Bozeman-based State Department nominee faces heat over Holocaust, race remarks

A controversial Bozeman-based public policy professional and political writer who formerly served on the state Humanities Board is the Trump Administration’s nominee for a top State Department position.

Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, was grilled Thursday by a U.S. Senate Committee about his past racist and antisemitic remarks and social media posts during a confirmation hearing.

Carl has espoused a conspiracy theory that posits nonwhite immigrants will replace white people, and he has made disparaging comments about transgender, Jewish and black people that drew the ire of federal lawmakers on Thursday.

At Thursday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Montana’s Republican senior Sen. Steve Daines gave Carl a friendly introduction, saying that he’s gotten to know him well over the past several years.

At the end of his remarks, Daines said that he looks forward to Carl serving in the role, but when Daines’ office was asked by the Montana State News Bureau if he plans to vote for his nomination, a spokesperson did not answer the question. They also declined to answer a question about Carl’s history of inflammatory remarks.

Even with Daines’ support, Carl’s nomination is in peril. Following the confirmation hearing, Republican Utah Sen. John Curtis released a statement saying he will not vote in favor of his nomination, citing his “anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people.”

If all Democrats on the committee also oppose the nomination, it will not garner enough votes to advance to the full Senate.

"It’s never pleasant to be falsely accused, but I’m grateful for the continued support of the White House and confident the majority of Senators will see through these political games and support my confirmation to the Department of State, as President Trump intends,” Carl said in a statement for this story.

He did not respond to a request for clarification about what he meant by “falsely accused.”

Carl said in a 2024 podcast that he and his family moved from California to Montana because the former was not the "social and political environment" he wanted to raise his kids in.

Over the last few years, Carl has made a slew of inflammatory remarks and social media posts. At one point, he criticized Missoula Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the first openly transgender woman elected to the Montana Legislature.

In an article examining Zephyr’s past, Carl referred to her as “a disturbed young man with a troubled past.”

“And we know this doesn’t just happen to bad people or the children of bad parents,” Carl wrote of transgender people in the piece. “As with any social contagion, good young people and people from caring families can fall prey to it. That’s why we’re spending so much time and energy fighting back against radical gender ideology.”

Until recently, Carl served on Montana’s 19-member nonpartisan Humanities Board. The board of directors are selected through applications open to Montana residents interested in the state's literature, history, culture and civic education, according to the nonprofit's website. The governor may also appoint up to six members.

Carl was named to the board by Gov. Greg Gianforte in 2023. A spokesperson for Gianforte said Friday that Carl resigned early from his term but declined to comment further for this story.

David Allen Cates, a fellow board member, said Carl left the position last year.

Cates described Carl as “collegial,” but was surprised by the tone of his piece on Zephyr.

“I’ve had such nice conversations with this guy. He’s a curious guy,” Cates said when reached by phone Friday. “Why is he such a f***ing prick in the press?”

Carl was specifically nominated to be assistant secretary of state for international organizations. The role oversees the country’s policies at the United Nations and manages over 100 diplomats worldwide.

The Montana AFL-CIO, a federation of dozens of unions, submitted a letter earlier this month to the Senate opposing his nomination.

“Mr. Carl's track record of making inflammatory, racist, and divisive public statements raise profound concerns about his ability to represent the United States effectively in this important role,” read the letter which was authored by AFL-CIO government affairs director Jody Calemine. “Mr. Carl’s repeated inflammatory public statements about immigration, race, and non-white populations in the United States are alarming and suggest he will not be an effective advocate in this diplomatic position,” it later continued.

Before the Claremont Institute, Carl served as deputy assistant secretary of the interior for the last five months of Trump’s first term in office.

Before his nomination, Carl erased at least 5,000 posts from his account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, CNN reported.

He has repeatedly spread the “Great Replacement” theory, a conspiracy that claims there is a secret plot to replace white people in Western nations with nonwhite immigrants.

In 2021, former Missouri Democrat Rep. Cori Bush wrote in a tweet on Juneteenth that “incarcerated Black people are still in bondage.” Carl responded to her on the social media platform, writing that it’s “either win or die” with his political opposition.

“There is no ‘peaceful coexistence’ we are going to have when our opposition is led by people like this,” his post read.

In a podcast from late 2024, Carl said Jewish people often want to “relitigate” the Holocaust. At the top of that podcast, he prefaced his statements by saying that the statements he makes won't be true about every Jewish person. Carl grew up Jewish, but now practices Christianity.

In an exchange with New Jersey Democrat Sen. Cory Booker at the confirmation hearing Thursday, Carl took responsibility for some antisemitic comments.

“I made some comments in interviews about minimizing the effect of the Holocaust that were absolutely wrong,” Carl said. “And I’m not going to sit here and defend them here.”

In another line of questioning, Carl stood by his past remarks.

Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy pressed Carl on his belief that, prior to the Trump Administration, white people were the most discriminated group in the United States.

“This is my belief. I’m not running away from that. I think that while of course all races in different contexts can be subject to really severe discrimination,” he said. “When we look at our legal structures, white Americans are often disfavored in overt ways.”