Herschel Walker confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed former football star Herschel Walker to serve as U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas. 

President Trump nominated Walker for the diplomatic post last year, after the retired running back entered the political fray by running as the Republican nominee in Georgia’s 2022 Senate race. He lost to incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock by 2.8 points in a runoff.

Walker is the first Senate-confirmed ambassador to the Bahamas in over a decade.

Walker won the Heisman Trophy in 1982 with the University of Georgia Bulldogs, and played professionally for three years for the U.S. Football League’s New Jersey Generals — a team that Mr. Trump bought toward the end of Walker’s career with the upstart league. After the USFL folded, Walker played in the NFL for more than a decade.

He ran for Senate three years ago with Mr. Trump’s backing. Walker’s campaign was dogged by accusations that he paid several women to get abortions in the 1990s and 2000s, despite his opposition to the procedure while on the campaign trail. Walker vehemently denied the allegations.

Walker was also named to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition during Mr. Trump’s first term, but was removed during the Biden administration.

“Herschel has spent decades serving as an Ambassador to our Nation’s youth, our men and women in the Military, and athletes at home and abroad,” Mr. Trump wrote in a December Truth Social post nominating Walker to the ambassador role.

Walker and more than 100 other Trump nominees were confirmed Tuesday in a single 51-47 vote, part of a rules change by Senate Republicans that allows them to approve large groups of executive branch nominees “en bloc” with a simple majority rather than voting on them one by one. They changed the rules amid frustration that Democrats had slowed the nomination process to a crawl — though Democrats accused Republicans of going “nuclear.”

Another high-profile nominee who was approved in Tuesday’s package is former White House aide Sergio Gor for ambassador to India.

The nominees were approved while the Senate remained at an impasse over the government shutdown. The body is expected to weigh competing Democratic and Republican proposals to reopen the government Wednesday — but both bills have been voted down multiple times.

Alan He

contributed to this report.