Senate Requires the Renomination of @StateDept Nominees Stalled in 2017

Posted: 11:12 am PT
Updated: Dec 4, 2017 | 12:57 pm PT
Updated: Jan 8, 2018 | 7:50 PT -we missed the Poblete nomination in our original post.

 

Last month, we blogged about the nominations that were listed on the Executive Calendar but received no action from the Senate when the Senators left town for the holidays (see Confirmations: McClenny, Braithwaite, Ford, Newstead, Waters, Brock). It now looks like the Senate requires the renomination of almost two about a hundred nominees including the State Department nominees who were not confirmed last year (military nominees remain in status quo and need not have to be renominated).  We should know very soon which of these nominations will get a new life, and which ones are dead.

CNN has additional reporting on this, with a quote below from the White House on the renomination. As of Jan 4, the WH has yet to make any public statement on the renominations:

Nominees who are not confirmed by the end of the Senate session must receive unanimous approval from the chamber to be carried over for consideration in the next session. Any one senator can object to carrying them forward. Nominations not approved are returned to the White House and those nominees must then be re-nominated if they are to proceed.  Murray’s nomination was not held over to the next session, according to a full list of nominees sent back to the White House released by the Senate on Tuesday. Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesperson, declined to say specifically if Murray would be re-nominated.  “This is a standard paperwork practice due to long-established Senate rules, and we will proceed as necessary with re-nominations in January,” Gidley wrote in an email.

Per Senate Executive Calendar dated January 2, 2018:

Suspension of Rule XXXI

Ordered, That all nominations received by the Senate during the 115th Congress, first session, remain in status quo notwithstanding the provisions of Rule XXXI, paragraph 6 (pdf), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, with the exception of the following nominations:

AMBASSADORS

Doug Manchester, of California, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Commonwealth of The Bahamas;

Kathleen Troia McFarland, of New York, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Singapore;

Samuel Dale Brownback, of Kansas, to be Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom;

Richard Grenell, of California, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Federal Republic of Germany;

James Randolph Evans, of Georgia, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Luxembourg;

STATE DEPARTMENT

Eric M. Ueland, of Oregon, to be an Under Secretary of State (Management);

Stephen Akard, of Indiana, to be Director General of the Foreign Service;

Yleem D. S. Poblete, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (Verification and Compliance);

Susan A. Thornton, of Maine, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister- Counselor, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (East Asian and Pacific Affairs). (Dec. 21, 2017.)

Yleem D. S. Poblete, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (Verification and Compliance). 

FOREIGN SERVICE

Kenneth W. MacLean, Foreign Service;

Tanya S. Urquieta, Foreign Service;

David A. Ashford, Foreign Service;

David Charles Miller, Foreign Service;

Five nominations, beginning with Michael Ashkouri, and ending with Omar Robles, Foreign Service;

UNITED NATIONS

Jay Patrick Murray, of Virginia, to be Alternate Representative of the United States of America for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations;

Jay Patrick Murray, of Virginia, to be an Alternate Representative of the United States of America to the Sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations, during his tenure of service as Alternate Representative of the United States of America for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations;

 

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