Shaheen breaks the glass ceiling on the Foreign Relations Committee

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) insists the Senate can chart a bipartisan course on global challenges under President-elect Trump, even as the Republican leader demonstrated his disruptive influence on the party even before he returned to enter the White House.

As the incoming ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Shaheen will be a key player in charting that course, leading the way as the first woman to hold her party’s top position on the panel.

While Trump and his allies are critical of sending US dollars abroad, Shaheen is adamant she can count on some of her Republican colleagues to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia and strengthen Chinese President Xi Jinping’s deterrence.

“I think in the Senate there is strong bipartisan support for Ukraine, to try to help Ukraine be in the strongest possible position for any negotiations on the war,” he said in a phone call with The Hill last week.

“There is a lot of bipartisan agreement on the need to address China’s efforts to undermine the United States; Iran, North Korea, they are watching what is happening in Ukraine. They’re taking lessons from how America responds.”

The 77-year-old sees the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the 1960s and 1970s as the heyday of influence, citing the impact of Fulbright’s five-year hearings looking into the Vietnam War .

“The Foreign Relations Committee was very important in directing foreign policy in the United States and its oversight responsibility for the State Department, and I hope we can move in that direction again,” he said.

Do you have a partner across the hall?

Shaheen has a visibly warm relationship with incoming chairman Jim Risch (R-Idaho), and said they have discussed making the committee more flexible in responding to world events and prioritizing the confirmation of ambassadors, particularly service officers career outside

It’s a major area of ​​partisan contention, after dozens of President Biden’s ambassadorial nominees went unconfirmed in 2024 amid Democrats and Republicans on the committee pointing the finger of blame.

“Every person in the Senate has voted for something to get something else, that’s how it works here, because that’s the power that an individual senator has,” Risch told The Hill in September when asked about stalled nominations .

But Risch and Shaheen have publicly pledged to move quickly with Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Still, many of Shaheen’s Republican colleagues are sure to toe the line on Trump’s position that the US provides too much foreign aid and should pull itself out of global conflicts.

last month, 37 Senate Republicans voted to cancel $5 billion in loan forgiveness for Ukraine. Among them was Risch, who often likes to say he is in “violent agreement” with Shaheen on priorities like Ukraine.

And while Shaheen said it is “still a priority for the Senate” to approve Biden’s November request for $24 billion in Ukraine-related aid, he acknowledged there is no clear path forward with the administration incoming Trump and the Republican “trifecta” of power in DC.

The president-elect has said Ukraine should “probably” expect cuts in US aid, and some of his advisers have proposed using US aid to push Kiev to negotiate with Russia.

Shaheen did not respond to questions about whether there is a strategy to push back against Trump, his congressional allies or outside influences such as billionaire Elon Musk, whose Starlink satellite Internet is a key communications tool for the ‘army of Ukraine and for the United States and its allies at a distance. and isolated places.

Of Musk, Shaheen said his influence “so far, has proven to be quite destructive,” speaking a day after he successfully pressured Trump to speak out against a short-term financing deal days before the deadline of government shutdown

Under Musk’s influence, Trump also opposed a one-year extension for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, an agency established with bipartisan support and tasked with countering foreign influence and propaganda. Musk has criticized the agency for engaging in censorship.

“He doesn’t seem to understand the impact, or he doesn’t care about the challenge we face in the United States, of misinformation and disinformation, where we are behind our adversaries, China, Russia, even Iran, for address that, and that’s the role of the Global Engagement Center,” Shaheen said.

“She’s stubborn”

Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle and former staff label Shaheen as a serious lawmaker, a “workhorse” as opposed to a “show horse,” but say she will back off and will put “defensive” against the obligation of his colleagues.

“She’s dogged about working toward the goals she’s set, or about trying to accomplish something, and yes, there’s a combative aspect to it,” said Rich Sigel, who served as Shaheen’s chief of staff when she was governor of New. Hampshire.

“She always engages me in the phone calls she’s making with elected leaders, world leaders in Europe, and I really appreciate that,” said Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who served as the ranking member of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe under Shaheen’s tenure as chairman.

“Obviously, these issues are not necessarily partisan, it’s about representing America’s interests, but he does a great job of making sure it’s a bipartisan effort when we talk to these world leaders.”

Algene Sajery, who served as Democratic policy director for the Foreign Relations Committee from 2015 to 2018 and is a board member of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security, said Shaheen is the “ epitome” of what it takes to counter partisanship.

“I think a lot of people on the committee and in the Senate really, on both sides, care a lot about human beings, about people. … But they let partisanship dictate policy, and I see that on both sides,” he said.

“I was in awe of this woman,” Sajery said of Shaheen.

“She’s able to listen to both sides and then really solve the problem. She’s exactly who we need at this time in the Senate to guide national security and foreign policy, laws and policy positions.”

Breaking down barriers

A trailblazer, Shaheen is the first woman to hold the ranking position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in its 209-year history. This follows her distinction as the first woman elected governor in New Hampshire and the first woman in the country to hold the distinction of both governor and United States senator.

Shaheen has not said whether he will run for re-election in 2026; doing so would put her in the position to be the first female chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee if Democrats flip the Senate.

He told Semafor that he will see how the next two years go.

“Is there an opportunity to move things forward in a positive way, to help address the concerns that I see we have around the world in terms of humanitarian issues?” he said to the dam.

Shaheen is often the leading voice denouncing the lack of attention to women’s and girls’ rights globally, unafraid to occasionally call out her mostly male colleagues.

“You think that every time you see women in the title we’re talking about reproductive rights. … There are many things women do besides have babies!” Shaheen scolded his Republican colleagues to the Senate in 2022trying to advance the stalled confirmation of Biden’s nominee for ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues.

“Is this office about how do we provide economic empowerment to women and the issues that affect women? … There should be room for agreement on these issues,” he said on the call with The Hill.

“We know that when women are empowered, they give more back to their families, their communities and their countries than men in terms of monetary return, and that countries with women who are empowered tend to be more stable.”

Shaheen said vigilance is needed to roll back any efforts that threaten gains for women’s participation and representation, including a Trump-era rule that blocks any US funding globally for organizations that can provide information about abortion. Biden revoked the expanded “global gag rule,” but Trump will likely push to reimpose it.

“I think that’s an area where we’re going to continue to disagree, because I think their policy is wrong,” Shaheen said.

Another example of her work across the aisle came in 2017, when she worked with Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to sponsor the Global Health Empowerment and Rights Act (HER ) that would be permanent. revoke the gag global rule. Shaheen reintroduced the bill in 2023 with Murkowski, but it did not advance out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But one of her bills is the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, which makes it a world-leading priority for the U.S. government to promote women’s participation in foreign policy and security efforts national, such as conflict prevention, peace negotiations and democratic institutions.

She lists her favorite stats, of the United Nationsthat women’s participation in peace negotiations increases the likelihood, by 35 percent, of agreements lasting at least 15 years.

Shaheen has been the only, or one of two, women on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since she joined in 2009. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) overlapped with Shaheen until she left in 2017. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Calif.) Ill.) joined the committee in 2023.

Shaheen said her access to the ranking is important because “when it comes to something like foreign policy, there’s an important lens to recognize the role that women play globally.”

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