Successfully was able to click the publish button on a new entry in Netlify CMS and confirmed in GitLab that the branch merged. Hopefully, the issue is resolved for now.
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Hey there, @amy 
Thank you for confirming that this is now working for you. We appreciate the update!
Failed to publish: API_ERROR: Branch cannot be merged
I received this same error message and the problem was that our merge requests were blocked due to needing a rebase. Not sure what caused it. Possibly due to someone moving 11 entries quickly into the ready status or trying to publish several ready entries back to back too quickly.
The solution was to either 1) make a change to the entry (Save) to force a rebase, then publish or 2) go into the gitlab merge request and click rebase, then publish
Just trying to help others from Google find this thread easier
Hi , thanks for sharing your solution with the community! this will definitely help other users who come across this thread. (: