The Scoop
US President Donald Trump is set to nominate a slate of top State Department officials, including the third-highest ranking position at the agency and several crucial posts overseeing arms control, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia, according to a list of nominees from the White House dated Feb. 11 obtained by Semafor.
The nominations include a New York lawyer, Sarah Rogers, who has defended the National Rifle Association on free speech grounds and litigated against content moderation. Her appointment to be the under secretary for public diplomacy — a role that had, in the Biden administration, been involved in efforts to combat false information on social media, signals that the Trump administration is planning to globalize its push to force social platforms to allow a wider range of speech.
Rogers will replace Darren Beattie, an outspoken and divisive MAGA figure who is acting in the role. Beattie, who was never expected to take the role on a permanent basis, had courted controversy in the past for associating with extreme figures and espousing foreign policy views at odds with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s hawkishness.
Rogers has no obvious foreign policy experience, but brings a similar point of view on key issues around speech and social media platforms. A partner at the New York litigation boutique Brewer, Rogers represented the National Rifle Association alongside the ACLU in a winning appeal to the Supreme Court last March. She also represented the NRA against the New York State Attorney General, who was seeking to dissolve the organization, which the NRA beat back on First Amendment grounds. And she represented the playwright David Mamet in an amicus brief in support of a Texas law barring platforms from moderating content based on political viewpoints.
Know More
Rogers is one of a handful of top State Department officials proposed for Senate confirmation.
Allison Hooker has been tapped for under secretary for political affairs, the third most senior role in the department. Hooker is an expert on Indo-Pacific security and previously served in Trump’s first administration as the lead Korea specialist on the National Security Council.
Trump has also tapped Thomas DiNanno of the Hudson Institute as under secretary for arms control and international security, meaning he could play a crucial role in potential “denuclearization” talks with Russia and China — something the president has said he wanted.
Christopher Pratt, who was the principal deputy special envoy for hostage affairs in the first Trump administration, has been selected to become assistant secretary for political-military affairs, a key role managing arms transfers and security partnerships.
Joel Rayburn, a former diplomat and Middle East specialist who worked for Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican, has been tapped as the department’s top Middle East official. Paul Kapur, a professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School, will be nominated to lead the department’s efforts in South and Central Asia. And Caleb Orr has been selected to lead the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, which oversees global trade and sanctions efforts.
The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.