Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake says he will not support Utahn Ron Mortensen who was nominated by President Trump to head up the State Department program that oversees refugees.
Mortensen was a controversial pick by Trump because of his hard-line anti-immigration views, and his association with the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Flake tweeted a headline from a Politico story about Mortensen’s anti-immigration views, saying he would not vote in favor of Mortensen.
This nominee will not have my support https://t.co/qnPqVCS3tG
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) May 30, 2018
Mortensen has previously been critical of other Republican senators, including McCain, whose “support for illegal aliens and open borders has left the United States vulnerable to terrorists.” Of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mortensen wrote that he is “either exceptionally gullible or just plain dishonest.”
Flake’s opposition is key because Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the Senate. With Sen. John McCain’s absent from the Senate as he battles brain cancer, Flake’s opposition means Mortensen would need at least one Democrat to vote for him in order to be confirmed.
