Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in President Donald Trump’s first term, recently joined his administration as a senior policy advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, Waltz announced on Tuesday.

Cohanim was born in Tehran and left Iran as a child in 1979, following the Islamic Revolution. She came with her family to New York. 

“Ellie’s story is the American story,” Waltz said in a statement. “Her family fled persecution in Iran, built a life in New York, and she has spent her career looking for ways to serve America, fighting for freedom, standing with the persecuted, and calling out antisemitism wherever it hides. That is exactly the kind of conviction and courage we need at the United Nations.” 

Cohanim regularly appears on Fox News as a booster of Trump’s foreign policy, and the announcement of her hiring described her as an advocate of “America First foreign policy.” 

Cohanim served as co-chair of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a group created in 2023 to help the Heritage Foundation draft a conservative framework to combat antisemitism. 

Last fall, the task force disaffiliated from Heritage after its president, Kevin Roberts, came to the defense of Tucker Carlson following the far-right podcaster’s interview with neo-Nazi provocateur Nick Fuentes. Since then, Cohanim and her co-chairs have been outspoken about antisemitism on the political right.