Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is threatening to sink the ambassador nominations of two high-profile allies of President Donald Trump unless the White House commits to distributing AIDS funding in Africa.
A spokesperson for Cornyn, a member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told POLITICO on Tuesday that he wouldn’t vote to advance Kari Lake or Doug Mastriano, Trump’s picks for ambassador to Jamaica and Slovakia, respectively, unless he receives firm reassurance that the administration will release funds set aside for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the HIV and AIDS program credited with saving millions of lives in poor countries.
Both nominations are expected to face a vote in the committee on Wednesday. But without assurance on PEPFAR funding from the Trump administration, Cornyn could singlehandedly block the two nominations if they otherwise receive party-line backing, as Republicans hold 12 seats on the committee to Democrats’ 10.
It’s the second time in less than a week that the four-term senator has bucked the White House in the wake of his Senate primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in May. Cornyn suffered a lopsided defeat that came after the president endorsed Paxton — to the chagrin of Senate GOP leadership.
He also clashed with Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick for attorney general, over the White House “anti-weaponization” fund during a senate confirmation hearing last week.
Asked about leveraging his vote in recent weeks to move the White House towards his preferred policies, Cornyn told POLITICO, “It’s kind of fun.”
Semafor was the first to report Cornyn’s ultimatum on the nominees. The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lake and Mastriano both lost races for governor in 2022, in Arizona and Pennsylvania, respectively. They both took down more moderate Republicans in their respective primaries and earned the president’s favor by embracing his rhetoric regarding the 2020 election.
Lake subsequently ran for Senate in 2024, losing to Sen. Ruben Gallego even though Trump won Arizona that year by more than five points.
Cornyn is the latest Republican whose career Trump has effectively ended who’s since decided to turn the screws on the White House in recent months.
Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — have been in talks with the White House over what it would take for them to support advancing Blanche’s attorney general nomination to a full floor vote.
And Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who lost his Republican primary to Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow in June, will play a major role in deciding the fate of Erica Schwartz, the administration’s nominee for director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The two shared a tense exchange during her confirmation hearing last week.
Since Trump returned to office, Republicans have consistently pushed for cuts to the AIDS-prevention program created during the George W. Bush administration. The State Department cut over 100 contracts grants from PEPFAR last year as part of the efforts to curb government spending led by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, drawing criticism from Democratic lawmakers and even some Republican senators, who blocked $400 million allocated for PEPFAR from being clawed back in the White House’s $9 billion rescission package last year.
Last month, the State Department decided to begin winding down PEPFAR programming in South Africa to comply with Trump’s executive order directing U.S. agencies to stop the funding unless the African country took steps to prevent discrimination against its white Afrikaner minority.
Chris Marquette contributed to this report.
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