Shaheen breaks glass ceiling on Foreign Relations Committee

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Source: The Hill

12/25/24 7:51 AM ET


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

As the incoming ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, Shaheen will be a key player in charting that course, and she’ll break ground as the first woman to hold her party’s top position on the panel. Though Trump and his allies are critical of sending U.S. dollars abroad, Shaheen is adamant that she can count on some of her Republican colleagues to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia and bolster deterrence to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“I think in the Senate, there is strong bipartisan support for Ukraine, for trying to help Ukraine be in the strongest possible position for any negotiation on the war,” she 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, are all watching what’s happening in Ukraine. They’re taking lessons from how the United States responds.”

The 77-year-old looks back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the 1960s and ‘70s as being the heyday of influence — citing the impact of the five-year Fulbright hearings scrutinizing the Vietnam War. “The Foreign Relations Committee was really important in directing foreign policy in the United States and its oversight responsibility for the Department of State, and I would hope that we can move it in that direction again,” she said.

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/international/5050962-shaheen-senate-foreign-relations/