Trump nominates Kari Lake as ambassador to Jamaica

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump nominated Kari Lake as the next U.S. ambassador to Jamaica on Monday, elevating the former television news anchor and two-time failed Arizona candidate to a diplomatic post months after a federal judge ruled her leadership at Voice of America was unlawful.

The White House announced the nomination on May 11, 2026, offering Lake an exit from a domestic governing fight she was losing. If confirmed by the Senate, she would replace Scott Renner, the current Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston, and assume oversight of a diplomatic mission whose most recent Senate-confirmed ambassador departed in 2021. The Caribbean posting moves Lake from a legal quagmire in Washington into a role that has historically gone to political allies of the sitting president, though Jamaica has not had a confirmed ambassador in more than four years.

Lake, 55, spent more than two decades as a local Fox News anchor in Phoenix before launching two high-profile but unsuccessful campaigns — for Arizona governor in 2022 and for the U.S. Senate in 2024. She lost the gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs by roughly 17,000 votes and later challenged the results in court, alleging irregularities that multiple judges found no evidence to support. Those challenges failed. Through it all, she remained one of Trump’s most visible and combative surrogates in the Southwest.

After the electoral defeats, Trump appointed her acting chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, the parent agency of Voice of America. Founded in 1942, VOA broadcasts U.S.-funded news to audiences worldwide in nearly 50 languages, operating as a soft-power arm of American diplomacy since World War II. Lake moved quickly to dismantle the broadcaster under an executive order aimed at cutting government waste, but critics — including press-freedom groups and Democratic lawmakers — called the move an attack on independent journalism.

She attempted to fire hundreds of journalists and moved to cut funding for other federally backed news outlets, including Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. The push triggered a two-front response.

In March 2026, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that Lake had been installed illegally as interim leader of the agency, voiding the personnel actions she took while in the role. The ruling landed after Congress had already rejected the administration’s bid to strip funding from the broadcasters. A February spending measure preserved $200 million for Voice of America, ignoring the White House budget that sought to zero out the service. The judge’s decision effectively ended Lake’s tenure at the agency, though she remained in Trump’s orbit as a loyalist awaiting a new assignment.

“Jamaica is a country I know very well, full of incredible people,” Lake said in a statement Monday. “If confirmed by the Senate, I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our nations, advancing America’s interests abroad, and building on the deep friendship shared by the American and Jamaican people.”

The White House has not indicated when it will formally submit the nomination to the Senate, and no hearing date has been set.