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The U.S. Senate on Saturday accredited a flurry of nominations for abroad diplomatic posts, together with President Joe Biden’s longtime “finest good friend” and former aide Mark Gitenstein to be U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
Senators additionally confirmed former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel to be ambassador to Japan and former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell for ambassador to Group for Financial Cooperation and Growth.
Emanuel was confirmed on a 48-21 vote and a lot of the different nominees had been accredited by voice votes.
The motion got here after Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) struck a deal with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to raise his maintain on 32 nominees in change for vote in January on Nord Stream 2, the Russia-to-Germany pure gasoline pipeline. Cruz had been slow-walking dozens of overseas coverage nominees over the Biden administration’s choice to waive sanctions on the pipeline, forcing Schumer to make use of invaluable flooring time on the nominees or lower a take care of Cruz.
Gitenstein was chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden was chairman within the late Nineteen Eighties. Collectively, they led a profitable long-shot bid to halt President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Courtroom.
20 years later, when Biden was vp, he described Gitenstein as “my finest private good friend” throughout a visit to a Romania, the place Gitenstein was ambassador.
Gitenstein most lately has been a particular counsel on the Mayer Brown legislation agency, the place he suggested purchasers on how you can do enterprise in Central and Jap Europe. Now he’ll play a key position within the Biden administration’s efforts to work with the EU to answer rising competitors from China.
Different nominations accredited right this moment embody:
— First Girl Jill Biden’s chief of employees Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon to be ambassador to Spain;
— Former ambassador to Belgium and government director of Girls for Biden through the 2020 marketing campaign Denise Campbell Bauer to be ambassador to France;
— Massachusetts Home of Representatives Majority Chief Claire Cronin to be ambassador to Eire;
— Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Marc Evans Knapper to be ambassador to Vietnam.
— Senior State Division adviser and former CARE USA vp Bathsheba Nell Crocker to be the consultant to the UN and different worldwide companies in Geneva;
— Marcela Escobari to be assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, a submit she beforehand held within the Obama administration;
— Surgeon and creator Atul Gawande to be assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for International Well being.
Afterward, the Senate adjourned for the 12 months, leaving various commerce nominees pending. These embody María Pagán to be ambassador to the WTO, Christopher Wilson to be USTR’s chief mental property negotiator and Marisa Lago to be below secretary of Commerce for worldwide commerce.
The nomination of Alan Estevez to be below secretary of Commerce for business and safety can be nonetheless awaiting a Senate vote.
Andrew Disiderio contributed to this text.
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