President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as assistant secretary of state for international organizations faced a major setback Thursday when a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he would oppose the appointment.
Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah said he does not believe Jeremy Carl is the right person to represent the nation’s interests at international organizations. The position oversees U.S. relations with bodies including the United Nations.
Carl is a senior fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute think tank. He served as a deputy assistant secretary of the Interior Department during Trump’s first term.
“I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated,” Curtis said in a statement after Carl’s nomination hearing.
Curtis’ decision was first reported by the Deseret News.
A White House official said Carl remains the nominee.
At the hearing, Curtis asked Carl about past comments about Jewish people, including a podcast appearance in which he responded, “Right, right, yeah,” when the host criticized Jews for “claiming special victim status” because of the Holocaust.
Curtis’ opposition makes it unlikely Carl will win approval from the Foreign Relations Committee, potentially sinking his nomination.
That would mark a departure in the Republican-controlled Senate, which has so far backed most of Trump’s nominees and policies.
The committee has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats and oversees the State Department. All Democrats are expected to oppose Carl.
During the hearing, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey asked Carl what he meant when he said he believed in the “Great Replacement” theory, which promotes the idea that nonwhite immigrants will replace white citizens.
Carl said he was referring to the “international demographic replacement of Europeans in Europe.” Booker then asked whether Carl believes there is currently “an effort to replace Americans.” Carl responded, “I think the Democratic Party, through its immigration policies, has certainly sent signs of that.”
Questions about Carl’s nomination have circulated for months. In September, CNN reported that Carl had tried to delete at least 5,000 posts on X, formerly Twitter, including many that were inflammatory about race.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York opposed Carl’s nomination in a Senate speech this week, saying he has “a long history of racist, white supremacist and antisemitic views.”
A nomination can be sent to the full Senate for a vote even if the committee does not approve it, though that is extremely rare. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the chamber.
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the committee’s Republican chairman, said he supports all of the president’s nominees.