Photo Credit: GPO/Lior Diskal
President-elect Donald J. Trump has extended an offer to Representative Elise Stefanik, a prominent Republican from New York, to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, CNN reported, citing two officials briefed on the matter.
Trump issued a statement saying, “I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.”
Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House Republican, has built a reputation as a steadfast supporter of Trump, a significant fundraiser for the party, and the lawmaker who pushed two, count them, two Ivy League university presidents out of office.
During a 2023 hearing on antisemitism of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Stefanik asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, who had been invited to speak, whether “calling for the genocide of Jewish people” constituted bullying or harassment on their campuses. Their responses, in which they refused to say “yes” or “no,” drew criticism from the public and from a group of Representatives who signed an open letter calling for all three to resign.
UPenn president Liz Magill, who was already facing pressure from within the university, resigned the following week. Following the announcement of Magill’s resignation, Stefanik tweeted “One down. Two to go.”
During the hearing, when the MIT president denied hearing any calls for genocide, Stefanik claimed that chants of “Intifada” are often considered a “call for genocide” against Jewish people. Harvard’s President Claudine Gay resigned shortly thereafter when Stefanik’s charges of ignoring antisemitism on her watch were combined with charges of plagiarism.
Representative Elise Stefanik’s career reflects the evolving dynamics within the Republican Party under Donald J. Trump’s leadership. Once seen as a bridge-builder across the aisle, she ranked as the 19th-most bipartisan House member according to the Bipartisan Index during the first session of the 115th Congress in 2019. However, by the 117th Congress, which ran from 2021 to 2023, her rank had dropped to 100th.
The shift is also evident in her ratings from conservative organizations. Heritage Action, a conservative advocacy group, had previously given Stefanik a lifetime score of 48%, but as the 117th Congress began in January 2021, that score jumped to 84%, though still below the House Republican average of 95% for that period. The American Conservative Union currently assigns her a lifetime rating of 44%, while the conservative Club for Growth rates her even lower, with a lifetime score of 35%—a figure that falls below that of Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad.”
Representative Stefanik voiced her opposition to President Trump’s 2017 executive order, which imposed a temporary ban on travel and immigration to the United States for nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries. Her stance on Trump’s measure, which sparked widespread debate and legal challenges, marked a rare break from the Trump administration and underscored her early approach as a Republican willing to dissent from her party’s leadership on certain key issues.
Last May, then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz met with Congresswoman Stefanik and said he wished to “Thank you personally for being the first to remove the masks and reveal the true faces of the university presidents who did not condemn antisemitic incitement and calls for the murder of Jews. You were like the Biblical figure Nachshon ben Aminadav who jumped first before the parting of the Red Sea to lead the people of Israel. The events that unfolded on the campuses proved how right you were. The world must fight antisemitism and incitement against Israel.”
And now, Nachshon Ben Aminadav from Albany, NY, will be fighting the wars of Hashem against the antisemites at the UN.
Shkoyach.
