Just before leaving town on Sept. 30, 2026, U.S. senators confirmed 10 new ambassadors. Among those nodded through before Congress closed for an extended midterm recess were new U.S. ambassadors for Kenya, Nicaragua, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan.
That’s commendable – many of those countries hold geographical or strategic importance for U.S. diplomacy. But it still leaves 92 out of 196 ambassador jobs currently unfilled. In some of those cases, the White House has not sent names to Capitol Hill despite the second Trump administration being a year and a half into the job. In others, the Senate, which is controlled by the same party as the White House, hasn’t acted on the names put forward.
