Trump Gave 90% of Ambassador Nominations to Political Supporters
NEWS & RESEARCH
Of the 102 individuals the Trump administration nominated as foreign ambassadors as of August 2026, a whopping 90 percent are political rather than career service appointees—largely wealthy donors and loyalists with personal ties to the president, many of them with no diplomatic experience or any connection whatsoever to the country they've been assigned. For example, the US ambassador to the Philippines is now Lee Lipton, owner of Benny's on the Beach, a restaurant in Palm Beach County, Florida, who is a friend of Trump and a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club. And the US ambassador to Peru, Bernie Navarro, is a real estate investment firm executive and close friend of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Meanwhile, the ambassador to the United Kingdom, Warren Stephens, is an Arkansas businessman who donated about $27 million to Trump and his allies in the two years prior to his nomination. Even excluding Stephens from the data, Trump’s nominees gave an average of about $1.8 million in political contributions, suggesting a pay-to-play model in which ambassador positions can essentially be bought. Even Trump's family has gotten in the game, as the president named his daughter's father-in-law as the ambassador to France and his son's ex-fiancée as the ambassador to Greece. While presidents from both sides of the aisle have done this to some degree in the past, none in recent history has taken it to the level of Trump.
SOURCES: Washington Post | NOTUS | Good Morning America | NBC News
ANALYSIS & OPINION
Trump’s approach has major consequences, particularly as unqualified political appointees are now taking up space meant for career diplomats with expertise in a country's language and society. For instance, Kelly Adams-Smith has a background in economics and spent almost three decades in the US Foreign Service, gaining extensive experience in Europe and fluency in multiple languages, including Russian. Biden nominated her in 2024 as the ambassador to Moldova, but Trump quickly retracted this nomination, instead filling the position with one of his allies. Scenarios like these have real-world impacts, as one former diplomat explained, “When the president went to Beijing, and if you look at who was manifested on his flight, there wasn’t a China expert among them. It’s not a surprise that if you have a problem with Russia or with China, and you’re using a real estate lawyer, or people who’ve never negotiated successfully with the Chinese, you’re going to have suboptimal outcomes.” Others agree, saying “When a coup breaks out or an earthquake hits at 2 a.m., [a career diplomat’s] experience is the difference between a coordinated American response and an improvised one.” Thus, Trump's "donor to ambassadorship pipeline" may also be weakening US influence and credibility abroad. Some former diplomats, though, believe that the administration is doing this intentionally because it does not want its decisions to be questioned.
SOURCES: Washington Post | NOTUS | Good Morning America | NBC News
HOW TO FIX IT
Federal action:
Section 304 of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 (22 U.S.C. §3944) was written to prevent quid pro quo in scenarios just like this. The law states that ambassadors should possess "clearly demonstrated competence to perform the duties of a chief of mission," that such posts should normally go to career members of the Foreign Service, and that political campaign contributions should not be a factor in an appointment. It also requires the president to send the Senate a report on each nominee's demonstrated competence, and the nominee to file, under oath, a record of the contributions they and their immediate family made over the previous four years. However, every substantive provision is written with "should" rather than "shall," which leaves the law virtually unenforceable—a president who ignores it, as Trump has, faces no penalty at all. That was likely not an oversight: Congress knew a hard requirement could collide with the Constitution's Appointments Clause, which grants the president the right to make political appointments, so it chose not to make the law binding. Amending it now would run into the same wall. Thus, here are some potential workarounds:
Mandate a floor requiring that career diplomats hold most ambassadorships. Congress can't tell a president who to nominate, but it does control the budget and can decide which jobs get funded. Thus, it could choose to pay for only a set number of non-career ambassadors—say, 10%, a cap that has been called for by the American Academy of Diplomacy and AFSA, the union representing Foreign Service officers. It could be written as an appropriations rider attached to the annual spending bill.
Establish a cooling-off period by passing legislation stating that anyone who gave above a set amount to the president's campaign in the previous four years can't get paid to serve as an ambassador for at least two years.
The limitation of both of these approaches is that they are based on Congress’ spending powers, and most of the billionaires Trump appointed likely wouldn't care about getting paid, as the ambassador position is probably more about prestige than salary for them.
Congress could also create an independent panel of retired career diplomats to rate each nominee before the Senate votes, much as the American Bar Association rates judicial nominees. The panel couldn't block anyone, but an official "not qualified" rating attached to a donor's name would make confirmation politically costlier than a quiet voice vote.
A 2016 piece of follow-up legislation (P.L. 114-323 §712) requires the president's report on a nominee's demonstrated competence to be posted on the State Department's website within seven days of being sent to the Senate. However, there is no penalty for ignoring it. For instance, the administration nominated Trump donor and lawyer Nick Oberheiden as ambassador to Egypt in June 2026—despite the fact that Oberheiden was born in Germany, has no ties to Egypt, and has no diplomatic experience—and two months later, the department still had not published the required document explaining why he was qualified.
Congress can pass the State Department Integrity and Transparency Act, which would also require the government to publish more information about who a president picks and what contributions those people gave him, but it essentially re-writes the rule in P.L. 114-323 §712 that already exists and is being ignored. However, the act would also require that at least 75 percent of the State Department's senior officials in Washington be career professionals. Ambassadors are excluded from this, but Congress could consider the possibility of amending the proposed legislation to cover them.
The Ambassador Oversight and Transparency Act had similar provisions. It would have required certificates of competence to address language skills and knowledge of the country's history, culture, economics, and politics; extended the contributions disclosure window from four years to ten; required certificates and financial disclosures to be published together on a single website; and required presidential certification that contributions played no role in the nomination.
All of these documentation requirements lack consequences. To address this issue, Congress could pass legislation claiming it will withhold an ambassador's salary, residence, and expenses until the government publishes the documentation it owes, but this still faces the same weakness as the other financially-motivated solutions listed above. Additionally, the Campaign Legal Center argues these competency certificates have become "almost meaningless" under the current administration, because they "often lack information about the nominee's relevant experience and instead boast of the person's business success." Forcing the government to publish a document doesn't force it to publish a responsive one.
To perhaps make the documentation more meaningful, though, Congress could mandate objective testing. This would require certificates of competence to include formal test scores from the Foreign Service Institute, demonstrating a nominee's proficiency in the relevant language and their understanding of the region’s history, preventing them from hiding behind vague corporate resumes.
Senators already vote to confirm ambassador appointees, but they could begin to actively vote against nominees who clearly lack geographic or diplomatic expertise, rather than simply rubber-stamping them as a professional courtesy across party lines. However, one law professor noted that this is unlikely, because “At least in some of these cases, the very individuals who are making donations to the president are also making donations to senators.”
While not a direct fix, Congress can also pass legislation to audit these appointees once they're in the job. Embassies are currently inspected about every five years, longer than many ambassadors serve. Requiring a published inspector general review of any embassy led by a political appointee within 18 months of arrival can help establish accountability. There is no statutory mechanism by which Congress can un-confirm an ambassador, but it can at least document how those already put in place perform.
Legislation: Legislation: S.4719 - State Department Integrity and Transparency Act | S.4025 - Ambassador Oversight and Transparency Act
