Jeremy Carl, President Trump’s nominee for a senior State Department post, struggled at his confirmation hearing on Thursday to answer what should have been an easy question, since he wrote an entire book about it: What is white identity and why is it under threat?
After nervously rambling about white food and Black food, white music and Black music and white worship styles, Mr. Carl told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that a loss of a dominant white culture is weakening the country. That notion has become an intellectual framework animating much of what has been described as the New Right, and Mr. Carl, who would if confirmed be the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, is one of its most prominent proponents.
But Mr. Carl’s halting defense of his theory on “white erasure,” along with previous statements about race and Jews, has put his nomination in danger. A Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee chairman, John Curtis, Republican of Utah, came out in opposition immediately after the hearing was gaveled closed.
“I do not believe that Jeremy Carl is the right person to represent our nation’s best interests in international forums,” said Mr. Curtis, who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over democracy and human rights, accusing Mr. Carl of making “insensitive remarks” about Jewish people.
On Friday, Mr. Carl defended himself on social media from the accusation that he is a white nationalist. “White culture,” he wrote, “was simply the culture of the overwhelming majority of Americans who lived here” before the 1965 immigration reform “radically transformed American demographics.”
The White House was standing by the nominee on Friday evening. In an email, the press office praised his work during the president’s first term and called him highly qualified to serve at the State Department.
Who is Jeremy Carl?
If confirmed, Mr. Carl would lead outreach to institutions such as the United Nations. He previously served in the first Trump administration’s Department of the Interior after making a name for himself as an international energy expert at Stanford University.
Mr. Carl sits at the intersection of several movements and institutions gaining power and prominence within the Republican Party. He is a proponent of “national conservatism,” a movement that holds that American society lost its moorings when it drifted from a core power structure centered on the Christian white men who founded the nation and instead embraced diversity, multiculturalism and feminism.
He is a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a Trump-aligned research organization that became the intellectual nerve center of the American right.
“I know the Claremont Institute as the group, the only group, maybe, in California that makes me seem just like a reasonable moderate,” Vice President JD Vance joked during a 2025 speech at a Claremont awards dinner in which he argued that “social cohesion” and familial ties to the land are central to American identity.
What has he said about “white identity?”
Mr. Carl has argued that white people should organize as a group to protect their rights.
“White Americans are increasingly second-class citizens in a country their ancestors founded and in which, until recently, they were the overwhelming majority of the population,” he writes in his 2024 book, “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart.”
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He also accused the Democratic Party of waging an “all-out assault on the rights of white people.” (About 64 percent of the people who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 were white, compared to Joe Biden’s 61 percent in 2020, according to Pew Research.)
What has he said about Jews?
The Trump administration has made its opposition to antisemitism central to its attacks on higher education and its efforts to deport pro-Palestinian students. But Mr. Carlson is only the latest in a series of the administration’s own officials who have been accused of antisemitism.
During Thursday’s hearing, Sen. Jacky Rosen, Democrat of Nevada, who is Jewish, read a series of statements Mr. Carl had previously made about Jewish people.
“‘The Jews love to see themselves as oppressed,’” she said, quoting a 2024 podcast appearance. “‘Jews have often loved to see themselves as the victim, rather than accept they are participants in history,’” she continued.
Mr. Carlson has also espoused the Great Replacement Theory, the notion that Western elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” white Americans with nonwhite immigrants.
When Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, asked if Mr. Carlson believed there was an active effort to replace white Americans, Mr. Carl responded, “the Democratic Party, through its immigration policies, has certainly shown signs of that.”
However, Mr. Carl did walk back some of his statements that have been labeled antisemitic.
“I made some comments in interviews about minimizing the effect of the Holocaust that were absolutely wrong,” he said. “And I’m not going to sit here and defend them.”
Who opposes his nomination?
Prominent civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the National Urban League, have asked the Foreign Relations Committee to reject Mr. Carl’s nomination.
“Mr. Carl’s portrayal of immigrants and communities of color as threats to the nation’s future is incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with the principles of a multiracial democracy itself,” they wrote in a letter to the committee.
Mr. Carl is underqualified and has an “anti-Black ideology,” the Congressional Black Caucus said in a statement. “Beyond his troubling remarks on civil rights, his commitment to denigrating Black history deeply concerns our Caucus. Mr. Carl has not only been steadfast in his campaign to oppose the teaching of Black history in primary and secondary education, but his public record also reflects a penchant for conflating Black history with anti-white propaganda.”
While racial controversy has not been completely disqualifying for nominees in the second Trump administration, there has been some pushback, including to tan initial pick to lead the White House Counsel’s Office, Paul Ingrassia, after his racist texts from a group chat came to light.
Others appointees have weathered the storm, including Darren Beattie, a senior State Department official who was fired from the first Trump administration after speaking at a conference attended by white nationalists.
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities and demoralizing competent white men,” Mr. Beattie once wrote on social media.
Still, some on the right are rallying to Mr. Carl’s side.
The conservative activist Christopher Rufo defended Mr. Carl, writing that Americans have been bullied into believing that “white culture” is “inherently shameful or evil,” which leads them to “pretend that it doesn’t exist.”
Clyde McGrady reports for The Times on how race and identity shape American culture.
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