As Donald Trump fights to push his cabinet nominees through the Senate, Democrats are figuring out how much they should push back.
“We have an obligation to elicit all the facts about how unprepared and unqualified some of these nominees are,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal told NOTUS, “not just questions or issues, but basic, core lack of character and competence.”
“The stakes couldn’t be higher,” he said.
Democrats are eager to meet the moment during the high-profile confirmation hearings that kick off this week. But as they wrestle with an unexpectedly weak election performance, they’re also grappling with their tone for this next Trump administration — whether reflexive opposition is the way to go or whether it’s best to look for spots to work with Trump.
Which cabinet nominees to oppose, and potentially which to support, has become one of the first tests for Democrats in this next Trump era.
“There are some nominees that are going to get bipartisan support, but there are others who are objectionable,” Sen. Brian Schatz told NOTUS.
Of course, Senate Democrats don’t have the votes to actually block any of Trump’s nominees after Republicans won 53 seats and Democrats ended the filibuster for cabinet nominees in 2013. Consequently, even Trump’s most controversial nominees — Pete Hegseth at Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Health and Human Services, Kash Patel at the FBI and Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence — appear to be headed toward confirmation.
What Democrats do have is a rare opportunity to put a spotlight on a number of controversial Trump nominees. Everything from brain worms to dead dogs to alleged womanizing to cozying up to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is fair game.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Senate Democrats at a Tuesday caucus lunch last week that Democrats should push nominees to explain how they plan to execute Trump’s campaign promises, according to a Senate Democratic source.
The confirmations will be the first opportunity for Senate Democrats to hold Republicans accountable, get nominees on the record, dive into their background and lay the groundwork to say “we warned you” later on, this source said.
“The American people have a right to know if President-elect Trump’s Cabinet nominees are going to fight for them,” Schumer said during a floor speech last week.
“Will they lower people’s costs? Will they be loyal to the country and the Constitution? Or will they cater to their wealthy benefactors like the first Trump Administration? Will they try to undo the wellsprings of democracy?” he said. “We can answer these questions through a robust nomination process in the Senate.”
But with their first chance to stick it to the new Trump White House nearing, Democrats still appear to be working through their approach. While some Democratic senators told NOTUS they’re itching to take Trump’s nominees to task, others signaled they plan to take a more measured approach.
Sen. Cory Booker, who is piloting a new leadership position as the chair of the Strategic Communications Committee, told reporters that Democrats’ approach to the hearings will be targeted toward the question: “Are they fighting for Americans, or are they going to fight for the kind of cronyism politics that’s really hurt this place?”
“I want to support nominees that are going to really fight for the American people, not fight for special interests, not fight for rich people, not fight to take away our freedoms,” he said.
But Booker also left reporters with an important caveat.
“We’re not looking to make this partisanship or tribalism,” he said. “We’re trying to refocus it.”
Democrats know they have to be sharp-elbowed in the hearings to make it clear they’re not on board with Trump and his administration’s vision for the next four years. Trump’s nominees will oversee an agenda that includes mass deportations, abortion restrictions and crackdowns on transgender people that Democrats fiercely oppose. Democrats have no appetite to give Republicans a pass.
But it’s also true that Democratic efforts to frame Trump and his acolytes as existential threats to democracy failed in the 2024 elections. The glory days of the 2017 and 2018 resistance movement are over.
Now, Senate Democrats are, as Booker put it, seeking to “refocus” as they try to reclaim the upper chamber in 2026. A Thursday press conference — and hype video — were rhetorically centered around who Democrats are fighting “for.”
Democrats are broadly reckoning with their disdain for Trumpism and their acknowledgment that the MAGA movement’s popularity has swept them into the minority. The hearings will be a balancing act between signaling opposition to an agenda they fervently disagree with and an openness to reach across the aisle if they think it is in their constituents’ best interests.
Some nominees are likely to receive some Democratic support. Democrats have told NOTUS they see Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, as a serious and qualified candidate for secretary of state. But at least one Democrat who has an open mind about voting for some of the more controversial picks.
Sen. John Fetterman has already met with most Trump nominees — and met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend to discuss further. (He told NOTUS the only nominee he hasn’t talked to is his former rival Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is up for running the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)
When NOTUS asked about Fetterman’s preparations for the hearings on the Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture committees, he said plainly, “My plan is to listen.”
More Democrats, however, told NOTUS they’re focused on aggressive and thorough questioning — even if they wouldn’t spoil the specifics. The committee hearings will give Democratic senators a chance to interrogate the nominees.
In some cases, Democrats say they will be on information-gathering missions as some senators complain about a lack of meetings from a certain few of Trump’s nominees. A few ranking members, including Sens. Mark Warner and Martin Heinrich, seek to delay their committee’s hearings until they see relevant documentation.
Heinrich, the ranking member on Natural Resources, said Democrats on the committee have not received financial documentation for former Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s Interior nominee, nor have his FBI background checks been completed.
Sen. Brian Schatz said Republicans moving ahead with the hearings without the consent of Democrats may come to regret the new precedent they’re setting.
“Right now, the Senate has to be the Senate, and some of these Republican chairs ought to remember that the door swings both ways,” Schatz said.
But for the most part, Democrats are thinking of the old trial lawyer saying that goes, “You never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.” They’ll be using their questioning as an opportunity to poke holes in the nominees’ candidacies and to persuade the voters at home that Trump is trying to surround himself with a reckless cabinet.
Sen. Tim Kaine — who will participate in Hegseth’s and Kennedy’s hearings — told NOTUS that Democrats are prepping to ensure they spread out the questioning of key issues. He said they are meeting to “maximize the effectiveness and cover the topics we need to.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth — who has complained about a lack of transparency from Hegseth — told reporters she expects the Democratic caucus to convene Monday to discuss their hearing plans.
But even with the exact plans still in flux, Democrats teased a few attack lines in conversations with NOTUS.
Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said he’s interested in probing Gabbard’s foreign connections and stance on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Notably, Gabbard is backing Section 702, which authorizes spy powers she once tried to repeal. Duckworth, a member of Armed Services, said she wants to ask Hegseth about his readiness to run a “large-scale organization.”
Judiciary member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told NOTUS he plans to probe whether attorney general nominee Pam Bondi is “gonna turn into a Trump stooge who does what MAGA wants and violates the rule of law and the traditions of the department and the integrity of the law enforcement system.”
There’s yet another factor that could shape the contours of Democrats’ approach to the confirmation hearings: star power.
Just as Vice President Kamala Harris — then a junior senator from California — earned headlines during the initial days of the first Trump administration for her performance at confirmation hearings, there’s a new freshman class of Democrats eager to make an impression.
Sen. Mazie Hirono understands the opportunity Democrats have better than most. She grew her national profile when she asked Brett Kavanaugh whether he had ever committed sexual assault. Hirono told NOTUS, this time around, she’s locked in on what Trump’s nominees “bring to the job.”
“Aside from 100% loyalty to Trump,” she said.
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS. Ben T.N. Mause and Katherine Swartz are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.