Senator Murray is the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. Senate, holding a leadership position since 2007 and currently serving as Assistant Democratic Leader. In addition to being the first female Senator from Washington state, Murray served as the first female chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and as the first female chair of the Senate Budget Committee.
Today she serves on the Appropriations, Budget, and Veterans Affairs committees and chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
As the senior Senator for Washington state, where the first positive COVID- 19 case in the United States was identified, Senator Murray was one of the first to raise the alarm in Washington, DC, and push the Trump administration and Congress to take the pandemic seriously. She knows that public health and pandemic preparedness are critical parts of our national security.
What’s more, she has a personal connection to the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. Her family has deep ties to Washington’s Tri-Cities and the Hanford Site, a plutonium production facility that began operations in 1943 to help produce the first atomic bombs. She personally understands the adverse health consequences that are possible from nuclear exposure, and Senator Murray has been fighting to clean up Hanford since she arrived in the Senate. Today, more than 2,300 nuclear weapons are housed in Washington State, mostly at the Bangor ballistic missile submarine base. The Senator is in favor of working responsibly toward a world free of nuclear weapons and advancing policies in the interim to reduce nuclear risk, like No First Use and arms control negotiations.
She also clearly understands the connection between a nuclear arms race and climate change as the worst threats to life on this planet and has been vocal in her position that climate change is a national security threat.
