals already enacted as Florida governor.
While head of the state, he has banned higher education institutions from putting dollars toward diversity and inclusion programs, forbade the use of federal resources to teach students about sexual activity, sexual orientation or gender identity, and prohibited some teachings about race and U.S. history.
But Michael O'Hanlon, a security fellow at the Brookings Institution, called DeSantis’s stance a “missed opportunity” for the former Navy officer, who served in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Iraq.
“Cleary DeSantis is fighting the culture wars and he’s sort of staying true to his M.O.,” O'Hanlon told The Hill.
“I think it’s probably a missed opportunity for him. … He should be trying to show he is actually capable of developing serious views on the big strategic issues of the day, which are fundamentally not about diversity, equity and inclusion within the armed forces,” he said. “I think he ought to be engaging on China and Russia, how to solve the Ukraine, how to prevent war over Taiwan.”
And Kuzminski said there’s a misperception that the Florida governor is capitalizing on “wokeness” as a recruiting challenge in the U.S. military,
“That is the perception of some who may have served a long time ago, but the reality of military service is that it needs to reflect the population from which it's drawn,” she said. “That's a challenge that I think a President Trump 2.0 or President DeSantis is going to run ... into if they were to win the election.”
On Ukraine, Desantis has offered tentative comments on the conflict, insisting it wasn't a U.S. national security priority and downplaying the Russian invasion.
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests [such as] securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party, becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” DeSantis said in March.
He has since walked back his comments on the war being a “territorial dispute.”
A firefighter walks with of a resident through smoke coming from a house on fire, after cluster rockets hit a residential area, in Konstantinovka, eastern Ukraine, on Saturday, July 9, 2022. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty)
Trump’s Ukraine-Russia War focus
Trump, meanwhile, has long made pledges to cut back U.S. involvement in foreign wars, starting with campaign promises ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump coasted through the 2016 GOP primaries under his so-called “America First” foreign policy, intended to diminish Washington’s role on the world stage and focus more dollars at home than overseas.
During his presidency, he continued that line of thinking, calling for a reduction in service members serving abroad and criticizing the U.S. foreign intervention as being too expensive and ineffective.
Trump seems to be doubling down on that track with his plan for “Rebuilding America’s Depleted Military,” also released last week.
In a prerecorded video put out by his campaign, the former president focuses largely on foreign policy, repeating criticisms over Biden’s handling Russia’s war on Ukraine.
If reelected, he claimed, he would demand Europe pay the U.S. to rebuild its weapons stockpiles — which have pulled from heavily since February 2022 to help bolster Kyiv in its fight.
“Less than three years ago, I’d fully rebuilt the United States military and steered America into such a strong global position,” Trump boasted.
“Twenty-nine months later, the arsenals are empty, the stockpiles are bare, the Treasury is drained, the ranks are being hollowed out, our country has been totally humiliated, and we have a corrupt, compromised president, crooked Joe Biden, who is dragging us into World War III,” he said.
Trump also claimed Washington’s European allies were only giving a “tiny fraction” of the assistance to Ukraine compared to the United States, and suggested Biden was “too weak and too disrespected to even ask” for reimbursement.
Trump also said in a recent interview that he could end the war in 24 hours, a claim many found dubious.
O’Hanlon, who called Trump’s assertions on lagging European assistance to Ukraine “incorrect,” said he appears to be banking on his past arguments on making America first.
Kuzminski agreed that Trump’s campaign looks to be “hitting harder on making Ukraine repay us,” and “doubling down" on those statements.
While Trump hasn’t been as vocal on culture war issues in the military this time around, he has a well-documented history when it comes to his stance on transgender service members in the military.
In July 2017, he announced on Twitter, apparently out of the blue, that transgender individuals would no longer be allowed “to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”
That ban was eventually rescinded by Biden via executive order shortly after he entered the White House in January 2021.
The White House on Monday threatened to veto a proposed spending bill for military construction and veterans’ affairs, arguing that House Republicans are pursuing a partisan spending proposal that deviates from an agreement struck during debt ceiling talks.
"House Republicans had an opportunity to engage in a productive, bipartisan appropriations process, but instead, with just over two months before the end of the fiscal year, are wasting time with partisan bills that cut domestic spending to levels well below the (Fiscal Responsibility Act) agreement and endanger critical services for the American people," the White House said in a statement of administration policy.
"These levels would result in deep cuts to climate change and clean energy programs, essential nutrition services, law enforcement, consumer safety, education, and healthcare," the statement added.
The Biden administration argued that the House GOP proposals would lead to additional cuts from the Inflation Reduction Act, a signature piece of legislation focused on climate and health care initiatives that passed with Democratic votes last year.
The House Republican bill would also have "devastating consequences including harming access to reproductive healthcare, threatening the health and safety of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Americans, endangering marriage equality, hindering critical climate change initiatives, and preventing the Administration from promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion," the White House said.
"The Administration stands ready to engage with both chambers of the Congress in a bipartisan appropriations process to enact responsible spending bills that fully fund Federal agencies in a timely manner," the statement added.
In a separate statement, the administration said President Biden would veto a proposed agriculture spending bill, citing similar concerns that it contained deeper cuts than were agreed upon during debt ceiling talks earlier this year.
Lawmakers are scheduled to take up the military construction and agriculture appropriations bills this week.
The White House and Republican leaders in May struck a deal over spending that included an agreement to lift the debt ceiling and avoid a default. As part of that deal, the two sides agreed to a rollback of nondefense discretionary spending to fiscal 2022 levels, while limiting top-line federal spending to 1 percent annual growth for six years.
