John Cornyn said Wednesday he would block committee action on Kari Lake and Doug Mastriano unless the Trump administration releases money for PEPFAR, turning two ambassador nominations into leverage over a funding fight that is still unresolved.
The Foreign Relations Committee was set to consider Lake’s nomination to be ambassador to Jamaica on Wednesday, and Mastriano was likely to be added to the slate. Cornyn said he would not support either nominee without confirmation that the money would be distributed, and he also said he would vote against them on the Senate floor if they advanced and his concerns were not addressed.
The Texas Republican framed the move as a way to force action on money Congress already approved. He said about $1.3 billion was ready to be released immediately, out of roughly $10 billion lawmakers have appropriated for the program over the past two years. Cornyn said, in effect, that using nominations as leverage was the only way to get the administration’s attention on funding issues, and that the committee vote would be used to get the money distributed the way Congress intended.
The dispute matters because PEPFAR is not just another line item. Cornyn said he saw its benefits firsthand during a trip to Africa last year, when he described the program as one of the key tools the US has for keeping friends there and countering Russia and China. He also said earlier this year that the administration had to be pressed on funding concerns in a different fight over money for Texas, underscoring that he is willing to use nominee votes when he thinks the White House is not moving.
That puts Cornyn in the unusual position of threatening Trump-aligned nominees from his own party. Lake and Mastriano are both allies of President Trump, and both lost the 2022 gubernatorial races; Lake also lost a 2024 Senate race. Still, Cornyn said he had already made his position clear to Jim Risch and warned that he would not be alone if the administration did not move on PEPFAR money. The question now is whether enough Republican senators on the committee will follow him, or whether the nominations move ahead and turn the fight into a floor vote.
