Elissa Slotkin

The life of Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic U.S. senator from Michigan, has largely been defined by three historic moments from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Specifically:

• The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and what she perceived as the indifference to the suffering it was causing by the administration of U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan
• The 9/11 terror attacks, which occurred on her second day of graduate school at Columbia University in New York City
• The election of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump in 2016 and his subsequent efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act

Early years

Elissa Blair Slotkin was born on July 10, 1976, in New York, New York. Her great-grandfather Sam Slotkin had immigrated to the United States from Belarus. He founded a meatpacking company in Michigan that created Ball Park Franks hot dogs, which were originally sold at Tiger Stadium, the former home ballpark of the Detroit Tigers.

Slotkin’s parents were Curt Slotkin, who worked in the family meat business, and Judith Slotkin, a travel agent. They moved to a family farm in Holly, outside Detroit, when Elissa Slotkin was four. The couple divorced when Slotkin was nine, and she and her younger brother, Keith, lived with their mother in the Detroit suburbs. In 1986 Judith Slotkin came out as gay. Elissa Slotkin says that while growing up she knew her mother was a Democrat and her father was a Republican, but as AIDS swept through the gay community, Slotkin became aware of the role of government in people’s lives. She recounted in a 2025 interview with LGBTQ Nation:

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When my mom’s community would be over at our house or helping my brother and I make Halloween costumes for our dog…I overheard this whole narrative from that time: that the government was not investing in research to find a treatment or a cure for AIDS. I feel like that was the first political conversation that I heard, listened to, and absorbed.

After graduating from high school in 1994, Slotkin attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, receiving a bachelor’s degree in rural sociology in 1998.

The impact of 9/11

Slotkin had started graduate school at Columbia University just before September 11, 2001. She recalled in an interview with The Washington Post marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11 that her experiences that day “completely changed my life. Top to bottom…I never saw myself in the intelligence community…until that day.…I wanted to be a part of preventing that from ever happening again.”

Read: How women with military backgrounds are changing the face of politics

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After graduating from Columbia, she became a Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. Fluent in Arabic and Swahili, she worked for the CIA from 2003 to 2007, serving three tours in Iraq. She then joined the staff of the National Security Council (NSC), serving as director for Iraq policy starting in 2007, during the administration of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush. When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the Bush transition team advised Obama’s people to keep Slotkin on. “She inspired confidence in everyone. She knew what she was talking about and wasn’t afraid to stand up for her opinions,” Stephen Hadley, Bush’s national security adviser and Slotkin’s boss, told Politco.

In the Obama administration she held roles in both the Department of State and the Department of Defense, serving as acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under Obama from 2015 to 2017. In that role Slotkin was responsible for policy relating to Russia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Beginning of a political career

Slotkin entered electoral politics in 2017, launching a bid for the seat held by incumbent Republican Mike Bishop representing Michigan’s 8th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Slotkin had seen Bishop on television with other Republicans in the White House Rose Garden celebrating a House vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare (The repeal legislation ultimately failed in the Senate). Her mother, who had died of cancer in 2011, lived without insurance for years because of an earlier battle with cancer. Slotkin was livid:

I remember watching in outrage as my then-congressman smiled and celebrated…as they attempted to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Their behavior—ignoring constituents and voting against their interests—was…a dereliction of duty, and it’s a fireable offense.

She defeated Bishop in the 2018 general election, becoming one of more than 100 women who won seats in Congress that year. Joining her in the House of Representatives were a number of women with similar backgrounds and moderate mindsets, including Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. The three women all had had careers in national security (Spanberger, like Slotkin, in the CIA, and Sherrill as a Navy helicopter pilot), and they became fast friends.

In 2019 Slotkin, like Spanberger and Sherrill, refused to vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the House. Later that year she joined a group of freshman Democrats, including Spanberger and Sherrill, in writing an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for the impeachment of Trump for his demands in a phone call with Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky to undermine Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival. The next day Pelosi opened a formal inquiry. The House impeached Trump on those charges; he was acquitted in the Senate.

Slotkin was reelected to the House in 2020 and 2022. Her national security expertise led to her being assigned to the House armed services and homeland security committees. She chaired the House subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism in 2021–23.

Time in the Senate

In January 2023 Democratic U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan announced that she would not run for reelection. Soon afterward Slotkin entered the race to replace her. After winning the Democratic primary election in August 2024, Slotkin faced Trump-backed Republican candidate Mike Rogers in the November general election. While campaigning, Slotkin emphasized her support for abortion rights, her national security experience, and her opposition to Trump. She defeated Rogers in a close race on November 5, winning a state that had voted for Trump for president.

Slotkin was sworn into office on January 3, 2025, and later that year was chosen to deliver the Democratic response to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress. Throughout the second Trump administration, she became an increasingly vocal opponent of the president, calling on Democrats to do more to oppose Trump, telling The New York Times in July 2025:

You cannot win a game, a war, anything, just by playing defense. You can’t just point at Donald Trump every day and point out the bad things that he’s doing. You have to show a positive, affirmative vision of what you’re going to do if you’re in power.

In that same interview Slotkin said she was not considering a run for president in 2028.

In November 2025, Slotkin appeared in a video along with other Democratic legislators who had served in the military or national security roles, including Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, both of Pennsylvania. In the video, which Slotkin organized, the lawmakers remind members of the armed services that they did not need to follow unlawful orders. “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now,” Slotkin says at one point. Hers is the final voice on the video saying:“Don’t give up the ship.” The video incurred the wrath of Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who both called it “seditious.”

In January 2026, just days after Hegseth announced the military was investigating Kelly, Slotkin revealed that she too was under investigation for her role in the video. It was unclear what crime might have been committed, and Slotkin decried the investigation saying:

Facts matter little, but the threat matters quite a bit. The threat of legal action; the threat to your family; the threat to your staff; the threat to you.

In February 2026, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., refused to indict Slotkin and the other lawmakers who made the video on charges brought by the Trump Justice Department that they violated a statute that prohibits interfering with the loyalty, morale or discipline of the military. It is highly unusual for a grand jury to reject an indictment bid presented by federal prosecutors.