Shaheen Backs Trump U.N. Pick After Deal to Release Frozen Foreign Aid Funds
Part of her decision to vote Michael Waltz's nomination out of the panel, she said, was that he 'represents a moderating force with a distinguished record of military service and an extensive background in national security policymaking.'
At a time when top national security officials in Mr. Trump's administration have sought to decrease the United States' footprint around the world, Ms. Shaheen said, Mr. Waltz 'did not represent himself to me as someone who wants to retreat from the world — and this is a quality I value in nominees.'
But Ms. Shaheen, who has broken with her party to back other Trump administration nominees in the past, also gave another justification for supporting Mr. Waltz. In exchange for her vote, she said she had won an assurance from officials that the administration would release $75 million it had frozen for the World Food Program and the International Organization on Migration. That includes $50 million for disaster relief in Haiti, including 'lifesaving food for 250,000 individuals at risk of extreme/acute malnutrition' as well as public health programs, according to her office. The other $25 million was for food distribution efforts in Nigeria.
The deal, reported earlier by Axios, was remarkable not so much because of how open Ms. Shaheen was about disclosing it, but because she had to bother making it in the first place.
The money, after all, had already been approved by Congress and signed into law. But given the Trump administration's aggressive moves to unilaterally freeze federal spending in defiance of Congress, particularly foreign aid, a side deal was needed to ensure that the funding would be spent.
'Saving lives through American assistance globally is not only the right thing to do, but it advances our national security and economic interests around the world,' Ms. Shaheen said on Thursday.
Ms. Shaheen cast the tiebreaking vote after Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, voted against advancing Mr. Waltz's nomination out of committee. He said he had done so because the former congressman voted in 2020 to constrain Mr. Trump's ability to remove troops from Afghanistan.
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