A Colorado senator accused U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on the Senate floor this week of freezing for the first time in history all Department of Defense civilian and military promotion nominees, including new generals and admirals, until a final decision is made about the U.S. Space Command Headquarters.

“There is no precedent for what the senator from Alabama is doing,” U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said Tuesday on the Senate floor. Bennet said he “couldn’t believe it” when he heard it.

Bennet and other Colorado lawmakers are trying to stop the U.S. Space Command’s move from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala., after that city won a government comparison competition. Bennet moved that the Senate immediately consider the promotions and Tuberville rose to object.

Tuberville said Bennet “may have good intentions but he’s wrong on the facts.” Tuberville said he was holding up the Defense Department promotions “because the secretary of defense is trying to push through a massive expansion of taxpayer subsidized abortions without going through this body.”

Bennet has criticized the possible command move to Alabama by saying the state’s ban on almost all abortions would be an unfair hardship imposed on Space Command staff forced to move to the state with the headquarters.

Tuberville said he told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III three months ago that “if he tried to turn the DOD into an abortion travel agency I would place a hold on all civilian, flag and general staff nominees.”

Austin signed a memo in October “designed to ensure that service members and their families can access reproductive health care and to support Department of Defense health care providers concerned about potential risks while providing federally authorized care.”

“Following the (Supreme Court’s) Dobbs decision, women who are in states with restrictive abortion laws may have to travel to other states to receive reproductive health care, including abortion-related care,” Austin’s memo said.

Alabama has “some of the strictest laws in the nation surround abortion,” according to the website womenscaremedicalcenter.org. The state bans all abortions after the point of conception.

Colorado lawmakers have raised that issue trying to keep the Space Command headquarters in their state. Alabama came out on top in the federal government’s own headquarters search with the command top office apparently heading to Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal.

“The DOD refused to answer questions or justify this policy for months last year,” Tuberville said on the Senate floor today. When the DOD did answer, Tuberville said, the memo was “exposed for what it really is, nothing but a political charade to please the Left.”