{"id":8258,"date":"2026-04-11T02:13:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T02:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/11\/former-rep-eliot-engel-who-worked-on-foreign-affairs-for-decades-dies-at-79-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T02:13:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T02:13:50","slug":"former-rep-eliot-engel-who-worked-on-foreign-affairs-for-decades-dies-at-79-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/11\/former-rep-eliot-engel-who-worked-on-foreign-affairs-for-decades-dies-at-79-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Rep. Eliot Engel, who worked on foreign affairs for decades, dies at 79 – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

WATCH LIVE: NASA astronauts emerge from Orion spacecraft after splashdown in Pacific Ocean<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
Former U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee and played an influential role in matters from the Balkans to the Beltway, including President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> first impeachment, has died. He was 79.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
Engel died Friday at a Bronx hospital of complications of Parkinson\u2019s disease, according to his family.
\u201cDuring his over 44 years in public service, Eliot Engel fought tirelessly for his constituents at home and for peace and security around the world,\u201d the family said in a statement.
Engel won his first congressional election in 1988, defeating a 10-term incumbent on an insurgent, reformist platform. More than 30 years later, he left office in similar fashion after losing a 2020 primary<\/a> to now-former Rep. Jamaal Bowman in a race seen as a progressive upset<\/a> over the party\u2019s pragmatic wing.
A former teacher and state Assembly member, Engel rose through the ranks of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, eventually becoming its chair in 2019. He was a strong supporter of Israel and one of the first lawmakers to call for military intervention on behalf of Kosovo, then a province where ethnic Albanians were seeking independence from Serbia, in their war<\/a> in the 1990s. A U.S.-and-U.K.-led NATO bombing campaign<\/a> opened the way for Kosovo\u2019s eventual independence nine years later.
Engel was \u201ca fierce advocate for Kosovo and the Albanian community at a time when few others were paying attention,\u201d U.S. Rep. Richie Torres, a fellow Bronx Democrat, said in a statement Friday.
Engel also helped negotiate the Harkin\u2013Engel Protocol, an international agreement that aimed to eliminate the \u201cworst forms of child labor\u201d on cocoa farms in West Africa.
And he headed the Foreign Relations Committee as it worked on the 2019-2020 impeachment inquiry into Trump over the Republican\u2019s efforts to prompt Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a> to scour for dirt on Trump\u2019s then-rival Joe Biden.
After Trump was impeached and then acquitted<\/a> in February 2020, Engel vowed not to abandon the issue, saying there were \u201ca lot of unanswered questions that the American public deserves to know\u201d answers to.
Soon after, the COVID-19 pandemic set in \u2014 and with it, questions, spurred by an article in The Atlantic<\/a>, about Engel\u2019s absence from his district.
That scrutiny grew following a hot mic incident in which Engel was heard trying to convince another Bronx official to let him speak at a news conference, saying: \u201cIf I didn\u2019t have a primary, I wouldn\u2019t care.\u201d
During his years in office, Engel became known for waiting for hours to get an aisle seat in the House chamber for the State of Union address, so he could greet the president \u2014 in full view of TV cameras \u2014 as the chief executive entered.
But Rep. George Latimer, a Democrat who now holds what was Engel\u2019s seat, said \u201chis legacy consists of hard work on issues and kindness to all.\u201d
The Associated Press
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WATCH LIVE: NASA astronauts emerge from Orion spacecraft after splashdown in Pacific Ocean news AlertsThere are no new alerts at this timeFormer U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat who chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee and played an influential role in matters from the Balkans to the Beltway, including President Donald Trump\u2019s first impeachment, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}