AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
FILE – Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas, speaks during a House Judiciary Committee meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 1, 2023.
It’s been a week since President Donald Trump named U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The timing of Hunt’s confirmation and when he might take up his post will have ramifications for the Houston area.
Hunt represents Texas’ 38th Congressional District, stretching across west and northwest Harris County. Like Trump’s first-term ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Gen. John Abizaid (ret.), Hunt is a former U.S. Army officer. In addition to his deployment to Iraq as an Apache Helicopter pilot, Hunt served two tours in Saudi Arabia as a diplomatic liaison officer.
Trump’s nomination of Hunt comes at a moment when the GOP holds a razor-thin margin of control in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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“It may be that the administration will want Congressman Hunt to be confirmed, but not to actually leave his seat, until the end of his term because Congress usually does meet after the election late in the year,” said Chase Untermeyer, U.S. ambassador to Qatar under President George W. Bush and director of presidential appointments under President George H.W. Bush. “It might last as long as Christmas time, in which case, they will need his vote.”
At this late date, Gov. Greg Abbott might not be able to call a special election to fill the seat if Hunt resigned before the end of his term. That means residents of Texas’ 38th could find themselves without a representative until the winner of the general election to succeed Hunt takes the oath of office in January 2027.
“[Hunt’s] term will expire in January, and that would be the time I imagine he would actually take up duties in Riyadh,” Untermeyer said.
The last congressional vacancy in the Houston region followed the death of U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner in March 2025. It left residents of the 18th District without representation for nearly a year.
Hunt declined to run for reelection to Congress this year, instead challenging incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican Party primary for U.S. senator. He wound up placing third, failing to make the runoff between Cornyn and the eventual GOP nominee, state Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Untermeyer, who now teaches at the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, noted that the Senate is already working under a very tight time constraint to process as many of Trump’s appointments as possible before the end of the current session.
“The Senate has to confirm all ambassadorships but also every other presidential nomination that comes up, like judgeships and cabinet assistant secretaries and regulatory commissioners,” Untermeyer said. “So, it is a scheduling matter for the Senate majority leader, Sen. [John] Thune [R, S.D.]. If they want to move ahead on a particular nomination, such as for Saudi Arabia, they can. It just has to be done within a very, very crowded Senate schedule.”
Just over 30 days remain in the current session of Congress. If the Senate does not confirm Hunt within that time frame, Trump will have to resubmit his name to the next Congress, which potentially could be under Democratic control.
That wouldn’t necessarily dim Hunt’s chances of confirmation, but it could delay it further. The U.S. embassy in Riyadh hasn’t had an ambassador since just after the start of Trump’s second term in January 2025.
“Very early in the second Trump administration,” Untermeyer said, “the U.S. ambassador in Saudi Arabia … was notified he was not only out of a job, but he should vacate the embassy immediately.”
Untermeyer said it’s more common for the Riyadh embassy to be filled by a political appointee than by a career Foreign Service officer.
“But the tradition has been that the career Foreign Service officers stay on until the end of their roughly three-year tour of duty,” Untermeyer said. “That was not honored in this administration, and that’s the option of the president.”
The embassy has since been managed by interim chargés d’affaires. Untermeyer said that does not mean the relationship has been entirely neglected.
“Saudi Arabia is one of those countries that has so many ties to the United States at all levels — such as defense, such as energy, such as education — that an ambassador still performs a very important role, but the relationship continues in the absence of an ambassador,” he said.
Still, the embassy has remained vacant at a critical time for the U.S. in the Middle East. The U.S. has gone to war with Iran, a country that Saudi Arabia considers a mortal enemy, while Saudi Arabia itself remains mired in a conflict in Yemen.
“The U.S. ambassador in any size country is the on-scene representative of the United States, not just with fellow diplomats or the government but with people at a whole,” Untermeyer said. “A good ambassador to Saudi Arabia would go around the country, get to know other regional business and government and religious leaders, and essentially represent the United States in person.”