The Last Two New England Democratic Senators Unconditionally Supporting the Gaza Genocide

The two holdouts, Sens. Maggie Hassan and Richard Blumenthal, have canceled meetings with activists and favored their districts’ weapons manufacturers.

Elijah de Castro Sep 23, 2025

The meeting was scheduled for August 11, at the Manchester, New Hampshire office of Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. After numerous requests for a huddle with Hassan to demand that she change course in her unconditional support for Israel, a group of peace activists had finally locked in a time — not with her, but at least with one of her foreign policy staffers.The group of 22, composed of professors, veterans, students, artists, and a farmer from New Hampshire, was prepared to give the staffer three demands for their senator to support: a ceasefire in Gaza, a surge in humanitarian aid, and an arms embargo on Israel. They also wanted answers for why, just weeks before, she had voted to send Israel more weapons.“We were just a coalition of constituents and people who are concerned about the situation in Palestine,” said Chris Balch, a New Hampshire activist who helped organize the meeting. “We were going in there to try to reason with our representative.”The weekend before the meeting, the staffer reached out to Balch and canceled it, citing a scheduling conflict, according to an email the staffer sent to Balch. “I was absolutely furious,” Balch said. “Maggie Hassan has essentially built a wall between herself and the constituents that is almost impossible to get over now.” A constituent who did manage to get a meeting described it as “useless.”Hassan is one of only three of New England’s 12 senators who still unconditionally support Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Peace organizers, drawing on the region’s strong history of anti-war activism, have had success lobbying New Hampshire’s senior senator, Jeanne Shaheen, and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, and have hopes of replacing Maine Republican Susan Collins with anti-war veteran Graham Platner. However, Hassan and Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s offices have canceled or ignored requests to meet with organizers.Instead, Hassan and Blumenthal have favored relationships with New England’s weapons and military equipment manufacturing base.

“I cannot defend the indefensible”

For the first time in recent history, a majority of Democratic senators have voted against sending more arms to Israel, a departure from years of unconditional party support.On July 30, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders forced a vote on two Joint Resolutions of Disapproval (JRDs) for the sale of 20,000 Colt automatic rifles to the Israel National Police, and tens of thousands of 1,000 pound bombs to Israel. Alongside senate Republicans, Hassan and Blumenthal were the only Democratic senators from New England who voted against both resolutions, allowing the sales to go forward.“The United States must not be complicit,” said Sen. Ed Markey from Massachusetts, who had voted in April 2024 to send Israel $14 billion in weapons.Sen. Shaheen of New Hampshire, the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, voted in favor of blocking the sales of rifles and 1,000 pound bombs in July. As recently as April, Shaheen had voted against a Joint Resolution of Disapproval that would have blocked a weapons sale to Israel in April.In Connecticut, Sen. Chris Murphy also changed his position, voting in favor of blocking the weapons sales in July. “The images of children starving to death as a famine unfolds across Gaza shock anyone with a conscience,” Murphy said in a July release.While Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the only Republican senator in New England, voted for the weapons sales, her Democratic colleague Sen. Angus King voted to block the sales. “I cannot defend the indefensible,” said King in a July release, having previously voted in April to sell weapons to Israel.Hassan, who declined a request for an interview on this story, wrote in a July 30 press release after voting against the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval that “blocking these arms sales would not end the starvation but would embolden Hamas and undermine Israel’s security.”Amy Antonucci, the board chair of New Hampshire Peace Action, which has had meetings with both Hassan and Shaeen, said that while “Shaheen has drastically changed her position,” “Maggie Hassan remains extremely stuck in her position that we must support Israel at all costs, even if the cost includes the lives of Palestinians.”