Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
You have to figure Elise Stefanik has been getting pretty antsy lately. She announced way back on November 10 — so long ago that DOGE was just an evil glimmer in Elon Musk’s eyes — that Donald Trump had offered her the Cabinet-level position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. It must have seemed like a pretty sweet gig: no management responsibilities at all, but a lot of public attention (just like her predecessor Nikki Haley), and the chance to please The Boss by attacking his growing list of global enemies.
There was one catch, though: Stefanik’s confirmation by the Senate (expected to be a breeze) was postponed until after April 1, when two House vacancies in Florida created by earlier Trump appointments (Matt Gaetz as attorney general, briefly, and Michael Waltz as White House national security adviser) would be filled by a special election. Before then, the fragile GOP majority in the House meant Stefanik had to stay in that chamber to supply her vote on big measures like the House budget resolution and the continuing resolution that kept the federal government running. Once those were out of the way, and two new Floridians sworn in, Stefanik would finally be able to head to the U.N. building and take the next step up the ladder that some figured would eventually make her a presidential possibility herself.
But just a few days before the Florida special elections, lightning struck, via a Trump post on Truth Social:
So instead of strutting her stuff on the international stage and burnishing her “rising star” image, Stefanik will be stuck in the House as just another slave to Trump’s every whim.
What happened? Well, if Trump is telling the truth (never a given), there remains the fear that even with fresh troops from Florida, the margin in the House is too narrow for comfort with the “one big, beautiful bill” implementing the president’s legislative agenda still on tap and not sure to reach the House floor until late spring or even summer. With Stefanik’s seat vacated and with a Democratic governor of New York able to delay filling it for some time, all it would take is two or three defections (depending on absences) to screw everything up and derail tax cuts, budget cuts, a debt-limit increase, and all the other weighty items planned for the budget reconciliation bill.
What you have to wonder is why this situation wasn’t evident before Stefanik was nominated, as GOP senator Lisa Murkowski remarked shortly after the announcement:
Murkowski reacting to Stefanik being pulled because of tight margins in the House.
“They just realized that now?”
— haley talbot (@haleytalbotcnn) March 27, 2025
The perilous situation of House Republicans was actually worse at the beginning of this Congress, before two House Democrats died. Are there new jitters about Mike Johnson’s ability to manage his troops? Is it possible Republicans are afraid they’ll lose one of those Florida special elections, or perhaps the New York special election Stefanik’s departure would have triggered? Is the myth of Trump 2.0 as a fast-moving and irresistible force crushing all opposition perhaps slightly hollow? Or is this all a ruse and the extremely ambitious House Republican Conference chair said or did something to displease the man upstairs (meaning Trump, not God)?
That’s unclear, but for the moment it sucks to be Elise Stefanik. Not that long ago she was on the shortlist to become Trump’s running mate and presumptive political heir. Now she’s a prisoner of the House, a body that is determined to surrender all its power to Russell Vought and Elon Musk.
It’s true that Trump’s thunderbolt taking away her nice new job included an explicit suggestion that she will “join my administration in the future,” and that’s no small thing, particularly given the high likelihood that the GOP will lose control of the House in 2026 making House Republicans even less significant than they are today. But who knows what the future will bring and which jobs will be open when Stefanik’s mere floor vote stops being essential? Nah, it would have been better if the New York representative had arranged to be first in line to quit her House seat after the election.
