Sen. Tommy Tuberville dropped his hold on the promotion of more than 400 senior U.S. military officers for one reason only—to avoid abject humiliation, which was about to come his way if he didn’t relent.

For 10 months, the first-term Alabama Republican blocked the promotions as a protest of the Defense Department’s policy on abortion. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, leaving abortion policy to the states, the Pentagon said it would pay the travel expenses for servicewomen who wanted to have an abortion but were based in states that had outlawed it. (The Justice Department passed a similar allowance for pregnant prisoners.) Tuberville put a hold on every military promotion and nomination, saying he would not let up until the Pentagon changed its policy.

He was able to do this because of a peculiar Senate rule. In weighing whether to confirm a president’s high-level political appointees, the Senate investigates, holds hearings, and conducts debates before voting. But for many nonpolitical assignments, Senate leaders ask for “unanimous consent,” a procedure that takes a few minutes. This is particularly true of nominations and promotions of military officers—thousands of which occur each year. To vote on all of them individually would take hundreds, even thousands of hours.

However, according to the rules, a single senator can object to the request for unanimous consent—and thus hold up the process. This is what, until this week, Tuberville had been doing for 10 months: blocking the routine advancement of nearly half of all the generals and admirals in the U.S. armed forces.

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