Will Senate Move Deborah Lipstadt Appointment to Global Antisemitism Panel?

More than six months after President Biden nominated Deborah E. Lipstadt to be the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Senate Republicans and Democrats are close to setting a date for her confirmation hearing, sources said.

A spokesperson for Sen. Bob Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Forward that the senator is “negotiating committee schedule” with his Republican colleagues.

The parties have so far been unable to come to an agreement on her hearing date, frustrating Democrats and Jewish community leaders who say rising antisemitism globally makes it critical that Lipstadt, one of the world’s foremost Holocaust historians, be confirmed soon.

Suzanne Wrasse, a spokeswoman for Sen. Jim Risch, a Republican from Idaho and ranking member of the committee, wrote in an email that “the chairman’s office determines the schedule for nominations hearings” but declined to provide any details.

Republicans have thrown roadblocks in Lipstadt’s path to the office. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, sought clarification of a tweet in which Lipstadt accused him of white supremacy for a comment he made about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.