President Donald Trump’s nominee for a senior State Department position withdrew his candidacy Tuesday after growing opposition from lawmakers threatened to derail his confirmation.
Earlier in the day, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Jeremy Carl—Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for international organizations—of having “a long history of racist, white supremacist, and antisemitic views,” arguing that those views disqualified him from serving in the role.
Carl stepped aside after weeks of scrutiny over past remarks about white identity and American culture, though he maintained that his comments had been misinterpreted.
“Unfortunately, for senior positions such as this one, the support of the President and Secretary of State is very important but not sufficient,” Carl said in a statement announcing his withdrawal. “We also needed the unanimous support of every GOP senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations, given the unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats to my candidacy, and unfortunately that support was not forthcoming.”
Carl also defended his previous comments, saying that while he has occasionally used the phrase “white culture” in speeches and writings, his broader concern has been preserving what he described as a shared American civic culture.
According to Carl, the term referred to cultural traditions widely shared by Americans prior to the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act. He argued that people of all backgrounds can participate in and contribute to those traditions.
Carl also pushed back against Schumer in a post on X, accusing the New York Democrat of selectively condemning controversial rhetoric when it can be used against Republicans.
“You appear to only disavow racism, antisemitism and racial supremacy if you think you can use those words as a cudgel to beat Republicans,” Carl wrote, adding that Schumer has not denounced comments he characterized as anti-white from Democratic lawmakers, including Texas House Democratic leader Gene Wu and Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Carl faced intense questioning during a Senate confirmation hearing in February over earlier remarks warning about the potential “erasure” of white culture in the United States.
During the hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, pressed Carl to explain what values he believed were disappearing and why he believed “white culture” was being erased.
Carl responded that Murphy had misunderstood his position, reiterating that his comments referred to what he views as a shared civic culture in the United States rather than an exclusionary racial identity. He again argued that Americans of all backgrounds can take part in and help shape that culture.
