At a White House event honoring Women’s History Month on Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump took six minutes out of his speech to personally recognize many of the Republican women gathered in the audience.
But one person in attendance whom he did not mention was Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who was, at the time, Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The omission, which several GOP lawmakers took notice of at the time, was all the more conspicuous given that Stefanik’s name was included on the list of women in Trump’s prepared remarks, according to a White House official.
While it’s unclear whether Trump purposely chose to skip Stefanik’s name, less than 24 hours later, the president delivered another public blow to the congresswoman. He announced that he was withdrawing Stefanik’s nomination for the ambassadorship, citing concerns over Republicans’ razor-thin House majority and the prospect of a special election to fill her seat.
Trump has heaped public praise on Stefanik since the announcement.
“She is phenomenal, number one. She is a friend of mine. … But she’s very popular in her district. And I didn’t want to take a chance,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office. “We have a slim margin. We don’t want to take any chances. We don’t want to experiment.”
The sudden implosion of Stefanik’s nomination came as a surprise to many Republicans on Capitol Hill, especially given that she sailed out of the committee process earlier this year and would have likely garnered bipartisan support on the Senate floor. Plus, the trickiness of the House GOP’s narrow margins is hardly a new dynamic, with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warning Trump almost immediately after the November election against plucking members from the House for the new administration.
Republicans were caught off guard by President Donald Trump’s move to withdraw the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., to be U.N. ambassador.
But over the last few months, there has been growing anxiety inside the GOP and the White House about the difficulties of governing as they try to pass Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda — a sentiment that has only been compounded by a special House election next week in Florida.
Trump won the district by 30 points in 2024, but the race has become surprisingly competitive, with Democrat Josh Weil massively outraising Republican Randy Fine. The seat opened up when Michael Waltz left to become Trump’s national security adviser.
GOP leaders, while still confident of victory, have had to intervene, with Trump holding a tele-town hall for Fine on Thursday evening. Trump also held a similar event Tuesday for the GOP candidate in another special election, in Florida’s 1st Congressional District, but Republicans feel more confident in that race.
Adding to GOP anxiety, Democrats this week flipped a Republican-controlled state Senate seat in Pennsylvania that Trump carried in the last election.
Meanwhile, the GOP’s math problems in the House have been a persistent topic of conversation in meetings with Trump over the past few months, according to the White House official. And there are only so many ways to solve that problem. In multiple instances this year, Trump has had to expend energy and political capital to get members to fall in line, including personally calling members in the middle of a big vote.
With Trump experiencing those political realities first-hand and privately expressing annoyance about the Fine-Weil race in Florida, he ultimately decided to pull the plug on Stefanik’s nomination on Thursday. Trump and Stefanik have spoken multiple times since the announcement, according to a Republican source familiar with the conversations, though White House deputy chief of staff James Blair was the one who initially delivered the news.
House Republican leaders are now scrambling to create a new spot on the team for Stefanik, who gave up her No. 4 leadership post in anticipation of her ambassadorship. Those discussions are still underway, according to a GOP leadership source, but anything they come up with will not carry the same weight or power as Stefanik’s previous post, which was an elected leadership position that came with additional staff and resources.
The development was a devastating blow for Stefanik, who, along with some of her staff, had already been making arrangements to move to New York City, where the U.N. is headquartered. Stefanik, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, also spent this week posting a farewell tribute to her time in Congress on social media. And the House leadership team was even planning a goodbye party for Stefanik next week, according to the GOP leadership source.
But publicly, Stefanik has opted to put on a brave face and say she will continue to be a team player for Trump.
“Look, I’ve been in the House. It’s tough to count these votes every day, and we’re going to continue to defy the political prognosticators and deliver victory on behalf of President Trump and importantly, the voters across this country,” Stefanik said Thursday night in an interview on Fox News.
The prospect of replacing Stefanik in Congress was also shaping up to be potentially messy. Stefanik’s upstate New York district is slightly less Republican than the Florida one the GOP is worrying about, though Trump still carried it by 21 points last year.
County party leaders have the ability to select their nominees in special elections in New York, and Republicans were facing a potentially divisive choice. GOP businessman Anthony Constantino, who is aligned with former Trump adviser Roger Stone, had threatened to run as a third-party candidate if party leaders instead selected state Sen. Dan Stec.
Democrats have already consolidated behind dairy farmer Blake Gendebien, who has signaled he could make Trump’s tariffs an issue in the race, as New York’s 21st District borders Canada.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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