WASHINGTON — Crucial national security jobs in the Trump administration have been left empty by Senate Democrats’ obstruction while the White House focuses on installing US ambassadors — leaving America vulnerable to foreign threats, The Post has learned.
At least 144 nominees were awaiting confirmation when the Senate broke for its August recess — including picks for senior positions at the State, Defense and Energy departments tasked with military readiness, nuclear issues and weapons of mass destruction.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), in line to take over as Chuck Schumer’s No. 2 with the retirement of Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), initially placed a hold on more than 300 Trump nominees — a move one source familiar with the confirmation process described as “payback” for the administration “destroying USAID.”
“Unprecedented Democrat obstruction against every single presidential nominee has left vital national-security positions vacant, even those tasked with preventing nuclear devices from falling into the wrong hands,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told The Post last week, demanding that the August recess be canceled.
“While Chuck Schumer wants to neglect his responsibilities, President Trump continues to work hard from the White House on behalf of the American people,” said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly. “He has been clear that the Senate must confirm all of his nominees as quickly as possible.”
Notably, only around two dozen ambassador nominations are still pending on the Senate calendar, compared to more than 100 nominees for other executive branch roles.
The White House notifies the Senate when it wants nominations to be voted on, and some administration sources have groused that the approach of ensuring ambassadors are confirmed first is akin to “having an army of generals without soldiers.”
“It’s vital to have these positions to secure regional stability, especially in our own hemisphere,” added another source close to the White House. “But it’s one of many issues at the moment.”
While Trump has yet to nominate an assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security at the Pentagon, for example, US ambassador to Belgium nominee Bill White, a businessman and former Obama fundraiser, has leapfrogged to the front of the line for consideration.
Several ambassadors were approved late last week before the Senate recess — including Louis Rinaldi, a longtime golfing buddy of Trump’s, to be envoy to Uruguay; and fast food magnate Andrew Puzder, who donated more than $100,000 to help Republicans and the president’s re-election campaign, to be US representative to the European Union,
Of the more than a dozen ambassadors confirmed so far, at least half donated to Trump’s campaign committees or PACs during the 2024 election cycle or so far in 2025.
Others opened their pocketbooks after the president took office — and were confirmed in two months.
Warren Stephens, Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, donated nearly $400,000 to the RNC in February — a little more than a week after the Senate received his nomination. He was confirmed in a bipartisan 59-39 vote on April 29.
US Ambassador to Italy Tilman Fertitta gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee on April 9, one month after his nomination was sent to the Senate. He was confirmed in a bipartisan 83-14 vote on April 29.
Pending national security nominees include the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian Affairs-designate Michael DeSombre, whose purview includes US policy on China.
DeSombre’s nomination was received in the Senate March 24, placed on its executive calendar June 5, and still hasn’t received a vote.
Robert Kadlec, who helmed Trump’s Operation Warp Speed and dug deep into the possible culpability of China’s military experiments for the COVID-19 pandemic, was nominated in February for a similar role at the Pentagon — but hasn’t made it out of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Gerald Parker, who reportedly helped craft the president’s executive order banning gain-of-function research that officials and scientific experts have said could have started the COVID outbreak, was tapped to lead the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy but recently resigned.
Meanwhile, Adrienne Keen, the ex-director for global health security at the National Intelligence Council, who played a role in keeping critical evidence on COVID origins out of a 2021 briefing delivered to former President Joe Biden, remains employed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The delays in filling administration posts have left experts in the field impatient.
Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright said it was “dismaying the Senate has moved so slowly on confirmation of key nominees for biosecurity positions. The foot-dragging puts US health security and US national security at risk.”
“It is even more dismaying that Adrienne Keen, who actively participated in defrauding the public and policy makers about the origin of COVID, remains at the CDC. Keene needs to be terminated for cause forthwith,” added Ebright, who testified on the pandemic’s origins before the Senate last year.
“National security should not be politicized,” added Atlantic Council fellow Alex Plitsas. “If nominees are unqualified or not confirmable for valid reasons then they should be acted upon accordingly to ensure another qualified nominee is sent forward to the Senate for consideration as soon as possible to prevent critical vacancies. Otherwise, holding qualified nominees indefinitely for other reasons is detrimental to our national security.”
A political appointee tracking website shows the pace of confirmations is roughly the same as under Biden and during Trump’s first term — but far beneath that set by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Republicans have considered adopting new procedural rules to quicken the process — including eliminating the cloture vote, shortening debate time for nominees down to two hours or voting on groups of nominations at once.
“Going back multiple administrations, both Democrats and Republicans, as recently as Bill Clinton, 98% of all the noms considered were handled either by voice [vote] or UC [unanimous consent] and it’s just deteriorated over time to where Trump’s, you know, we’re at zero here,” Thune told The Post in an exclusive interview last week.
“It’s got to be fixed,” he said. “It certainly hamstrings, I think, the functioning of our government in a way that’s really detrimental to the country.”
Senate committees noted that the pace of their confirmations is ahead of where it was during the previous two presidential terms, without directly commenting on any of the stalled nominees.
“As of July 30th,” a Senate Foreign Relations Committee spokeswoman said the panel, “had passed 54 nominees, where the Biden Administration had only passed 18 at this point in the admin, and Trump 1.0 Administration had passed 24.”
Of the 33 civilian leadership nominees advanced out of the Senate Armed Services Committee, at least 22 been confirmed, a spokesman for the panel added.
The State Department, Pentagon, Department of Health and Human Services, and Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did spokespeople for Thune, Schumer or Schatz.
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