Tuberville Brings Back Military Promotion Stonewall Over Concerns About Sec Def Austin’s Hospitalization

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking the promotion of an Army general over concerns about his role in Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s mysterious hospitalization, the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Tuberville is singlehandedly stonewalling the nomination of Lt. Gen. Ronald P. Clark, a senior aide to Austin, to the position of four-star commander of the Army, a spokesperson for Tuberville told the DCNF. The senator is doing so because he reportedly has concerns over Clark’s supposed role in helping Austin keep secret his late 2023 and early 2024 hospitalization from the White House, the spokesperson said.

Tuberville’s move is reminiscent of his now-infamous strategy throughout 2023, in which he blocked hundreds of high-level military promotions out of protest of the Pentagon’s abortion policy.

“Sen. Tuberville has concerns about Lt. Gen. Clark’s actions during Secretary Austin’s hospitalization,” Tuberville spokesperson Mallory Jaspers told the DCNF.

Austin underwent a procedure in late 2023 due to issues stemming from a prostate cancer diagnosis, which created its own set of complications that forced him to go into intensive care at the end of the year, where he stayed until early January. The Defense Secretary chose to withhold that information from the public and the White House; Clark learned of Austin’s hospitalization on Jan. 2 but did not disclose