Over 100 ambassador roles are vacant, doubling rate from Trump's first term

Source: The Independent

Tuesday 26 May 2026 15:21 EDT


The Trump administration has not confirmed ambassadors to more than 100 nations, more than doubling the vacancy rate from the same period in the president’s first term. The gaping holes in the American diplomatic corps have left the country less informed and less able to respond to a variety of ongoing crises, according to observers, as more than half of the world's nations lack a full U.S. ambassador.

The unfilled seats come at a time of global uncertainty, as the U.S. wages a war with Iran; the Ukraine conflict threatens to spill over into NATO countries in Europe; and President Trump is pursuing a maximalist foreign policy from the Caribbean to Greenland.

As of mid-May, there were 109 vacant ambassadorships out of 195, according to the American Foreign Service Association, including those for strategically important nations such as Ukraine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, just 45 ambassador posts were vacant, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. “Those missions should all have ambassadors when you’re fighting a war,” Barbara Leaf, a retired diplomat who served high-level positions in the Middle East during the first Trump and Biden administrations, told Reuters. “At a moment of crisis – and it’s an open-ended crisis – this administration has left these missions in a parlous state.”

Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-ambassador-vacancy-state-department-iran-ukraine-b2983908.html