Senate confirms Mike Waltz as Trump’s UN ambassador ahead of UNGA summit
The vote comes days ahead of President Donald Trump's address to the annual gathering of the UN General Assembly.
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday confirmed former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, days before heads of state convene in New York for the UN’s annual gathering.
Waltz’s confirmation ends an eight-month vacancy, during which the United States lacked a permanent representative to the world body.
The position has been left open since President Donald Trump asked his original nominee, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), to withdraw her nomination to ensure Republicans kept their narrow majority in the House. Trump nominated Waltz after it was revealed that he accidentally added a journalist to a private Signal chat in which senior US officials discussed military strikes against Yemen’s Houthis.
The Senate confirmed Waltz in a 47-43 vote. Democrats John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Kelly of Arizona broke with their party to support him, while Rand Paul of Kentucky cast the lone GOP vote against.
Before joining the Trump administration, Waltz served three terms as a Republican congressman from east‑central Florida and earlier was a senior Pentagon policy official under both the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations.
During his confirmation hearing in July, Waltz pledged to confront antisemitism within the United Nations and accused the 80-year-old international organization of bias against Israel and the United States. He called for the UN agency tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees — UNRWA — to be dismantled.
UNRWA has long been a target of Republicans and came under further scrutiny after Israel alleged that 19 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. UNRWA fired nine of them after an internal UN probe found they “may have been involved” in Hamas' assault on southern Israel.
Trump is expected to address the war in Gaza during his address to the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, a week after Israel launched its long-threatened ground offensive in Gaza City.
On Monday, France and Saudi Arabia will hold a summit on the two-state solution, where a handful of US allies are expected to recognize Palestinian statehood. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will address the summit virtually after being denied a visa by the Trump administration.
