Four hundred military nominees were swiftly confirmed by the Senate Tuesday, just hours after Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville lifted his 10-month blockade on the majority of appointments. Tuberville had been protesting a completely unrelated Pentagon policy that pays out-of-state travel costs for its staff to receive abortion care. He finally relented after mounting pressure from fellow Republicans and threats from Democrats to temporarily change Senate rules in order to bypass the blockade.

In related news, the military’s top sexual assault prosecutor has been fired after an email surfaced in which he undermined assault allegations of survivors. Brigadier General Warren Wells sent the email to staff in 2013, which read, in part, “Expect no commander to be able to make objective decisions involving allegations as long [as] Congress and our political masters are dancing by the fire of misleading statistics and one-sided, repetitive misinformation by those with an agenda.”