The Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to hold a hearing on Mike Huckabee’s nomination as U.S. ambassador to Israel on March 25, according to a source close to the former Arkansas governor and pro-Israel Baptist minister.
The Senate panel has yet to list the names of envoys who will have hearings during that Tuesday session.
The source close to Huckabee told JNS that a media report, which claimed that Democratic obstinance and liberal U.S. Jewish opposition delayed Huckabee’s advancement, is false.
The Senate panel has only held a handful of nomination hearings for ambassadorial selections thus far, with the Senate’s calendar largely tied up in more urgent business.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he selected Huckabee for the Jerusalem post on Nov. 12, shortly after Trump was elected. Huckabee’s nomination was officially filed with the Senate on Feb. 11.
Other diplomats, whose nominations were also sent to the Senate on Feb. 11, have yet to receive hearing dates, including Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for ambassador to France, and Joel Rayburn, who would be Huckabee’s supervisor as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.
Huckabee is expected to encounter some Democratic resistance based on his opposition to a Palestinian state and his evangelical Christian views on the region. But the source close to the former governor told JNS that the Republican-controlled committee is expected to advance Huckabee’s nomination.
Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) announced last month that they would place blanket holds on all Trump envoy nominees until the White House reverses its decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.
If those holds remain in place, they would thwart Republican efforts to fast-track nominees in a final Senate vote through unanimous consent for Huckabee and others.
