The White House announced on May 30 that President Joe Biden is formally withdrawing his nomination of Ann Carlson to be administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), just months after she was nominated to the top position.
In a press release, the White House said it had informed the Senate that Carlson’s nomination had been withdrawn.
Officials did not provide a reason for the move.
The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for further comment.
Carlson, the agency’s chief counsel, was named acting head of NHTSA in September after taking over from Steven Cliff. She was formally nominated for the top position in February.
During her time at the administration, Carlson has overseen safety probes into Tesla, and efforts to reduce traffic deaths and boost vehicle fuel economy requirements.
However, her nomination had faced fierce opposition from Republican leaders who raised concerns over Carlson’s track record at the agency, including her past environmentalist positions on climate issues.
GOP Lawmakers Raise Concerns
The letter noted the EPA recently proposed emissions standards for new vehicles that are “so stringent they effectively mandate automakers produce electric vehicles even if Americans do not want them.”“Based on your record, we are deeply concerned that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will follow the EPA’s lead and propose similarly radical vehicle fuel economy standards that run contrary to the law, diminish vehicle choice, impose higher costs on American families, and undermine our national and energy security all while [benefiting] China,” they wrote.
Earlier this month, a coalition of 43 oil and gas industry groups, including the Western Energy Alliance, American Petroleum Institute, and National Ocean Industries Association, also called on the Senate to reject Carlson’s nomination, citing her plans to “go beyond the agency’s congressionally mandated mission on traffic safety, despite record highway deaths, to instead turn NHTSA into a climate change enforcement body.”
In a statement following the White House announcement, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Carlson would continue to serve at NHTSA.
He did not comment on why her nomination was withdrawn.
Judge Nominations Pulled
Elsewhere on Tuesday, the White House formally announced that Biden had retracted the nomination of Michael Delaney to serve on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.Delaney, a former attorney general of New Hampshire, had faced scrutiny from Democrats owing to his handling of a case in which a private boarding school in the state was sued by a student who was sexually assaulted on its campus.
The school ultimately settled the lawsuit.
At a committee confirmation hearing in February, Delaney defended his handling of the case, in which he filed a motion on behalf of the school arguing that the female victim, who was a minor, should only be allowed to proceed with the case anonymously, as she had requested, if certain conditions were met.
Additionally, Biden withdrew the judicial nomination of Jabari Wamble for U.S. district judge in Kansas on Tuesday, again without citing a reason for the move.
Wamble was initially nominated by Biden for a circuit court vacancy earlier in his administration but the nomination expired before he could be confirmed by the Senate.
He was nominated for the district court seat in Kansas in February but pulled out last week, stating that he would prefer instead to remain in his current position as a federal prosecutor in Kansas.
