Washington’s senior Democrats in Congress are blasting President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for his Cabinet as a dangerous indicator of his plans to radically reshape the federal government with a cadre of loyalists.
Fresh off his election victory, Trump is moving to fill his administration’s top roles before he takes office in January. That’s a prerogative for every president, and although important Cabinet nominations are subject to Senate confirmation, in practice they are not often rejected.
But some of Trump’s choices — including Fox News host Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense, Robert Kennedy Jr. for secretary of health and human services, and former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general — are drawing strong backlash.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview Friday that Trump’s choice of Hegseth and others is disturbing, if not surprising.
“Donald Trump told us for four years exactly what he was going to do,” said Smith, the longest serving member of Washington’s House delegation. “He wants to destroy the existing system. He sees no value in what he calls the ‘deep state,’ which is our government.”
Smith said Trump is following through on his well-telegraphed plans to purge the federal bureaucracy of career professionals and replace them with unquestioning loyalists.
“You’ve got to understand what his vetting process is,” Smith said. “It consists of one question: ‘Will you do what Donald Trump wants you to do 100% of the time without question?’”
Smith said Trump’s pick of Hegseth will jeopardize “the rich tradition” of the nation’s top generals and other defense officials serving “the Constitution, not any one person.”
In nominating Hegseth, Trump praised the “Fox and Friends” weekend host, who is a decorated military combat veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who has never managed a large organization.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said in his announcement.
Joe Kent, the Trump-backed Green Beret combat veteran who recently lost his rematch challenge of Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, in Southwest Washington, mocked the objections to Hegesth.
“The ‘experts’ are mad a combat vet from our most recent war quagmires is going to be SECDEF as opposed to the status quo of a ‘properly credentialed’ 4 star architect of the quagmires that also sits on the board of a few major defense contractors,” Kent wrote on X, responding to criticism of Hegseth by Smith.
Sen. Patty Murray took aim this week at Kennedy, the famous anti-vaccine activist and environmental lawyer nominated to run health and human services.
“Donald Trump’s selection of a notorious anti-vaxxer to lead HHS could not be more dangerous — this is cause for deep concern for every American. There is no telling how far a fringe conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr. could set back America in terms of public health, reproductive rights, research and innovation, and so much else,” Murray said in a statement Thursday.
Murray, Washington’s senior Democratic senator, is an appropriator and a member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where she helped steer money to biomedical research and public health.
She said Kennedy would be “nothing short of a disaster” heading HHS and urged Senate Republicans to vote down his nomination.
Kennedy is part of one of the nation’s famous political families and the son of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He has for years been among the most-known promoters of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
This year, he ran for president as an independent but dropped out and endorsed Trump in exchange for a promise of a prominent health policy position.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said at a rally last month.
Nationally, some Republicans have also expressed concerns about Trump’s nominations.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said of Gaetz this week, “I do not see him as a serious candidate” for attorney general. Gaetz has been broadly unpopular among his GOP colleagues and has been the subject of a bipartisan House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.
But Trump has vowed to push his nominations through and has demanded that congressional Republicans fall in line.
While both Smith and Murray said they’ll continue to speak out about Trump’s Cabinet choices, they acknowledged their limited ability to do much about them given the recent election, in which Trump won the White House and Republicans claimed Senate and House majorities.
“I will speak out and vote against every Trump nominee who I believe to be unfit for the job, but there will be real and devastating consequences to a MAGA Republican majority in Congress and Donald Trump in the White House,” Murray wrote Thursday on X.
Murray also opposed many of Trump’s Cabinet choices in his first administration.
In 2017, Murray voted against 14 of Trump’s 22 Cabinet nominations, including for attorney general, according to The New York Times. Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell voted against 13 of them, departing from Murray in voting yes on the nomination of Linda McMahon to lead the Small Business Administration.
