Here’s Just How Stupid Tommy Tuberville’s Military Blockade Really Was

A new report from the Department of Defense reveals the number of times military members were reimbursed for costs of traveling out of state for reproductive health care—and in doing so, exposes just how ridiculous Senator Tommy Tuberville’s protest of that policy was.

Tuberville single-handedly held up more than 400 military promotions last year to protest the Defense Department policy of reimbursing service members who had to travel for an abortion or other form of reproductive care. Despite repeated warnings from department leadership that he was hurting military readiness, the Alabama Republican claimed he wanted to “stand up for the taxpayers of this country” against what he considered a “bad policy.”

But deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh revealed Tuesday that the policy wasn’t such a burden on taxpayers after all.

Between June and December 2023, “the policy was used 12 times to access noncovered reproductive health care services,” Singh told a press briefing. Those services include abortion, as well as assisted reproductive procedures such as egg retrieval and in vitro fertilization.

“The number 12 accounts for each instance of an individual using the policy for a round-trip event,” Singh explained.

The total cost for travel and transportation in those 12 instances was $44,791.20, Singh said.

In comparison, the Defense Department’s total budget for 2023 was $816.7 billion. And the amount has gone up for this year.

Tuberville held up hundreds of military promotions for most of 2023, throwing the entire U.S. military into disarray. He finally relented in December, after succeeding only in making everyone angry with him. Military leaders called him out by name, accusing him of “aiding and abetting Communist and other autocratic regimes,” while fellow Republicans criticized him, with one calling him “dumb” on the Senate floor.

Through it all, the Defense Department refused to budge on its policy. Dropping that policy “would be an egregious violation of the covenant that we make, the military makes, with the people that sign up and volunteer,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in October.

“When they volunteer for that duty, they have every right to expect that they’re going to get the health care they need.”

A special election in Alabama on Tuesday proved one thing for Democrats: Abortion is a winning issue.

Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands defeated her Republican opponent, Madison City Council member Teddy Powell, for a state House seat in a deep-red district after she made abortion and in vitro fertilization access a cornerstone of her campaign.

“Today, Alabama women and families sent a clear message that will be heard in Montgomery and across the nation. Our legislature must repeal Alabama’s no-exceptions abortion ban, fully restore access to IVF, and protect the right to contraception,” Lands said in a statement after her victory.

Lands secured a whopping 63 percent of the vote—a 26-point lead—by aggressively going against the grain, telling voters she supports a repeal of Alabama’s abortion bans while sharing her own experience with abortion two decades ago, when she received a devastating diagnosis: a genetic defect called trisomy.

“Twenty years ago I was able to get the care I needed. My three doctors told me this is the procedure I needed, that my life was at risk. I was able to go to my own hospital with my own doctor there, I didn’t have to leave my community,” Lands told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent. “And to think we’ve gone 20 years backwards. I can’t believe that. I’ve seen, in my lifetime, women make great strides in many areas. And, I’m just, I’m outraged that 20 years later women do not have the same freedoms and protections that I had.”

The special election also sees Lands take the seat back from a Republican she lost to in 2022—former state Representative David Cole, who resigned from the elected position after pleading guilty to voting fraud charges.

It could be the beginning of a turning tide for a state that witnessed an immense backlash after Alabama’s highest judiciary voted 7–2 to ascribe rights to embryos, effectively restricting IVF access across the state. Still, Democrats have a long way to go before they have a stronghold in the state legislature. Republicans currently hold a 75–27 advantage over the liberal party in the state House.

Now that Lara Trump, who once said that people should “get ahead by merit and merit alone,” is in charge, the Republican National Committee has a new question to determine the merit of all job candidates: Was the 2020 election stolen?

Trump and former North Carolina Republican Party head Michael Whatley took over the RNC at the beginning of the month. Both had been picked by her father-in-law, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, to replace Ronna McDaniel. Lara Trump and Whatley promptly purged all RNC staffers but allowed them to reapply for jobs with the organization.

The application process now includes an interview with Donald Trump advisers, The Washington Post reported Tuesday night, citing anonymous sources. One prospective employee, who is based in a key swing state, said they were asked, “Was the 2020 election stolen?”

Applicants told the Post they were startled by the question, which seemed more about measuring their loyalty to Donald Trump than their political acumen. While the questions about the 2020 election were reportedly open-ended, one former RNC employee pointed out that “if you say the elections wasn’t stolen, do you really think you’re going to get hired?”

Republican strategist Doug Heye, who worked as the RNC’s communications director, told the Post that the party has always expected staffers to mimic presidential candidates’ positions. “You’re there for that specific reason, to back the candidate up and go along with the worldview,” he said.

“The problem with Trumpism is that despite bringing in very smart and very capable people, if you want to play Trump’s game, you have to back him up on everything he says. Claims about the election being stolen is kind of the last frontier of that.”

The RNC has doubled down on promoting election fraud falsehoods. One of the organization’s first hires post-purge was Christina Bobb, a lawyer and outspoken election denier. Bobb will head the RNC’s new election integrity unit.

The new loyalty test in the application process shouldn’t be surprising now that Lara Trump is at the helm of the RNC. The former personal trainer, model, and cake decorator is running the RNC, all because she has sworn absolute loyalty to her father-in-law.

Donald Trump endured a couple of losses in his hush-money trial on Tuesday, though maybe none more irritating for the boisterous GOP presidential pick than his first gag order in the case.

The ruling came after Trump openly attacked Judge Juan Merchan and his family in a post on Truth Social, targeting the judge’s daughter in particular.

In his order, which came at the request of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Merchan forbade Trump from speaking publicly about courtroom staff, prosecutors, or any of their family members. Comments about jurors are similarly prohibited, and he cannot make—or order others to make—comments about witnesses. The order does still allow Trump to attack Bragg himself.

In a post on Truth Social earlier in the day, Trump attacked Merchan and his daughter.

“Judge Juan Merchan, a very distinguished looking man, is nevertheless a true and certified Trump Hater who suffers from a very serious case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. In other words, he hates me!” he wrote in a Tuesday morning post. “His daughter is a senior executive at a Super Liberal Democrat firm that works for Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, the Democrat National Committee, (Dem)Senate Majority PAC, and even Crooked Joe Biden. He was recently the judge on an unrelated trial of a long term employee, elderly and not in good health.”

“This judge treated him viciously, telling him either you cooperate or I’m putting you in jail for 15 years,” Trump continued. “He pled, and went to jail for very minor offenses, highly unusual, served 4 months in Rikers, and now they are after him again, this time for allegedly lying (doesn’t look like a lie to me!), and they threatened him again with 15 years if he doesn’t say something bad about “TRUMP.” He is devastated and scared! These COUNTRY DESTROYING SCOUNDRELS & THUGS HAVE NO CASE AGAINST ME. WITCH HUNT!”

The whole ordeal is a sign that Trump still hasn’t learned his lesson, even after suffering gag orders in previous trials. In October, Judge Arthur Engoron silenced the former president after he ushered a scourge of far-right vitriol onto Engoron’s chief law clerk. Trump was later fined $15,000 for violating the order. Judge Tanya Chutkan also imposed a gag order on the former president in his D.C. trial, which focuses on his efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

Still, the gag came as welcome news to some of Trump’s other victims, including his former fixer (and one of the expected star witnesses in the trial), Michael Cohen, who said he’s “been under relentless assault from Donald’s MAGA supporters.”

“Nevertheless, knowing Donald as well as I do, he will seek to defy the gag order by employing others within his circle to do his bidding, regardless of consequence,” Cohen told New York Daily News’s Molly Crane-Newman.

Donald Trump just lost another bid in his hush-money trial, thanks to his idiot legal team.

On Tuesday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan batted away several of Trump’s efforts to waylay the case, and doubled down on his warning that Trump’s legal team must ask for permission in future filings in the case. In a harsh reminder, Merchan warned Trump’s lawyers that he “has the power to punish a party for disobedience of a lawful mandate of the court.”

“This Court advises counsel that it expects and welcomes zealous advocacy and creative lawyering,” wrote Merchan in a court order. “However, the Court also expects those advocates to demonstrate the proper respect and decorum that is owed to the courts and its judicial officers and to never forget that they are officers of the court. As such, counsel is expected to follow this Court’s orders.”

“A court of record has power to punish for a criminal contempt,” noted Merchan in his order.

The root of the effort is all too clear from the judge’s perch.

“[Trump], either directly or through counsel, has repeatedly stated publicly that the defense goal is to delay these proceedings, if possible, past the 2024 presidential election,” Merchan wrote in a footnote to the court order.

On Monday, Merchan ruled that jury selection will begin April 15. It’s the first criminal trial officially on the docket for the former president, while the proceedings for his three other criminal trials are on hold thanks to appeals and delay tactics from Trump’s legal team.

Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He’s facing 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.