The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations advanced the nomination of Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun to be the Trump administration’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in a bipartisan vote on Wednesday.
If confirmed by the full Senate, the Chabad rabbi would become the second Chassid to be approved by the Senate for a senior administration position after Mitchell Silk was confirmed as assistant secretary of the treasury for international markets during the first Trump administration in 2020.
Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) voted with every Republican to confirm Kaploun, who faced opposition from some Democrats over his partisan commentary about their responses to Oct. 7 and antisemitism.
“Democrats are afraid to even say the words ‘radical Islamic terror’ while Trump says it openly,” Kaploun told Mishpacha magazine in 2024. “Democrats refuse to even recognize the butchers of women and kidnappers of children as terrorists. How can you go along with that?”
Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) all voted to oppose Kaploun’s nomination.
The Anti-Defamation League and Orthodox Union Advocacy Center welcomed the committee’s vote to advance Kaploun and recommended his Senate confirmation.
A Miami-based businessman who was born in Israel and raised in Connecticut, Kaploun has a lower profile than his predecessor, Deborah Lipstadt, who had a decades-long career as an academic expert on Holocaust denial before assuming the antisemitism envoy role.
At his confirmation hearing in November, Kaploun said that he would focus on education as a means to combat Jew-hatred.
“We must educate, educate, educate about the history of the Jewish community in America and the Judeo-Christian values our country was founded on,” the rabbi said. “Antisemitism is anti-American. Those who chant ‘death to the Jews’ all too often chant ‘death to America.’”
The U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism is a position within the State Department and has a mandate to fight antisemitism overseas.
On Wednesday, the Foreign Relations Committee also advanced the nomination of former Fox Nation host and current State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce to be the U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations on a party-line vote.
