AUGUSTA, Maine — Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s ongoing blockade of hundreds of military promotions over objections to Pentagon abortion policy is holding up a Maine Army National Guard leader’s potential change in rank.
The Maine delay is minor and has no immediate effect on staffing. But it shows the far-reaching effects of Tuberville’s move on military personnel who are based in countries around the world or closer to home. Maine’s congressional delegation has criticized his actions.
Tuberville, a Republican, has blocked the Senate from approving more than 300 senior military promotions and nominations since March over his objections to the Department of Defense’s new abortion policy unveiled in February. Under the rule, military leaders can provide time off and travel stipends to personnel who travel across state lines to get abortions.
In Maine, the only promotion currently caught up in Tuberville’s maneuver is that of Col. Scott Lewis, who lives in Monmouth and has been the Maine Army National Guard’s chief of staff since last year. He works at Camp Chamberlain in north Augusta, overseeing full-time personnel programs and developing goals for the Maine Army National Guard.
Lewis, 55, has been awaiting what is known as a certificate of eligibility for a promotion to brigadier general, according to Maj. Carl Lamb, a Maine National Guard spokesperson. These moves ensure continuity of leadership in the military branches and must be confirmed by the Senate.
However, Maine has no current brigadier general positions that need to be filled. Even if it did, there is at least one other officer who has the authorization that Lewis is up for, said Lamb, who added Lewis is also in the first year of a role typically held for at least two to three years.
If the Senate approved Lewis today, “it would not have an immediate effect on our headquarters staffing,” Lamb added.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle from Maine and other states have criticized the tactic from Tuberville, who entered politics by winning his Senate race in 2020 after a college football coaching career saw him lead several storied programs. The top spots in the Army, Marine Corps and Navy are among the vacant positions affected by Tuberville’s blanket hold.
“Tuberville should knock it off and stop messing with the military’s ability to promote new leadership,” U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat and Marine veteran who represents Maine’s 2nd District, said Tuesday in a statement.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told the Bangor Daily News earlier this month she had spoken with Tuberville to express how his maneuver is “not fair to the men and women who serve in the military, and it’s also not fair to their families.”
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a floor speech last week Tuberville should propose an amendment if he does not like the current abortion policy.
“It is an unprecedented attack on the integrity of our military chain of command,” King said of Tuberville’s actions.
Federal law prohibits the Department of Defense from providing abortion services at military treatment facilities except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the pregnant woman. The Pentagon first announced the plan to change its abortion policy last year after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Tuberville has called the new policy “immoral and arguably illegal.”
Lewis, the Maine Army National Guard leader, enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1989 as an anti-submarine warfare operator based at the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, according to his biography on the National Guard’s website.
In 1998, he joined the National Guard and has served in numerous positions over the years, with deployments to Iraq from 2003 to 2004 and Afghanistan from 2013 to 2014.
