BELÉM, Brazil — The State Department helped stymie U.S. officials’ ability to attend this year’s United Nations climate talks here, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said Friday.
The lawmaker from Rhode Island is the sole U.S. government presence at the COP30 summit, which has drawn an estimated 56,000 diplomats, activists, businesspeople, journalists and others to the Amazonian port city of Belém. He’s meeting with officials and other delegates to share a message that President Donald Trump and his aggressive championing of fossil fuels don’t represent the entire United States.
The U.S. government shutdown that ended this week was the main complication to the journey, but Whitehouse said it wasn’t the only barrier. He told reporters that the State Department refused to sponsor his efforts to receive United Nations credentials to attend the summit — a departure from the department’s past practice.
“There was a very deliberate pattern of behavior to try to discourage official attendance here, including making it just logistically really challenging,” said Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
