One day after making history as the first Native American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, Peggy Flanagan spoke to reporters about her plans next year when she takes office and beyond.
She congratulated Democrats across the country for Tuesday night’s blue wave and pledged to hold President Donald Trump accountable in a 30-minute news conference on Zoom.
“I think the message was overwhelming across the country that folks are ready to be a check on this president and to ensure that we are doing everything we can to send new voices to Washington D.C.,” Flanagan, the current lieutenant governor, said.
Flanagan also spoke about the historic nature of her win, which she said she was “really honored and quite humbled by.”
“I never set out to make history, but it is damn time that a Native woman served in the U.S. Senate,” she said. “My hope is that there are other Native people, young Native people, young Native women and girls, who can see themselves reflected in this victory. It took 250 years for me to get here, but [for] the next person it’s going to happen a lot faster.”
Below is a snapshot of Flanagan’s reflection on the election results and her stated plans for the year ahead.
On whether Chuck Schumer should lead the Senate
Flanagan said she supports a new majority leader for the Senate instead of New York Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Schumer has led Senate Democrats as majority and minority leader for the last decade, and reports suggest he has the votes to stay on this role next year.
“I am tremendously grateful for Chuck Schumer’s leadership and what he has done over the last many years, and I think it is time for new leadership,” Flanagan told reporters.
Flanagan said that voters last night sent a “resounding” message that they want a new direction for the country.
“We are at a point of a new movement in this country,” she said, “Many of us [who] were elected refused corporate PAC money, are beholden only to the the people who elected us, and are ready to fight for bold change.”
On her 10-point victory margin
Most polls suggested a much closer race, with Flanagan leading Republican Michele Tafoya by 3 or 4 points, within or close to the margin of error.
In the end it wasn’t close. Flanagan beat Tafoya, a former national TV sports broadcaster, by 10 points. The win came three months after Flanagan beat her DFL primary opponent by 20 points. Polls before the primary similarly showed a dead heat between Flanagan and outgoing U.S. Rep. Angie Craig.
“I think we were underestimated over and over and over again, but we delivered,” Flanagan said.
Flanagan attributed this partly to the Trump administration’s unique attacks on Minnesota. While the rest of the country is feeling the economic effects of tariffs and high gas prices from the Iran War, Minnesota “has received the brunt of the damage from the Trump administration,” she said.
“The 3,000 ICE agents who came to our state, who terrorized us, who killed two Minnesotans with zero accountability — I think that that was absolutely part of this,” she said.
On what she will do about ICE
During her victory speech Tuesday night, Flanagan pledged to “rip ICE apart,” gaining a thundering applause from supporters.
But the following morning, she told reporters that she and her new colleagues in the Senate “will get into the weeds of what that looks like from a policy approach” at a later date.
“To people all across Minnesota, Donald Trump’s ICE is completely broken,” she said. “The fact that we have had zero accountability for this agency, which essentially just does Donald Trump’s bidding, is unacceptable.”
Flanagan said she supports “secure borders” but will push for “public safety” to be the “foundation of this agency.”
“I mean public safety for everyone, so that these ICE agents can’t kill people in our streets,” she said. “We need to ensure that due process is also part of our immigration system.”
On how she’ll push a progressive healthcare agenda with Trump in the White House
While she campaigned on progressive issues like Medicare for All, the reality is that even with control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, policies like these face long odds under a Republican president.
Flanagan said she will work to restore Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts that were made in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill package passed last year. She also said she will push to end prior authorization, where health insurance companies demand approval of certain treatments or medicines from doctors before they cover it.
Ending prior authorization is a bipartisan issue and one that she hears most about from voters, Flanagan said.
“I hear horror stories of people having to go through multiple forms of treatment before they actually get the treatment that their doctor has prescribed,” she said. “Or having to pay tremendous out-of-pocket costs for medications that just allow people to live their lives because their insurance companies decided that they don’t want to pay for it.”
On whether Trump should be impeached
Flanagan stopped short of saying she would push for impeachment, but did say she would “hold this administration accountable.” She previously told Sahan Journal that Trump should be impeached but that Democrats must approach how they do so carefully.
“There are many tools of accountability in our toolbox and I will work with my colleagues to determine what those approaches will be,” she told reporters. “I’m not going to get into specifics as to what this looks like, but I can tell you what we heard here in Minnesota and what we saw across the country is people want elected leaders who are going to be a check on this president.”
On her desired Senate committee assignments
Flanagan said she will seek committee assignments on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Appropriations; and Indian Affairs.
As an incoming freshman, she acknowledged that she might not be put on all these assignments.
“I’ll be the new kid on the block, so we’ll see what I get,” she said.
