The 2022 midterms shed light on the 2024 presidential election and elections for seats in Congress. Prior to the 2022 midterms, President Biden's approval ratings had dipped to 39 % and the title of the link said:
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- Biden approval dips to 39% as Democrats brace for midterms, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows
October 26, 20222:01 AM CDTUpdated
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Republicans were giddy about the upcoming midterms
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The consensus among pollsters and consultants is this Tuesday’s election will be a “bloodbath” for the Democratic Party.
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Senator Ted Cruz predicted not just a red wave but a red tsunami and he predicted
2010 midterm results for 2022 and in 2010 the Republican Party picked up 63 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 seats in the Senate
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EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Ted Cruz said he is "incredibly optimistic" heading into Tuesday’s midterm elections, saying he is confident there will be a "red tsunami," and predicting big victories for Republicans in the House and Senate.
Cruz, R-Texas, during an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital at the end of his month-long bus tour, said he believes Republicans will "retake the House and the Senate."
"I am incredibly optimistic," he said. "I think this is going to be, not just a red wave, but a red tsunami."
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538 brought the bad news about the incumbent president's political party almost always losing seats in Congress in the first midterm
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One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections. Almost no president is immune.
And the results out of Virginia and New Jersey last November suggest that a red wave might hit President Biden’s Democrats in 2022.
Since the end of World War II, the president’s party has lost House seats in all but two midterms: 2002 and 1998, when Republicans were seen as overreaching with their impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton. In the average midterm election during this time period, the president’s party has lost 26 House seats.
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After the election, leave it to NPR to explain how the 2022 midterm election results were bad for President Biden
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Midterm elections are expected to push back against the party of the president who won two years earlier. This past week's vote was surely a pushback on President Biden
The average seat loss in the House has been 28 since World War II. It has been 43 seats when the president's Gallup Poll approval rating was below 50%. And as for Democrats, in particular, the last four lost an average of 45 House seats in the first midterm after they were elected.
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NPR notes that the three exceptions to the rule were 1934 with FDR's New Deal being supported by voters and JFK in 1962 after his steady hand during the Cuban Missile Crisis and President George W Bush right after September 11th.
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So, even with the history and President Biden's low approval ratings and inflation, the Republicans only gained a 9 seat majority in the House of Representatives and they lost ground in the Senate where there are now 51 votes for Majority Leader Schumer for Majority Leader (because Senator Sinema won't even caucus with the Democratic Party, I have to use this weird circumlocution) from the results of the 2022 midterm elections. There were three main drivers of that, one of which I will emphasize. Guess which one that is? :-) So, the first is Donald Trump. Donald Trump controls the Republicans in Congress completely and he is the most popular Republican among republican voters. As long as this is the case, any major set of elections will be viewed, at least partly, as a referendum on Donald Trump. Second, candidate quality matters. Donald Trump selected candidates whom he would endorse using one criteria only, are they election deniers who push the 🤥 lie and conspiracy theory that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election but Joe Biden stole it from him. Election deniers performed poorly in battleground states where they would oversee or administer important elections And third is, of course, Dobbs.
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Vox explains that Dobbs is what drove the election results and why the Democratic Party did much better and the Republican Party did much worse than was expected in the 2022 midterm elections
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The Supreme Court lost Republicans the midterms
A leading Democratic data analyst explains what happened in 2022 — and why abortion proved to be the decisive issue.
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson was a shock to the electorate’s system, waking people up to the fact that Republicans held a truly extreme position on an issue they really cared about. The GOP’s push to gut abortion rights gave Democrats a golden opportunity to paint Republicans as extremists.
“Banning abortion without any exceptions is probably as unpopular, or more unpopular, as defunding the police,” Shor tells me. After Dobbs, “abortion went from being a somewhat good issue for Democrats to becoming the single best issue.”
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Even Politico gets how Dobbs drove the 2022 midterm election results
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‘THE central issue’: How the fall of Roe v. Wade shook the 2022 election
More than 50 Democratic and Republican elected officials, campaign aides and consultants took POLITICO inside the first campaign after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling.
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On May 4, less than 48 hours after a draft opinion was published showing the Supreme Court was poised to end the federal right to abortion, a group of eight strangers gathered around a conference table in the Detroit suburbs to talk about the news.
They were all white women, mostly in their 30s to 50s and without college degrees. But when it came to the possibility of abortion being illegal, there was no equivocation: The women were stunned — and enraged.
But in that focus group in Michigan — and, in the months ahead, dozens of others held by Democrats and Republicans across the country — campaign strategists kept making the same startling finding: Abortion hadn’t simply awakened Democratic voters. It was actually persuading swing voters. The memo, obtained by POLITICO, called it a “massive vulnerability for Republicans” — a conclusion bolded and underlined
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Trump has turned republicans upside down and lost constituencies. One of these is the military. This is simply saying that the Republican Party typically was dominant among the military. However, after losers and suckers and a little rain , ( and Trump calling fallen soldiers 'losers' was confirmed by his chief of staff ) dissing John McCain , and not even bringing up Putin putting bounties on the heads of our soldiers much less did he do anything about it Trump and his Republican Party only split active military votes at best. Tommy Tuberville is combining both of these weaknesses and exacerbating both of them.
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Sep 3, 2020 — Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers' and 'Suckers'. The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and ...
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and
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But even without the distinction provided this year by McCain's well-known military service, veterans tend to be Republican in their political orientation, and Republican candidates generally fare better than Democratic candidates among this voting group. For example, in Gallup's final pre-election poll in 2004, 55% of registered voters who had served in the military backed George W. Bush, compared with 39% who supported John Kerry.
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and
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The awful reality that Donald Trump's repeated attacks on John McCain prove
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 7:39 PM EDT, Tue March 19, 2019
CNN)On July 18, 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump said this about John McCain: "He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
On March 19, 2019, President Donald Trump offered this assessment of the late war hero and senator: "I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be."
Those two comments -- almost four years apart and more than six months after McCain's death -- provide telling bookends to understand just how much Trump has changed Republican politics (and politics generally), and not for the better.
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Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, has lost serious ground with military voters
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WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s numerous lies on military issues, from claims of delivering historic pay raises to providing brand new ships and planes, do not appear to be working with service members, with polling suggesting he could lose this traditional Republican voting bloc this November.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads Trump, 41% to 37%, in a survey of more than 1,000 subscribers to the Military Times. Trump held a 20-percentage-point lead over Hillary Clinton in the same poll before the 2016 election.
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A former admiral notes that the military doesn't support Donald Trump and the Republican Party like they used to
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Oct. 31, 2020, 4:30 AM EDT
By Adm. Steve Abbot, retired Navy officer
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump essentially rejected the legitimacy of ballots cast by thousands of military personnel serving overseas.
“It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on Nov. 3, instead of counting ballots for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate and I don't believe that that's by our laws” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. “I don't believe that. So we'll see what happens.”
Trump says the military will vote for him. But he lost their support long ago.
Trump treats the armed forces as just another entity he can manipulate for political purposes. That's alienated the troops and the top brass alike.
The 2020 election is a completely different ball game for military and veteran voters. The president recently commented that the troops love him, but the Pentagon brass don’t.
To begin with, counting ballots after Election Day is in accordance with election law and the rules and regulations established by the individual states for the conduct of elections. Furthermore, it’s how overseas military ballots have been counted for years. Either Trump fails to recognize that discarding ballots received after Election Day disenfranchises thousands of overseas service members, or he’s aware of that and believes he may be losing their support and would be better off if their votes weren’t tallied.
Hillary Clinton.
But a Military Times survey conducted this August indicated former Vice President Joe Biden had 41.3 percent support from active-duty troops to Trump’s 37.4 percent. Third-party candidates came
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Prior to Dobbs, Roe vs Wade was precedent for fifty years
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A Year After the Supreme Court Overturned Roe v. Wade, Trends in State Abortion Laws Have Emerged
In the absence of federal protections, state legislatures have become arbiters of abortion access, with some states banning or severely restricting abortion and others improving and protecting it.
On June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned 50 years of precedent, overruling Roe v. Wade. In the year following that decision, the pace of new legislation on abortion has been swift
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Thus, prior to Dobbs when a female service member who was stationed in a very red state became pregnant and needed to terminate the pregnancy, since Roe vs Wade was still the law of the land, they would not need to travel great distances to get their reproductive healthcare needs met because they could do this in the state in which they were stationed. However, in the post Roe world, this Dobbs world, if a female soldier is stationed in a red state and needed to terminate the pregnancy, then they might have to travel a great distance to get that care since it might not be available in their state.
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At the risk of making an already complex and long diary more complex and even longer, I feel it would be worse to not speak out about something I care about. The 'exceptions' are horseshit. None of them protect women! Not one! They're all misrepresentations of reality. Since I don't have any good reasons to believe these people are honest or ethical and I have a lot of reasons to believe that they are not, I strongly suspect that most of the advocates for the exceptions but are still forced Birthers are lying when they promote or emphasize the exceptions.
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The CDC says 1 in 4 women have experienced attempted or completed rape
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Sexual violence is common.One in 4 women and about 1 in 26 men have experienced completed or attempted rape. About 1 in 9 men were made to penetrate someone during his lifetime. Additionally, 1 in 3 women and about 1 in 9 men experienced sexual harassment in a public place.
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Sexual assault victims usually know the person who attacked them
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Sex attack victims usually know attacker, says new study
- By Lucy Adams
- BBC Scotland correspondent
1 March 2018
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More than 90% of rape and sexual assault victims know their attacker, a new study of almost 1,000 victims says.
Researchers from Glasgow University said it was a popular misconception that most attackers were strangers.
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Most rapes go unreported
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Rape is the most under-reported crime; 63% of sexual assaults are not reported to police (o). Only 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to the authorities (g). The prevalence of false reporting is between 2% and 10%.
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And
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Most rapes go unreported
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Only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police. That means more than 2 out of 3 go unreported.1. Individuals of college-age2.
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Here are a couple of reasons why rape is not normally reported but it doesn't mention another likely main reason, namely the victim's fear of retaliation if the victim names their attacked
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A big reason why rape goes unreported is that victims perceive that they won’t be believed, or they don’t want to go through the pain of a criminal trial. But even when rape is reported, it’s rarely prosecuted. According to RAINN, only 5.7% of rape incidents lead to an arrest, only 1.1% of incidents are referred to a prosecutor, and only 0.7% are convicted of a felony. Even fewer, 0.6% of incidents, lead to incarceration. This is despite false accusations accounting for only 2-8% of reported sexual assault, according to WVFRIS
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But this makes it clear that the rape 'exception' does NOT protect women!
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CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — The latest abortion bill in the West Virginia legislature includes exceptions in the cases of rape or incest, but only if the victim reports the crime to law enforcement within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy and at least 48 hours prior to the abortion. 12 News talked to the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services (WVFRIS) to learn more about how victims can report a sexual assault.
Nationwide, rape is known to be one of the most underreported crimes.
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Incest has the same problem
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.Rape is the most underreported crime in America; many cases of incest are never reported. It is all of our responsibility to be aware of incest warning signs and to take informed action to keep children safe and keep the person who harmed from hurting others. Children may or may not disclose incest.
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Next, we address the 'danger to a mother's life' exception. Many of the readers of this diary, if anybody reads it, and maybe all readers, know what's coming next. The simple fact is that certainty is uncommon in medicine. So what happens if there's some risk to the pregnant woman's life ? How much risk will the state supreme court decide is in keeping with the law? What if the medical provider is afraid of a radical interpretation which a radical state supreme court might make of a law passed by a radical far right state legislature and signed by a far right governor? Obgyns may and often do choose to leave states with these laws because they don't feel that they can provide the medical care a patient is likely to need in a red state. I have read reports of physicians being too afraid to provide the medical care the woman needs because of fear of sanctions or threats of time in prison or losing their right to practice medicine and, so, leaving their patient in a dangerous condition.
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Why doctors say the 'save the mother's life' exception is medically risky
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Why doctors say the 'save the mother's life' exception of abortion bans is medically risky
Experts say the language of these laws make it unclear about what qualifies.
June 13, 2022, 6:03 AM ET
• 13 min read
In recent months, several strict abortion laws have been passed across the United States, banning the procedure after a certain number of weeks.
"The exceptions definition is very clear, specific, allows for the physician's good faith clinical judgment, and it has been upheld by the courts and is typically included in laws regulating abortion," Arizona state Sen. Nancy Barto, a Republican who sponsored the state's 15-week ban, told ABC News.
But doctors told ABC News the language of these laws is vague and makes it unclear what qualifies as a mother's life being in danger, what the risk of death is, and how imminent death must be before a provider can act.
"We've taken the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and these types of laws and this type of language actually do harm," Dr. Melissa Simon, vice chair for research in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, told ABC News. "I do not -- nor do my patients want me to -- stop what I'm doing and think about what the judge would do: 'Will the judge sentence me to jail if I were to perform an abortion?'"
"It sounds like it's straightforward criteria, but it's not in practice," said Dr. Lisa Harris.
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And one physician went on to point out what I was thinking of in my mind before I began the diary, what percent risk makes it acceptable to perform the abortion?
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"When I see patients, for instance, who have a major cardiac problem, a lot of the time they have a risk of a major cardiac event of up to 15% to 25%, even up to 50%," she told ABC News. "At the moment they're fine. But as they get further into pregnancy, that's going to put their life more and more at risk."
She continued, "So do I have to wait until they're on death's doorstep, or can I intervene at that point to prevent more harm and more damage to them?"
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Real OB/GYNS are leaving and as Dartagnan expertly explains, forced Birther providers are replacing them in red states and the forced Birthers are using unscientific terms designed to push forced Birtherism upon already distressed patients
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She’s using terms that your prior doctor never used, and every time you ask about potentially terminating this pregnancy she steers the conversation away, never answering your question directly. Her words are strange and anything but reassuring: She calls your pregnancy “pre-viable” and refers to the fetus inside you as a “preborn” child. She talks about the state’s new “regulations” that prohibit the termination of a pregnancy, which she refers to as “feticide.” Then you happen to glance over her shoulder and on the shelf sits a slim binder with the acronym “AAPLOG” in bold letters written along its spine.
It dawns on you that this doctor is trying to persuade you to continue your pregnancy, even though you already know you can’t.
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When you put all of this together, even if a red state includes 'exceptions', the 'exceptions' are unlikely to help the pregnant female soldier who needs to terminate the pregnancy. Therefore, even with 'exceptions', a pregnant female soldier who is stationed in a red state and who needs to terminate the pregnancy is likely to need to travel a great distance to get the reproductive healthcare she needs.
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And here's the point: this travel costs her money that she would not have to spend prior to Dobbs nor would she have to pay it if she were a civilian living in a blue state. So this policy simply makes it status quo ante.
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And no matter how many times Mike Lawler says that money is fungible, the military is only paying for the travel and not the actual abortion. Thus, Tuberville and Graham are lying when they say that paying for travel is the same as paying for an abortion and paying for travel is what Tuberville is doing this over and what his fellow Senate Republicans are allowing him to do.
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Now to change the rule so that a large batch of service members can be promoted at one time, we need 60 votes because of the filibuster. Therefore, it is not just Tuberville. All Senate Republicans are complicit in this because they could help to create a carve around the unanimous consent needed.
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The AP in an article written in July explained why one senator can hold up the promotions of hundreds of generals and flag officers
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THE POWER OF ONE
In the Senate, one senator can hold up nominations or legislation even if the other 99 want it to move forward.
Generally, leaders in the majority party get around this by holding a series of votes to move a measure and dispense of the hold. It just takes some additional time on the Senate floor.
But Tuberville’s blockade is unique because there are hundreds of military nominations and promotions, and Democratic leaders would have to hold roll call votes on every single one of them to get around the hold. It’s a decades-long tradition for the Senate to group military promotions together and approve them by voice vote, avoiding lengthy roll calls.
So Tuberville has put the Senate in a bind. The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said this week that voting on the more than 260 military nominations through the regular procedure would take 27 days with the Senate working “around the clock” or 84 days if the Senate worked eight hours a day.
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Chris Hays in an article yesterday explained this even more with context
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By Chris Hayes, host of “All In with Chris Hayes”
One, lone Republican in the Senate is actively undermining the military readiness of the United States of America as the country currently finds itself in the midst of some of the most intense and active global crises in recent memory: The wars between Israel and Hamas and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In this incredibly important and precarious moment, we have an unprecedented absence of the key Pentagon officials needed to administer U.S. armed forces. And that is all thanks to literally one man.
.Tuberville is using the arcane rules of the Senate to single-handedly block about 400 nominations to key military vacancies in a hopeless crusade to get the Biden administration to restrict abortion access for service members. On Thursday, Senate leadership was able to get a few key nominations through, including a second-in-command to relieve the commandant of the Marine Corps, who is currently hospitalized after working 18-hour days to cover the extra work left behind by Tuberville’s blockade.
But getting around Tuberville’s blockade is time consuming. It would take months of around-the-clock voting to circumvent him and confirm all the vacant positions. And to be clear, these are not controversial nominees. Each vote, if it eventually makes it to the floor, garners near-unanimous support. And even Tuberville’s Republican colleagues have lost their patience.
On Wednesday night, we witnessed a remarkable scene on the Senate floor when Senate Republicans tried to bring over 60 nominations — and Sen. Tuberville individually blocked each one. And Tuberville’s obstinance led to some of the most raw, honest, political legislating that I have seen in a while.
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But it gets worse, a three star general not in a Senate confirmed position was doing four jobs at one time
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With Smith hospitalized and no confirmed assistant commandant, Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl is performing the duties of commandant. Heckl, who is the deputy commandant for combat development, can't serve as an "acting commandant" because he is not currently in a Senate-confirmed position. As a result, he doesn't have all of the power or authority that a confirmed officer would have.
Schumer said Smith's sudden medical emergency is "precisely the kind of avoidable emergency that Sen. Tuberville has provoked though his reckless holds.A host of military officers have spoken out about the damage of the delays for service members. While Tuberville's holds are focused on all general and flag officers, they carry career impacts on the military's younger rising officers. Until each general or admiral is confirmed, it blocks an opportunity for a more junior officer to rise.
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Even the Department of Defense on an official government website is addressing the issue and advocating against the current situation created by Tuberville and made possible by his Senate Republican colleagues
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Pentagon Official Underscores Impact of Senate Hold on DOD Nominees
Defense Officials continue to push for a path forward on Senate confirmation for hundreds of military nominees, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said today.
A total of 378 general and flag officer nominations have been delayed indefinitely as part of the blanket hold put in place by Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama in February.
"The holds continue to grow, unfortunately," Singh said.
"We are continuing to be in touch with the Senate on the best way forward, and it's really up to them to decide on how they decide to lift these holds," she said. "But we're going to continue to advocate for all of our general and flag officers."
.It was the first time in decades that any one of the branches has been led by an acting service chief — and the first time in history that all three have operated simultaneously without confirmed leadership.
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. Other Senate Republicans are likely not doing this for any reason other than the fact that this is really bad politics. We are a year out from the presidential election. A third of senators will be up for reelection. While Donald Trump is temporarily and insanely leading, the fundamentals of the election are against him. The economy is good. Inflation has markedly improved, the GDP is growing, fourteen million jobs have been created during this administration and the unemployment rate is below four percent. Donald Trump is facing four Indictments. He was labeled a rapist by a court, he has been indicted by four different grand juries and charged with 91 felonies and will likely be convicted of at least the attempted coup Jack Smith prosecution and NY AG Letitia James will have ended the Trump Organization's right to do business and taken back hundreds of millions of dollars in all probability. At that time, the anti-Trump vote including younger progressives will have accepted reality that either they back and vote for President Biden's reelection or Donald Trump will win the 2024 presidential election with all that this will mean. President Biden had low job approval ratings at the time of the 2022 midterms too. Yes, President Biden wasn't on the ballot, but neither was Donald Trump who created this Dobbs mess by his radical and dishonest Supreme Court Justice nominees.
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The last thing that these Senate Republicans want is more discussion of abortion and Dobbs and a discussion of how Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville has weakened military readiness at the worst possible time when there are military threats around the world: China has threatened Taiwan , there's the Israel/Hamas/Palestinian which threatens to widen in Middle East conflict , and Putin is attacking Ukraine and after Ukraine he will go for Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia. These Senate Republicans know Dobbs killed them in the 2022 midterms and they know Trump hurt their support with the military already and Tuberville exacerbated them both.
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