Haley to leave UN post

WASHINGTON—U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley will step down at the end of the year, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday from the Oval Office with Haley by his side. The president praised her work, saying, “She’s done an incredible job,” noting that Haley told him six months ago she was considering taking a break.

Haley called her time at the UN “the honor of a lifetime” but said she believed it was her time to go and that she’s “a firm believer in term limits.” She cited budget cuts to the UN, U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as evidence that “now, the United States is respected.”

A Trump critic before the 2016 presidential election, Haley at times found herself at odds with the president’s foreign policy. “I don’t agree with the president on everything,” she wrote last month in a Washington Post op-ed. “When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him.”

Trump said he hoped Haley might return to the administration in a different role, and he would announce her successor in a few weeks. Haley denied rumors she would run against the president in 2020.

The former governor of South Carolina joined the Trump administration as UN ambassador in January 2017 after the U.S. Senate confirmed her by a vote of 96-4.