Jeremy Carl, President Trump's pick for assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, pulled his nomination on Tuesday after at least one Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declined to back him. Without unanimous GOP support on the panel, Carl's confirmation was dead on arrival.
Carl announced the decision on X Tuesday afternoon, framing it as a math problem he couldn't solve.
We also needed the unanimous support of every GOP Senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations, given the unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats to my candidacy, and unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming.
Republicans hold a 12-10 majority on the committee. A single GOP defection would result in a tie vote and block the nomination from advancing to the full Senate. That's exactly the wall Carl hit.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, made clear he wasn't on board. Curtis said Carl was not the "right person to represent our nation's best interests in international forums," citing what he described as anti-Israel views and insensitive comments about Jewish people.
According to Fox News, during his confirmation hearing last month, Carl faced questions about past remarks on race, religion, and Israel. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pressed him on references to "White identity" and what he believed was being "erased." Murphy later called him a "legit White nationalist" on social media.
Carl rejected that characterization, saying he was "not a White nationalist." He said he stood by his comments about "White identity" during the hearing.
This is the pattern with confirmation battles in a narrowly divided committee: Democrats vote as a bloc, and then a single Republican holdout becomes the entire story. Carl didn't lose because the Senate rejected him. He lost because the margin left zero room for dissent, and Curtis dissented.
Carl was gracious in withdrawal, making clear he didn't blame the president or the State Department. He expressed gratitude to both Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, noting their "continued support throughout this long and time-consuming process."
I remain extremely confident in President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and the rest of the outstanding team at State, a group of leaders that includes many close friends.
He added that he did not want to "waste valuable time and energy" on a fight that the committee math had already decided. That's a reasonable read. A conservative commentator and senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, Carl previously served as a deputy assistant interior secretary during Trump's first term. He knows how Washington works, and he knows when the votes aren't there.
This episode illustrates something conservatives need to grapple with honestly: when Democrats vote in lockstep against every nominee, the confirmation process becomes a hostage situation where any single Republican senator holds veto power. It doesn't matter how qualified the nominee is or how strong the president's support is. One senator with reservations can kill the whole thing.
Curtis may have had sincere concerns about Carl's fitness for a role that involves representing the United States in international forums. That's his prerogative. But the structural reality is worth noting. Democrats didn't need to defeat Carl. They just needed to hold the line and wait for one Republican to flinch. That strategy works every time the margins are this thin.
Meanwhile, the left's approach to Carl's confirmation was predictable. Rather than engage with his actual policy positions on international organizations, the playbook was to extract past comments, strip them of context, and brand him with the most inflammatory label available. "White nationalist" is not an argument. It's a disqualifier designed to end the conversation before it starts. The fact that Carl explicitly rejected the label didn't matter. Once the tag is applied, the substance becomes irrelevant.
The White House and State Department had not responded to inquiries about the withdrawal as of Tuesday. Trump will need to put forward a new nominee for the role, one who can thread the needle of unanimous Republican support on a committee where every vote is a potential landmine.
Carl closed his statement with confidence in the administration's direction:
I know they will continue to pursue a foreign policy that puts America first, and that they will work to ensure America is able to exercise its power and influence in the world like never before.
The America First agenda doesn't hinge on any single appointment. But every failed confirmation is a reminder that the Senate remains the bottleneck, and that a one-seat committee majority is barely a majority at all.
