President Biden Secures 100th Ambassador Confirmation; Dozens More Await

     With the excitement over the assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri and the signing of the historic Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Honoring Our PACT Act, one milestone that the Biden administration hit has gotten relatively little media attention: the confirmation of U.S. ambassadors. Senator Ted Cruz was able to block the confirmation of these men and women for virtually all of 2021 over unrelated sanctions on the Nordstream 2 pipeline; once the issue was resolved, 2022 became a year of ambassadors being confirmed at breakneck pace.

     In the same week that President Biden signed the Honoring Our PACT Act and CHIPS and Science Act and Congress ratified the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO and passed the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress was also busy confirming more ambassadors to foreign states and organizations. Among others, the confirmations of Carrin Pitman as ambassador to Iceland and Constance Milstein as ambassador to Malta were the 100th and 101st conducted by the United States Senate since President Biden took office.

     19 more have been reported by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, meaning they only have to be brought up for a vote by Leader Schumer in order to be passed. 27 others, meanwhile, are pending before this committee. Just 10 positions have not been filled: the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Gabon, Timor-Leste, Croatia, Estonia, Italy and San Marino, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the International Civil Aviation Organization. A few more ambassadors remaining from the Trump era are likely to resign here and there; however, it appears that, by the end of this year, all ambassador vacancies will be filled.

     They won't just be filled: they'll be filled with more diverse and more qualified individuals than under the Trump administration. President Biden is appointing diverse candidates as well as doing what Trump did not, which is putting the appointment of career foreign service agents above the appointment of major party backers and other cronies.

     Elections have consequences. Both parties are not the same. This summer in the Senate has made that extraordinarily clear.