US President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for the post of Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations has been one of Israel’s most outspoken defenders since the war in Gaza broke out last year.
New York Representative Elise Stefanik, 40, is the fourth-ranking House Republican and a devoted Trump loyalist. Her defence of Israel gave her a role in the removal of several Ivy League university deans.
She has also used her position to criticise UN attempts to restrain Israel’s continuing military operations in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank, even though she has little foreign policy experience.
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Stefanik issued a statement at the start of the body’s General Assembly in September that “the Biden-Harris administration must call out the UN’s extreme antisemitism and moral depravity and unequivocally support Israel’s right to defend itself against both brutal terrorists and biased international organisations”.
Earlier this year, Stefanik stood with a group of hardline Republicans who voted against a US$95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other US allies – a measure that ultimately passed 311-112 in April after a months-long stand-off.
Along with the holdouts, Stefanik backed a measure that would have authorised separate votes for individual aid packages, signalling support for aid to Israel and Taiwan.
She has also been actively sponsoring legislation targeting China, including one bill that would prohibit new drones from Shenzhen-based DJI from operating in the country and accessing domestic communication infrastructure.
Another piece of legislation supported by Stefanik is intended to create transparency around US investments in Chinese entities that are domiciled in offshore financial centres.
“Israel is currently fighting for her right to exist and at a time when our greatest ally needs us the most, [US President] Joe Biden and [Secretary of State Antony Blinken] are choosing to purposefully undermine Israel to appease the pro-Hamas faction of the Democratic Party,” Stefanik wrote on X around the time of the aid package vote in Congress.
Stefanik, who graduated from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in 2006, was a central figure in the intense pressure that preceded the resignations of Elizabeth Magill and Claudine Gay as presidents of University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, respectively.
Under questioning by Stefanik – who represents a rural swathe of northern New York state – in a congressional hearing in December, Magill, Gay and MIT president Sally Kornbluth prevaricated when asked if calls for genocide against Jews are against their schools’ codes of conduct.
“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill explained.
“‘Conduct’ meaning committing the act of genocide?” Stefanik said, with anger in her voice. “The speech is not harassment? This is unacceptable.”
That exchange, which was similar to the ones she also had with Gay and Kornbluth, dominated the headlines and social media at the time, and was even turned into a skit on the popular American sketch comedy programme Saturday Night Live.
Stefanik’s ideological tangles with Harvard predate the spectacle that wound up on late night comedy programming. Days after the deadly assault on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021, she was forced from the university’s Institute of Politics senior advisory committee.
In a letter explaining the move, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf referenced unsubstantiated assertions of voting irregularities in the 2020 election by Stefanik, which Trump and those closest to him have claimed since the previous presidential election.
“Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence, and she has made public statements about court actions related to the election that are incorrect,” Elmendorf said.
“Moreover, these assertions and statements do not reflect policy disagreements but bear on the foundations of the electoral process through which this country’s leaders are chosen.”
Stefanik wrote in a statement that she considered her removal “a rite of passage and badge of honour”.
“The decision by Harvard’s administration to cower and cave to the woke Left will continue to erode diversity of thought,” she said.
On the China front, Stefanik’s Countering CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Drones Act – which passed the House but has not yet gone to a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate – was part of “China Week” in September, a legislative push to curb Beijing’s political and economic reach in the US.
She has also teamed up with Florida senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott on another initiative targeting China.
Shortly after the congressional hearing that put pressure on Magill and Gay to resign, Stefanik sponsored the American Investment Accountability Act, which would require the commerce and treasury departments, as well as the US Securities and Exchange Commission to report in more detail on direct investments by the US private sector into Chinese companies.
The bill specifically calls for the “periodic” reporting to Congress to include investment in entities controlled by Chinese companies, regardless of where they are domiciled.
Stefanik said in a joint statement with Rubio and Scott – who sponsored identical legislation in the Senate – that the bill was necessary “to ensure that there is accurate and timely information on the true scope and nature of American investments into Communist China and other adversarial countries”.
“The current reports done by the Biden administration’s commerce and treasury departments are insufficient and leave Americans vulnerable,” she said.
Neither of the bills have any Democratic cosponsors.
Beijing regards Taiwan as part of its territory, to be brought under mainland control by force, if necessary. Like most countries, the US does not recognise the island as independent but is committed to its defence and is its biggest arms supplier.
More from South China Morning Post:
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