Sen. John Cornyn voted on Wednesday to confirm Trump allies Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano as ambassadors to Jamaica and Slovakia, respectively, after threatening to block their nominations over distributions of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
The Trump administration had plans to permanently terminate funding for PEPFAR in South Africa, Semafor reported in June. Cornyn, a Texas Republican who lost his reelection bid this year, had said he would vote down both Lake and Mastriano unless he received confirmation that the White House intended to release the funds to Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch (R-Idaho).
“The only way it seems like you can get the administration’s attention on some of these funding issues is by using the leverage to withhold votes on nominees,” Cornyn told Semafor on Tuesday. “We are going to use the committee vote tomorrow as a way to … get the money distributed the way Congress appropriated it.”
Before Wednesday’s vote, Cornyn told the committee he had received confirmation that the administration planned to release the payments.
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“The administration gave him assurances that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding that has already been appropriated by Congress will be obligated and released in line with Congressional intent,” Cornyn’s office said in a statement.
Lake and Mastriano, two staunch allies of President Donald Trump, advanced out of committee with a 12-10 party-line vote. Both nominations have to be confirmed by a majority of the full Senate.
President George W. Bush launched PEPFAR in 2003, and Congress has repeatedly expanded the program in the decades since. Experts say the global health initiative has been crucial for stabilizing sub-Saharan countries’ health systems.
Some conservative lawmakers began to question the program, however, claiming that the funding could be used to pay for abortions. PEPFAR is currently funded through annual spending bills, rather than long-term authorization, after Congress declined to fund it for a full five years in 2023.
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