US presidential elect Donald Trump (R) and Representative Elise Stefanik (L).
Credit: Reuters Photo
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York has been one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most ferocious allies for years, defending him during his two impeachments, amplifying his lies about the 2020 election and rallying behind his comeback campaign.
On Monday, her loyalty paid off: In one of the first major personnel announcements for his second term, Trump said he would nominate Stefanik as his ambassador to the United Nations.
Stefanik, 40, would bring relatively little diplomatic or foreign policy experience to the role, beyond having served as a member of House national security committees.
But in five terms representing the North Country of New York, she has made history several times over, beginning when she became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress at the time. Stefanik is currently the most senior woman in House Republican leadership, serving as chair of the House Republican Conference.
Her foreign policy views track with Trump’s. A staunch supporter of Israel, she has repeatedly accused the U.N. of being plagued by “antisemitic rot” and proposed blocking funding for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
At home, her viral faceoffs with Ivy League presidents over rising antisemitism on their campuses helped lead to several of them losing their jobs.
Few figures have better embodied the rapid evolution of the Republican Party under Trump than Stefanik.
After graduating from Harvard University, she joined the George W. Bush administration as a domestic policy aide, helped write the Republicans’ 2012 party platform and prepared Rep. Paul Ryan for that year’s vice-presidential debate.
In 2014, Stefanik won her House seat at age 30, flipping a Democratic-held district by running as a millennial moderate. Once in Congress, she eventually secured seats on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, and was a protege of Ryan, who became speaker before falling out with Trump.
Stefanik, too, initially kept the disruptive president at an arm’s length. But beginning in 2019, as Democrats prepared to impeach Trump for the first time, she undertook a dramatic transformation that brought her ever closer to the center of his orbit.
She embraced many of the conspiracy theories undergirding Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. In 2021, when House Republicans ousted Liz Cheney as their conference chair for repudiating Trump’s election lies, Stefanik stepped in as her successor.
She also adopted Trump’s pugilistic style. Speaking at his rally at Madison Square Garden last month in the presidential campaign’s closing days, she warned of “illegals swarming our streets,” blamed Democrats for kneecapping police and accused them of undertaking a never-ending “witch hunt” against Trump.
Others have used the post — which comes with a taxpayer-funded penthouse apartment in New York City — as a step toward higher office.
Stefanik’s rightward turn has infuriated Democrats. But after the House’s hearings about antisemitism on college campuses since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, even some liberals found themselves giving her grudging compliments.
The most memorable moment came during a hearing of the Committee on Education and the Workforce in December. Stefanik asked the presidents of several elite universities, including her alma mater, what sounded like a straightforward question.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” she asked.
The dispassionate, lawyerly answers about context and free speech that were offered in response set off a firestorm about discrimination on elite campuses that jumped beyond the conservative base.
The impact was hard to ignore. The testimony at that hearing and a subsequent one helped accelerate the resignations of the presidents of three of the nation’s most prestigious schools: Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and eventually Columbia University.
Stefanik, in turn, was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2024.
“The world heard,” Stefanik recounted during the Madison Square Garden rally. “You’re fired!”
After the hearings, Stefanik began stepping out more assertively on some foreign policy issues, especially in support of Israel. She traveled to Jerusalem in May to address the nation’s parliament, using the global stage to attack Democrats as insufficiently supportive of Israel’s war in Gaza.
She would most likely be among the country’s most vocal defenders at the UN if confirmed. She has also supported the United States taking a harder line against China. And after initially supporting Ukraine’s war effort, Stefanik opposed the latest multibillion-dollar aid package to the war-torn nation.
Stefanik’s nomination as UN ambassador will have to be approved by the Republican-controlled Senate. But if she were confirmed, her ascension would lead to a special election next year and would temporarily thin Republicans’ ranks in the House.
That possibility was enough to give one of Trump’s biggest supporters, Elon Musk, pause. “Elise is awesome, but it might be too dicey to lose her from the House, at least for now,” he wrote on his social media platform, X.
Democrats on Monday quickly began assessing their chances of flipping the seat. The party has performed well in recent special elections across the country, but winning this one, should it become vacant, could be exceedingly difficult.
The upstate New York district stretches from the outskirts of Albany to the Canadian border, encompassing some of the state’s most conservative rural counties and much of the Adirondack Mountains. Stefanik defeated her Democratic opponent, Paula Collins, last week by 25 percentage points.
Collins said Monday that she would be interested in running again in a special election. The names of other potential Democratic candidates were already circulating, including Assembly member Billy Jones.
Republicans were discussing several possible candidates of their own, including state Sen. Daniel Stec; Assembly members Robert Smullen and Chris Tague; and Joe Pinion, a conservative activist who lost a bid for U.S. Senate in 2022.
In the meantime, Republicans in Washington were jockeying to replace Stefanik in House leadership.