This is not a post blaming Democrats for the actions of the Trump administration. That blame lies squarely with the Republican party, who could put an end to the insanity at any moment if they so choose. What this is, is a post begging the Democrats to organize, to strategize, and to become the opposition party we need as a country to survive the burgeoning autocratic regime.
Some definitions:
Cloture is a vote taken to limit debate and move on to vote on amendments (if any are offered) and to the final passage of a bill. Invoking cloture requires 60 votes, meaning Democratic votes are needed to move legislation (does not apply to nominees). Withholding the votes for cloture is sometimes referred to as filibustering.
Unanimous consent is a verbal agreement among every member of the Senate to consider a bill on the floor without formal debate or votes first. It is the primary vehicle for keeping business moving in the Senate. Any senator can object to unanimous consent and force lengthy roll calls that disrupt and delay the majority’s agenda. For example, in 2023, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville (AL) blocked the Senate from confirming nearly 300 military personnel by declaring his intent to object to unanimous consent.
Spreadsheet of Senate votes
Nominees
Senate Democrats may not have the numbers to block Trump’s nominees unilaterally. But that does not mean their only option is to go along with business as usual. At minimum, they should not be voting for any of Trump’s nominees. They should be weaponizing procedural rules to institute the maximum amount of delays, forcing the Republican majority to waste time on tedious roll calls. No request for unanimous consent should be granted, for anything. In short, there should be no cooperation until Elon Musk is ejected from the executive branch and the administration complies with federal court orders.
Instead, Senate Democrats have supported, in some measure, 15 of Trump’s 21 cabinet nominees. In eight of those instances, at least one-third of all Democrats voted in favor:
All Democrats voted for Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State. Since then, he has issued orders pausing all foreign aid, helped shut down USAID, and personally authorized the arrest and deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for exercising his First Amendment rights.
21 Democrats voted for John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA. In contrast, not a single Democrat voted for Ratcliffe when he was confirmed to be Director of National Intelligence in 2020. Since his CIA confirmation in January, he has suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
16 Democrats voted for Scott Bessent to be Secretary of the Treasury. Since then, he vowed to impose “maximum” sanctions on trading partners, gave Elon Musk’s DOGE interns access to the Treasury Department’s secure federal payment system, and is working on creating a plan to acquire cryptocurrencies for Trump’s “crypto reserve.”
24 Democrats voted for reality star and Fox News commentator Sean Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation. Since then, he has presided over the decimation of FAA staff, blamed aircraft crashes on “DEI” hires, allowed Elon Musk access to FAA systems, proposed using artificial intelligence to “improve” air traffic control, and directed Transportation staff to prioritize grants for communities with higher marriage and birth rates.
27 Democrats voted for Doug Burgum to serve as Secretary of the Interior. Since then, Burgum announced his intent to open public land, including national monuments, to fossil fuel and mining operations.
24 Democrats voted for former Republican representative Doug Collins to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA). Since then, Collins canceled 875 VA contracts and plans to fire roughly 80,000 VA employees.
19 Democrats voted for Brooke Rollins to lead the Department of Agriculture. Rollins was the CEO of the America First Policy Institute, which created a policy book similar to Project 2025. As Secretary of Agriculture, Rollins has rescinded $1 billion in funding for food banks and schools.
17 Democrats voted for former Republican representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer to be Secretary of Labor. During her confirmation hearing, she pledged not to undermine anti-union right-to-work laws and rejected the need to raise the national minimum wage. She would not have made it out of committee without the votes of Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper (CO), Maggie Hassan (NH), and Tim Kaine (VA).
Outside of Trump’s cabinet nominees, more than a third of Democrats voted for JD Vance’s longtime friend and advisor, Daniel Driscoll, to lead the Army and more than half of Democrats voted for Vance’s policy advisor, Gail Slater, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
The Democratic senators who voted for the most Trump nominees are:
Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) each voted for 13 nominees, including 10 cabinet members.
John Hickenlooper (CO), Maggie Hassan (NH), and John Fetterman (PA) each voted for 12 nominees, including 10 cabinet members. Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General.
Elissa Slotkin (MI) and Gary Peters (MI) each voted for 12 nominees, including nine cabinet members.
Mark Kelly (AZ), Michael Bennet (CO), Jacky Rosen (NV), and Tim Kaine (VA) each voted for 10 nominees, including eight cabinet members.
The Democrats who voted for the least nominees (just one—Marco Rubio) are: Chris Murphy (CT), Mazie Hirono (HI), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Ed Markey (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), and Patty Murray (WA).
On the Republican side, the senators who voted against Trump’s nominees the most are Mitch McConnell (KY) and Rand Paul (KY). McConnell voted against three—Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—because they were too extreme even for him. He voted against a fourth, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, due to her past “pro-union” legislation. Paul also voted against Chavez-DeRemer, as well as against Jamieson Greer to be U.S. Trade Representative, Stephen Bradbury to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation, and Gail Slater to be an Assistant Attorney General.
Legislation
The Senate has voted on seven pieces of legislation so far, including the budget resolution and the continuing resolution to keep the government open for six more months. Democrats have supported, in some measure, four of these bills.
The Senate has also voted on five joint resolutions that nullify Biden-era regulations. The two worth mentioning here are: (1) S. J. Res. 11, to repeal a rule that protected marine archaeological resources from offshore oil and gas operations, passed with the support of Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper (CO), Jacky Rosen (NV), and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV). (2) S. J. Res. 3, to repeal a rule requiring certain cryptocurrency sales to be reported to the IRS, passed with the support of 19 Senate Democrats.
The Laken Riley Act, which dramatically expanded the power of the state to detain and deport immigrants without sufficient due process, passed the House with the support of 48 Democrats. The Senate then voted on cloture, with 33 Democrats voting in favor, allowing the chamber to move on to voting on the bill’s final passage. 12 Democrats joined all Republicans in passing the Laken Riley Act: Ruben Gallego (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ), Raphael Warnock (GA), Jon Ossoff (GA), Gary Peters (MI), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Maggie Hassan (NH), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Jacky Rosen (NV), John Fetterman (PA), and Mark Warner (VA).
The Born-Alive Abortions Survivors Protection Act, which requires doctors to provide medical treatment to babies delivered during a late-term abortion, even if they have a fatal health condition, was passed by the House with the support of a single Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas). Healthcare providers and civil rights organizations opposed the bill because it would take away the option of compassionate care for babies born with lethal conditions (e.g., anencephaly), threatening criminal charges against doctors that honor the parents’ wishes for a peaceful death. All Senate Democrats voted against cloture for the bill, preventing it from becoming law.
The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which would impose sanctions on persons that aid efforts by the International Criminal Court (essentially a response to the ICC’s investigation of crimes in Gaza), was passed by the House with the support of 45 Democrats. Senate Democrats voted against cloture for the bill, with only John Fetterman (D) crossing party lines, to prevent it from becoming law.
The Senate budget resolution, which sets broad spending targets for committees to meet when writing legislation for the actual budget this year, passed the Senate without the support of any Democrats. Because Republicans used the budget reconciliation process, it was not subject to filibuster.
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would ban transgender girls and women from participating in school sports in accordance with their gender identity, was blocked by Senate Democrats voting against cloture.
The HALT Fentanyl Act, which would classify all fentanyl-related substances as schedule I controlled drugs and enshrine mandatory minimum sentences for their distribution, passed the Senate with the support of 31 Democrats.
And, finally, last week, the Senate voted on the most anticipated bill of the year so far: a continuing resolution to fund the government for the next six months. If there was ever a moment for Democrats to use the power of the minority—power that Republicans under Mitch McConnell exercised effectively for years—that was the time. However, instead of filibustering the spending bill to extract key concessions like eliminating DOGE or, at the very least, to obtain legally binding commitments to spend money as appropriated by Congress, Senate Democrats capitulated.
Senators Brian Schatz (HI), Dick Durbin (IL), Angus King (ME), Gary Peters (MI), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and John Fetterman (PA) joined Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) to help Republicans break the filibuster. Schumer defended his decision by saying that Trump would “take even more power” in a government shutdown, calling it the “worse option.” Schumer failed to mention that the House Republicans who wrote the bill omitted spending directives that funding bills normally contain. In other words, the continuing resolution gives Trump and Musk more freedom to spend (or not spend) money as Congress intended:
Democrats had hoped to include language in the bill requiring Trump to spend all the money in the measure and potentially thwart the unilateral cuts Trump and Musk are pursuing to agencies like the Education Department and Social Security Administration. But because Johnson was able to persuade all but one House Republican to back the measure, the GOP didn’t need any Democratic votes — which meant Republicans didn’t need to negotiate over that language before sending the bill to the Senate, where enough Democrats agreed to let the measure proceed to ease passage Friday and avert a shutdown.
“It is a huge move to give the White House and DOGE more power of the purse — they will have much more discretion over how to spend money,” said Charles Kieffer, who served in senior positions in the White House budget office and recently aided Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Schumer told the New York Times that he believes that Republican senators will eventually turn on Trump and become willing to work with Democrats to reinforce the guardrails protecting democracy. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the severity of the threat we face that it borders on delusion. The GOP is all-in with Trump. They do not want to save democracy. The American people deserve a party that does—and is willing to fight for it.
Thank you for this clear and compelling summary, this clarifies exactly which Democrats need to be called!
Thank you for this roundup. Both of my senators (NH) have proven disappointing.