The American Senate on Tuesday confirmed Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, as the US representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. McCain, a prominent anti-Trump Republican, was confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate after being nominated to the post by President Biden earlier this year. "It's official!!" McCain posted on Twitter in response to the vote. The heavily divided Senate also confirmed three other new United States ambassadors via voice vote including former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake as the ambassador to Turkey, Former New Democratic Sen. Tom Udall as ambassador to New Zealand and the Independent State of Samoa, and the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, as ambassador to Austria. Both Flake and McCain endorsed President Biden in the 2020 presidential race and both were also vocal critics of former President Donald Trump. Flake wrote in a Medium post this summer that Biden's move to nominate him as an ambassador "reaffirms the best tradition of American foreign policy and diplomacy: the credo that partisan politics should stop at the water's edge." "US foreign policy can and should be bipartisan," Flake said. "That is my belief as well, and my commitment." The nominations were approved through voice vote, a process taking only minutes that can be used so long as no senators object. Republicans, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, are requiring the vast majority of Biden's other State Department nominees to go through a much more extensive and time-consuming process. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., thanked senators for acting quickly on the four nominations, but said he remains concerned about the overall pace of confirmations for the president's diplomatic corps. "There are dozens of countries where there is no confirmed American ambassador, and I hope that this moment of progress will be a predictor of other progress to come soon," Coons said. Flake was a rare critic of former President Donald Trump among Senate Republicans. He served just one term in the Senate, opting not to seek reelection in the face of what was certain to be a difficult GOP primary. McCain endorsed Biden in the presidential election, which at the time was viewed as possibly helping Biden broaden his appeal to Republicans and independents in Arizona, a crucial swing state that her husband had represented in Congress for 35 years. — Agencies
