The White House has told Republicans that President Donald Trump will not pull the nomination of Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait and wants the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to hold a vote on his candidacy, despite the growing bipartisan opposition to his nomination, Jewish Insider has learned. 

White House officials have communicated to committee Republicans in recent days that Trump would not withdraw Ghalib’s nomination because the president credits the Democratic Hamtramck mayor with helping him turn out Michigan’s Arab-American vote and win the state in last November’s presidential election, two sources familiar with the ongoing discussions told JI.

“We were told Trump believes he [Ghalib] helped him deliver Michigan. He doesn’t want to abandon him,” one GOP senator on the committee said of the White House’s characterization of the president’s thinking.

Pressed about the four committee Republicans who already committed to joining all Democrats in opposing Ghalib’s confirmation, the White House has told senators and senior committee staffers that Trump wants Ghalib’s nomination to receive a vote regardless of the outcome. 

“If Trump wants his friend to go down that way, that’s OK. He can go down that way,” another Republican on the committee said, expressing confidence that Ghalib had no path to advance out of committee. 

No Democratic senators on the committee will support advancing Ghalib’s nomination to the full Senate if and when it comes up for a vote, a source familiar with the Democratic whip count told JI. With all Democrats opposed, Ghalib could only afford to lose one Republican to be reported favorably out of committee. 

Four committee Republicans have already come out publicly against his nomination — Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Curtis (R-UT), Dave McCormick (R-PA) and John Cornyn (R-TX). At least two others confirmed to JI that they have voiced their reservations about Ghalib to the White House in the wake of his confirmation hearing last week, when Ghalib faced a bipartisan grilling over his long record of promoting antisemitic ideas and his embrace of anti-Israel positions as an elected official. Those senators have not yet made those concerns public. 

The White House did not respond to JI’s request for comment on Tuesday.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the committee’s chairman, acknowledged to JI on Tuesday evening that he had not yet scheduled Ghalib’s nomination for a vote, but demurred when asked if he planned to do so. 

A committee spokesperson for Risch declined to comment.

“A lot of what Trump is doing is kind of testing whether these guys have a gag reflex,” one Democratic committee member said of the situation, surmising that the president’s actions were partially aimed at assessing how much Republicans were willing to push back on nominees and legislative proposals that they object to.

The nomination of Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., to be U.S. ambassador to Kuwait is facing what appear to be insurmountable odds as opposition to his confirmation grows among Senate Republicans.

No Republican or Democratic senators have come to Ghalib’s defense after his performance at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, when he faced a bipartisan grilling over his long record of promoting antisemitic ideas and his embrace of anti-Israel positions as an elected official. 

Senators on both sides of the aisle had privately expressed reservations about Ghalib’s nomination prior to the hearing, but his attempts to evade responsibility for his record while under oath prompted several Republicans on the committee to go public. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced at the end of Ghalib’s hearing last Thursday that he would not be able to support moving his nomination out of committee to the Senate floor. Sens. John Curtis (R-UT), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Dave McCormick (R-PA) have since followed suit. Others on the panel, including Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), have said they plan to raise their concerns about Ghalib with the committee chairman, Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), and the White House. 

“Based on the hearing that we had last week, I’m going to vote no against him,” McCormick told Punchbowl News on Tuesday. “I don’t think he demonstrated that he’s qualified for the role.”

Asked about Ghalib and the concerns surrounding his nomination while speaking to reporters on Tuesday morning, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said he was “vaguely familiar” with the Hamtramck mayor’s nomination but had not “examined” the matter closely. 

The White House did not respond to Jewish Insider’s multiple requests for comment on the status of Ghalib’s nomination or the growing number of GOP senators coming forward to oppose him. 

Ghalib is not believed to have any support on the Democratic side, reinforced by his lackluster answers to questions about his documented history of antisemitic remarks from Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the committee. He also has an embattled standing within the Democratic Party because of his decision to help President Donald Trump win the state of Michigan for Republicans last November. 

“I think that you have dug your hole deeper today,” Murphy, who already opposed Ghalib prior to last week, told the nominee at his confirmation hearing. 

The White House has pulled Joel Rayburn’s nomination to be assistant secretary of state for near Eastern affairs, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Jewish Insider on Monday.

A source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking said Rayburn was withdrawn because “he did not have the votes.” 

“The administration will proceed in a different direction,” the source said of moving forward with a new nominee. 

Despite claims that Rayburn lacked the votes, the former Syria envoy’s nomination had been advanced to the full Senate by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was the only committee Republican to come out against Rayburn’s nomination on the GOP side. 

That vote was made possible by Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who crossed party lines to move Rayburn forward after his nomination had languished due to opposition from Paul and all committee Democrats.

Rayburn has been viewed critically by some isolationist figures, both within the administration and on Capitol Hill. Paul, a longtime critic of American engagement abroad, had said he was skeptical of Rayburn’s denials, including under oath at his confirmation hearing in May, that he had knowledge of efforts to mislead President Donald Trump about U.S. troop presence in Syria while serving as Syria envoy in the first Trump administration.

Votes to advance Rayburn’s nomination out of committee were repeatedly canceled over the summer as other committee Republicans and the White House lobbied Rosen and Paul to switch their respective positions. His nomination was first submitted to Congress in early February.

Paul Ingrassia announced on Tuesday he was withdrawing his embattled nomination to lead the Office of Special Counsel amid growing GOP opposition to his recently unearthed antisemitic and racist text messages. 

Ingrassia, 30, currently serves as the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security. Prior to that role, he briefly served as the liaison to the Department of Justice at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, but was reassigned after clashing with the DOJ’s chief of staff.

“I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s HSGAC [Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee] hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time,” Ingrassia wrote in a post on Truth Social. “I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!”

Trump nominated Ingrassia in late May to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which is tasked with investigating and prosecuting whistleblower claims and accusations of corruption within the federal government. He was scheduled to receive a confirmation hearing in committee on Thursday.

The nomination was initially poorly received by some Republicans on the committee due to his past incendiary comments, including antisemitic conspiracy theories posted to social media. Two GOP committee members had privately expressed concerns to the White House about Ingrassia’s candidacy in recent months, those senators told Jewish Insider on condition of anonymity. 

Ingrassia’s standing plummeted further after Politico reported on Monday that he had sent text messages in a group chat of Republican operatives stating that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and described himself as having a “Nazi streak … from time to time.”

Ingrassia wrote in the text chain that he would “never trust a chinaman or Indian,” a comment made in reference to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Another message stated that “We need competent white men in positions of leadership … The founding fathers were wrong that all men are created equal.” 

The revelation prompted immediate outcry on Capitol Hill, with Democrats reiterating their prior calls to pull Ingrassia’s nomination and Republicans publicly and privately urging the White House to do the same. Three Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee — Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rick Scott (R-FL) and James Lankford (R-OK) — told reporters that they would vote against Ingrassia’s nomination at his confirmation hearing. 

Johnson said that Ingrassia’s nomination “never should’ve gotten this far” and that the White House “ought to withdraw” his name from consideration. 

“I don’t plan on voting for him. I can’t imagine how anybody can be antisemitic in this country,” Scott said, later adding that he had informed the White House of his decision after the most recent text messages were published.

Asked by reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday if the White House should pull Ingrassia’s nomination, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) replied, “I hope so. He’s not going to pass.” He responded, “Yeah,” when asked if it’d be a mistake for Ingrassia to appear before the Homeland Security Committee on Thursday. 

Ingrassia also lost the backing of the Zionist Organization of America, the sole Jewish group that was supporting Ingrassia’s nomination, over the texts. The group announced on Tuesday that they were pulling their endorsement as a result of the messages.

“In this age of Jew hatred, even a hint of antisemitism can’t be tolerated,” Mort Klein, the group’s president, told the Washington Post of the decision. 

At a luncheon hosted by the White House on Tuesday for GOP senators, several Republicans took part in a discussion about Ingrassia’s nomination being “dead,” according to one senator who participated in the conversation.

“He’s going to be pulled,” the senator said of Ingrassia, citing several conversations this week with the White House. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who also serves on the panel, similarly predicted the White House would withdraw his nomination, saying there was no reason to force the confirmation hearing to proceed on Thursday when he had no chance of being confirmed.

“I expect it because there’s no way he’ll be confirmed. I don’t know why anyone would put him through the gauntlet of questions that I would be asking him, along with others,” Blumenthal told JI. “They should mercifully spare him the ignominy of being overwhelmingly disapproved.”

Ingrassia’s nomination was already considered controversial prior to the leak of his text messages, the result of his ties to avowed white nationalists and antisemites like Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, his record of public statements embracing conspiracy theories and his already rocky tenure in the second Trump administration, which had seen him depart from two roles due to friction with colleagues in less than a year. 

Ingrassia was also the subject of an internal investigation at the Department of Homeland Security this month after a sexual harassment complaint was filed against him, though the complaint was later withdrawn and no wrongdoing was found. 

Ingrassia has also been consistently critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship and has repeatedly asserted since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that the United States should not provide any aid to the Jewish state. 

As the Hamas attacks were still underway, Ingrassia posted on X calling illegal immigration to the U.S. “comparable to the attack on Israel.” Days later, Ingrassia wrote in a since-deleted post on the platform that the Israel-Palestine conflict was a “psyop.” 

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced this week that the nomination of Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, Mich., as U.S. ambassador to Kuwait has been delayed. 

Ghalib has faced scrutiny for his anti-Israel history, including questioning reports of Hamas atrocities on Oct. 7 and supporting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and for liking antisemitic comments on social media.

Shaheen told Agence France Press last month that Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, had agreed to postpone consideration of Ghalib as lawmakers gathered additional information about his background.

Asked about the delay by Jewish Insider, Shaheen said that “there were some questions” about Ghalib to which committee members are awaiting written answers. She said she did not recall the subject of the pending questions.

“SFRC has worked at a historic pace to move President Trump’s nominees through our committee,” Risch said in a statement to JI on the nomination. “That pace continues along with our commitment to thorough vetting, and this vetting sometimes means that certain nominations will take longer to process.”

The Hamtramck mayor said in a Facebook post on Sunday that Trump called him to emphasize that he continues to support Ghalib’s nomination but acknowledged that there have been objections.

“He renewed his unlimited support to me” for the nomination, Ghalib said, but “admitted during his call that attempts by some parties have hindered this appointment, and assured me that he will not accept to stand before my appointment for this task that I am honored to do to serve this great country, any obstacle, from any party.”

Ghalib, who was born in Yemen, made history in 2021 when he was elected as Hamtramck’s first Arab and Muslim mayor. As mayor, Ghalib, a Democrat, led Hamtramck to pass a measure to boycott and divest from Israel. He also has a history of liking antisemitic social media posts.

Ghalib made waves nationally last fall when he endorsed President Donald Trump’s 2024 bid in September and campaigned on the president’s behalf with Arab and Muslim voters who had grown frustrated with Democrats over the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

Trump went on to nominate Ghalib as U.S. ambassador to Kuwait in late March of this year.

The White House did not respond to JI’s requests for comment on the status of Ghalib’s nomination, which the Anti-Defamation League called for Trump to withdraw in March.

“Ghalib routinely traffics in antisemitism, actively supports the antisemitic BDS movement, attempted to justify the 10/7 massacre and refused to take disciplinary action against an appointee who attempted to justify the Holocaust,” the ADL said in a post on X at the time.

Ghalib visited Washington for meetings with White House officials in late August, when senators were in their home states for a monthlong recess. Ghalib met during the trip with James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs. No senators posted anything about meetings with Ghalib during that time period or since then, and two Republicans who serve on the committee told JI that they had received no outreach about meeting with the nominee. 

Ghalib’s confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled. 

This week brought more signs that progress on Joel Rayburn’s nomination to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs has ground to a halt, more than a month after his confirmation hearing in mid-May, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declining to call up Rayburn’s nomination for a vote on Thursday and no apparent plans to move the process to the Senate floor.

Rayburn served in President Donald Trump’s first administration and is seen as less aligned with the isolationist figures who have taken other senior roles in the second Trump administration.

The nominee was set for a vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in early June, but postponed after an unidentified senator requested that the vote be “held over” until the committee’s next business meeting.

It also emerged at that time, and in the ensuing weeks, that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) opposes Rayburn’s confirmation, as do all of the Democrats in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, leaving the vote tied — a failure in committee.

The committee held another business meeting on Wednesday to vote on 10 Trump nominees and could have called up the Rayburn nomination again — but Rayburn, this time, was left off of the schedule, a further indication that he lacks the support to advance.

Senate Republicans could still call a vote on the Senate floor to discharge Rayburn’s nomination from the committee and move him to a full floor vote — which would likely be successful — but Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 2 Senate Republican, told Jewish Insider earlier this week that he’s not aware of any discussions about doing so.

Barrasso referred questions to Sen Jim Risch (R-ID), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who did not respond to a request for comment.

With just one more week in session remaining until the July Fourth recess and all eyes on the budget reconciliation bill that Republicans hope to pass before the holiday, it appears unlikely that such a vote will occur in the immediate term. 

Rayburn’s nomination was first submitted to Congress in early February.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on whether the administration is considering withdrawing Rayburn’s nomination.

Ben Black, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, had his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. 

Black will serve as chief executive officer of the DFC, which acts as the federal government’s primary lender and investor in development projects abroad, if confirmed. The DFC was created during the first Trump administration, the result of merging the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Development Credit Authority of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Black was introduced at the start of the hearing by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who described Black in opening remarks as a “true America First patriot” who “will bring a wide range of experience and expertise to this job.”

“I’m here today to offer my full support for Mr. Black’s nomination to serve in this position.  Created during the first Trump administration, the International Development Finance Corporation facilitates overseas investment projects that better position us to compete with Communist China’s global infrastructure pursuits,” Cotton said.

“This position requires a person with expertise in strategic investment opportunities, an understanding of America’s foreign policy priorities, and tested leadership capabilities. For these reasons, I am confident that President Trump made the right choice in selecting Mr. Black for the job,” he continued.

Black said during his opening statement that if confirmed, “I look forward to working with Congress to shape and to continue to grow DFC’s capabilities and capacity, so that it can properly fulfill the responsibilities it has been given. The challenges facing our nation and the world today can seem overwhelming, but the opportunity for DFC to be part of meaningful solutions is enormous.”

Black is a managing director of Fortinbras Enterprises, a credit investment fund, and CEO and director of Osiris Acquisition Corp, another investment firm. He was a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2015 to 2020. Black previously worked at Apollo Global Management, the firm founded by his father, Leon Black, and was a senior portfolio manager at Knowledge Universe Holdings.

Black is an alumni of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. He also studied taxation at the New York University School of Law and received his BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors. 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed an anticipated vote on Thursday on Joel Rayburn’s nomination to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs as he faces opposition from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which could imperil his nomination.

The news is another setback for Middle East hawks who saw Rayburn, who held a series of national security positions in the first Trump administration, as more aligned with their worldview, as compared to the isolationists populating many senior roles throughout the administration.

Thursday’s delay came because an unidentified member exercised a prerogative to delay the vote on Rayburn until the committee’s next business meeting, which would still allow the committee to vote on him in the near future. But Rayburn may face bigger problems: If no Democrats support Rayburn, the vote on his nomination would be tied, meaning it cannot advance out of committee.

It’s not clear whether any Democrats will support him. At that point, Rayburn’s nomination could still be advanced through a full Senate floor vote, assuming a sufficient number of other Republicans support the nominee.

Paul told Jewish Insider that he was primarily concerned that Rayburn was involved in a deliberate effort in the Trump administration to obscure the U.S. troop presence in Syria from Trump and disobey orders to withdraw U.S. forces.

“My concern is that James Jeffrey directly disobeyed direction from President Trump. Said he was hiding the numbers of troop levels over there, and Rayburn worked for him at the time, and still remains close to him,” Paul said, referring to the then-U.S. envoy to the global counter-ISIS coalition. “I don’t know how that could have happened without him knowing about it, and I think we need people at the State Department who will follow the direction of the president.”

Paul said he had not been the senator who requested a delay in the committee vote on Rayburn.

Multiple Senate Republicans said Wednesday that they plan to scrutinize President Donald Trump’s nomination of Paul Ingrassia, a far-right figure picked last week to lead the Office of Special Counsel, charged with fighting corruption and fighting federal whistleblowers.

Ingrassia has trafficked in conspiracy theories, including, as early as Oct. 8, 2023, describing the Hamas attack and ensuing war as a “psyop,” as well as defending prominent antisemites including Kanye West, Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes.

Several Republican members said they were not deeply familiar with Ingrassia’s record but planned to dig into it further before his nomination hearing.

“We just got news of the nom[ination] coming forward. Those [comments] are obviously concerning and we’ll have our staff doing a full background check, but those are, on their face, concerning,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Jewish Insider.

Tillis was a vocal opponent of Ed Martin, previously Trump’s nominee to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., over his defense of those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including a known Nazi sympathizer. Amid that opposition, Trump withdrew the nomination.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said he wasn’t familiar with Ingrassia but that he planned to take a deeper look at him. “I’m not familiar with his record, but I don’t like the guys you just named or their views,” Hawley said, referring to Tate and Fuentes.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) expressed surprise about Ingrassia’s history and affiliations, and said he would “certainly monitor the situation.”

President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate far-right commentator Paul Ingrassia to head the agency tasked with rooting out corruption and protecting whistleblowers in the federal government. 

Ingrassia, 29, currently serves as the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security. He briefly served as the White House liaison to the Department of Justice early in Trump’s second term, but was reassigned after clashing with the DOJ’s chief of staff after urging the president to hire only individuals who exhibited what Ingrassia called “exceptional loyalty,” according to ABC News. 

In Trump’s post on Truth Social announcing Ingrassia’s nomination to head the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal agency tasked with investigating and prosecuting office government and political corruption, the president called him a “highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional scholar.”

Ingrassia has trafficked in a number of conspiracy theories, as have several other controversial administration appointees, including Department of Defense Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson and acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie. 

On Oct. 7, 2023, as the Hamas attacks were still underway, Ingrassia posted on X calling illegal immigration to the U.S. “comparable to the attack on Israel,” writing, “The amount of energy everyone has put into condemning Hamas (and prior to that, the Ukraine conflict) over the past 24 hours should be the same amount of energy we put into condemning our wide open border, which is a war comparable to the attack on Israel in terms of bloodshed — but made worse by the fact that it’s occurring in our very own backyard. We shouldn’t be beating the war drum, however tragic the events may be overseas, until we resolve our domestic problems first.” 

He wrote three days later that the U.S. “should not be committing any foreign aid (as well as military presence) whatsoever to any country – Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, NATO, etc. – until we secure our borders and get a sensible handle over our border crisis. Practically speaking, this will take several years (at least) to get under control. In the meantime: no immigration, no foreign aid, troops, equipment, or anything, period.” 

On Oct. 12, 2023, responding to a post alleging to uncover DNA sequences of “Canaanites, Israelites [and] Judahites,” Ingrassia wrote, “This is further evidence that Israel/Palestine is a deeply complex region of the world with a complicated history, that most Americans don’t adequately understand, nor could be expected to understand.” 

In that post, he bashed former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), former Vice President Mike Pence and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, calling them “Warmongering Troglodytes” and saying the alleged DNA evidence was “further reason to dismiss the dangerous and reckless calls” made by these officials to strike Gaza. 

On Oct. 15, just days after the attacks, Ingrassia wrote, “I think we could all admit at this stage that Israel/Palestine, much like Ukraine before it, and BLM before that, and covid/vaccine before that, was yet another psyop.”

A year later, on Oct. 3, 2024, he posted that there were no funds for hurricane relief because “we’re too busy stuffing the pockets of Zelenskyy and Netanyahu. What a disgrace our government is! Truly the enemy of the people.”

Ingrassia has further associated himself with white nationalists and antisemites, including Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, now known as Ye, posting a Substack in April 2023 titled “Free Nick Fuentes.” 

In the post, he applauded the social media platform X for restoring certain accounts including that of far-right provocateur Laura Loomer and alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, but argued that it should go further to restore Fuentes’ and Ye’s then-banned accounts: “Notably, the accounts of once banned high-profile users such as Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Roger Stone, and Laura Loomer have been reinstated with apparent impunity to use the platform as they please. But for every Trump and Tate, there remains the still banned Fuentes and Ye.”

The attorney has defended Tate and his brother — whom British authorities charged on Wednesday with rape, human trafficking and assault — saying in 2023 that the two “have become public enemies number one and two in the eyes of the Matrix, the deep state, and the satanic elite that attempt to systematically program and oppress all men from womb-to-tomb.”

Prior to joining the administration, Ingrassia was a regular contributor to the Gateway Pundit, a website known for publishing falsehoods and conspiracy theories. He wrote articles on the site falsely alleging Haley was ineligible to run for president in 2024 because she did not qualify as a U.S. citizen, arguing civil rights laws were never intended to protect LGBTQ persons and calling former President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 “beyond all doubt fraudulent,” among others.

Ingrassia has repeatedly used the term “globalists” to describe Jewish public figures, including Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Michigan Senate candidate Sandy Pensler and hedge fund manager Paul Singer.

Last year, following an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room show, Ingrassia wrote on X, “Discussed a very important topic this morning on War Room about how some RINO members — like @RepGallagher — of the House, many with dark money ties to notorious anti Trump billionaire globalist, Paul Singer, are actively working behind the scenes to turnover House control to Democratic hands with early retirements and thus pass legislation to remove President Trump from the ballot on bogus 14th Amendment grounds.”

The Senate voted to advance the nomination of Elbridge Colby to be undersecretary of defense for policy on Monday, teeing up a final confirmation vote for later this week, with three Democrats crossing party lines to vote in favor of advancing to a final vote on his confirmation.

Colby’s nomination advanced in a 53-39 vote on Monday evening, with no Republicans voting against him. It was unclear going into Monday’s vote what the final whip count would be, the result of Colby’s nomination being advanced in a secret vote during a classified session of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. 

A final vote on Colby’s confirmation is scheduled for Tuesday morning. 

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on Armed Services, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) voted for the procedural motion to advance Colby’s nomination to a final vote on Monday. All three serve on Armed Services, and Slotkin worked with Colby in the past. Slotkin, who has worked for the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, told Jewish Insider in February that she was familiar with Colby’s record because he “used to be my assistant.”

Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Cory Booker (D-NJ), John Fetterman (D-PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) did not attend Monday’s vote. 

The Democratic backers of Colby come as something of a surprise given the tough questioning the nominee faced from Democrats at his confirmation hearing on his skepticism of U.S. support for Ukraine and other issues.

Colby has faced pushback from some Republican lawmakers over his past support for accommodating a nuclear Iran. He walked back some of those positions, including that the U.S. could contain a nuclear armed Iran and that it should not attack Iran to stop it from obtaining a nuclear weapon, during his confirmation hearing last month. 

Several Republicans could vote against Colby on the final vote on Tuesday, but none of the potential critics previewed their plans to JI on Monday.

Colby said at the hearing that a nuclear Iran would be an “existential danger” to the United States and that he would provide the administration with military options to prevent such an outcome. He also said his past comments had been intended to push back on what he viewed as an overly hawkish public consensus at the time.

Those comments, along with a private lobbying effort by Colby and his allies to assuage concerns and distance himself from other controversial Pentagon hires, had a positive impact on skeptical senators who had been hesitant about voting to confirm him. 

“Speaking for me, he did answer things the way he needed to answer them, adequate at least to my satisfaction,” one GOP senator told JI last month. “He has said the things he needed to say to the satisfaction of people who like me and maybe others — I can’t speak for any of them … and he was pretty convincing.”

Jewish Insider’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed to this report.