Despite Marco Rubio being the first confirmed Trump nominee in the new administration, many key diplomatic positions remain unfilled, including several ambassadorial posts.
According to Al Jazeera reporter Ivica Puljić, several nominated individuals are considered highly controversial. Among them is Charles Kushner, father-in-law of Ivanka Trump, who has been nominated as U.S. Ambassador to France. His nomination raises concerns due to his past criminal conviction for corruption and fraud, for which Trump pardoned him last month.
Another notable nomination is Mike Huckabee for U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee, a Christian fundamentalist and evangelical nationalist, has made inflammatory statements, including claims that the West Bank should never belong to Palestinians and that all life in Gaza should be eradicated.
Lack of Appointments in Southeast Europe
The U.S. State Department has yet to appoint an Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, leaving the position temporarily filled by career diplomat Louis L. Bono. As a result, there is also no Deputy Assistant Secretary for Southeast Europe, and numerous ambassadorships across the region remain vacant.
Among Southeast European countries, the only confirmed nomination is Nicole McGraw as U.S. Ambassador to Croatia. McGraw, a wealthy Trump ally from Florida, has been assigned to what critics call a “vacation embassy”, suggesting that Croatia’s lack of bilateral tensions with the U.S. led to a non-career diplomatic appointment.
On the official State Department website, McGraw’s nomination is the only one marked as “announced”, while ambassadorships for Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia remain without nominees.
