The Donald Trump nomination has officially nominated Jeffrey Eberhardt, a career senior executive service official now serving in the State Department’s arms control bureau, as special representative of the president for nonproliferation, with the rank of ambassador.
The White House sent Eberhardt’s nomination to the Senate late last week. If approved by the Foreign Relations Committee and confirmed by the full chamber, he will take over as the State Department’s point person on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: the primary instrument of international nuclear arms control. The Senate had not scheduled a confirmation hearing at deadline Tuesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
With only about two weeks worth of legislative days left in the 115th session of Congress, there are still some nuclear-weapon-related positions in the federal government that can only be filled with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Any nominations not acted on by the end of the session in early January could be returned to the White House. The president then would have to resubmit them. The Senate can hold over some nominations from the previous session and has done so in the past. Whether it does so again could depend on whether Republicans maintain control of the upper chamber after U.S. midterm elections in November.
Among the notable nuclear nominees still waiting for a committee hearing is William Bookless: the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory senior physicist nominated in August to be the principal deputy administrator of the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. That is the second-highest ranking post in the agency.
