Adam Schiff is bringing Home-style confrontation to his new seat within the Senate — and defying the chamber’s extra staid, seniority-driven sensibilities alongside the best way.
Within the 5 months for the reason that California Democrat left his two-decade Home profession for the Senate, he has blasted his management’s choice to advance a Republican invoice to stop a authorities shutdown; led a bicameral mock listening to because the junior-most member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and pledged to dam Trump’s controversial nominee to be the District of Columbia’s prime federal prosecutor.
First-year senators usually ease into the highlight, cautious of upstaging extra senior colleagues. However Schiff — a former chair of the Home Intelligence Committee who catapulted to nationwide fame because the chief of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial — has positioned himself on the middle of affirmation fights. He’s even launched his personal Substack, the place he posts direct-to-camera movies explaining what’s taking place in Washington.
Schiff, in an interview, mentioned he may need been content material with a extra low-key launch had Vice President Kamala Harris gained the election in November.
“I did arrive very intent on being seen and never heard, and I feel frankly, if it had been a Harris presidency, I’d have continued to be seen and never heard,” Schiff, 64, mentioned. “However provided that on daily basis is a brand new disaster, none of us can afford to be seen and never heard.”
That strategy, although, has not been well-received by all of his new Senate friends. Within the Home, interpersonal disputes and bickering typically bleed into common legislative enterprise, and members concentrate on growing their very own social media followings and private manufacturers. The Senate has a repute for extra understated maneuvering, with a convention of civility and bipartisanship of which many longtime lawmakers are fiercely protecting.
“Dump the Home stuff,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) mentioned in an interview of what recommendation she’d give her new colleagues, together with Schiff.
The Senate, she mentioned, is a spot the place lawmakers work throughout the aisle, the place “right now’s foe is tomorrow’s conduit for one thing that you really want to your state.” And whereas she acknowledged it was necessary for Democrats to “articulate” opposition to the Trump administration, she mentioned, “we don’t need to develop into the Home.”
Schiff’s extra aggressive posture, nevertheless, is giving Senate Democrats a playbook for extra forcefully countering Trump and his legislative agenda. A resistance street map is one thing a lot of the bottom has been clamoring for, particularly for the reason that authorities funding battle final month left massive swaths of the social gathering questioning longtime Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer’s management.
As a frequent goal of the president’s ire, Schiff can also be used to being a pariah amongst Republicans. In 2023, he was faraway from the Home Intelligence Committee by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and was censured by the GOP-controlled Home for his half in Democratic-led investigations into Trump.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who was early to endorse Schiff in his Senate major race in opposition to two fellow Home Democrats — vented frustrations in a current interview about how Senate Democrats have dealt with affirmation proceedings for Trump nominees, arguing her social gathering ought to have been extra aggressive in battling the president’s Cupboard picks.
“For my part, that is the worst Cupboard we’ve ever had within the historical past of our nation,” mentioned Pelosi, one other Californian. “I feel that [Democrats] ought to have been more durable” in opposing them.
Schiff, in distinction, “has been significantly dogged about” calling out the nominees at affirmation hearings, mentioned Pelosi. She added that her former protege was bringing “the Home enthusiasm” to the method.
In a single well-watched change throughout Kash Patel’s affirmation listening to to guide the FBI, Schiff pressed the previous Home Intelligence Committee aide about whether or not he was “proud” of his alleged involvement in fundraising off a musical recording from a gaggle of rioters on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He requested Patel to show and face the Capitol Cops within the listening to room whose drive defended the constructing in opposition to the violent siege.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), rating member of the Home Judiciary Committee and the lead supervisor for Trump’s second impeachment trial, additionally praised Schiff for nonetheless working with the urgency of the Home. Within the context of the stopgap funding measure, Raskin mirrored, Schumer may need been fascinated with the results of the federal government shutdown battle for the long run, however the present second required Congress to see the battle by “a way more speedy lens.”
“The Home was set as much as be … rather more of a climate vane of what is going on on within the nation proper now, whereas the Senate was designed to be a spot the place passions might cool off and folks might take an extended view,” Raskin mentioned in an interview. “However I feel that Adam maintains the cadence and the rhythm of the Home.”
Schiff mentioned he sees advantages to the extra collegial and congenial tone of the Senate, the place bipartisanship is widespread and private assaults in committee hearings are uncommon. On the similar time, he mentioned he and his fellow freshmen gained’t be “wallflowers” and known as previous traditions about new senators ready months for his or her first main speech on the chamber flooring “fully outdated.”
Schiff was certainly one of 5 Home Democrats elected to the Senate final yr, becoming a member of Sens. Andy Kim of New Jersey, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Every joined Schiff in voting “no” on shifting ahead with the federal government funding invoice, with Gallego characterizing Schiff’s ethos as an strategy shared by the entire class: “I feel all of us introduced Home power to the Senate.”
Nonetheless, Schiff is arguably experiencing the largest adjustment by way of dropping his seniority inside his caucus. He tried to place himself again into the general public eye earlier this month, teaming up with Raskin to convene Democrats from each chambers to listen to testimony from former Justice Division officers who’ve since departed the Trump administration.
The so-called shadow listening to is a tactic ceaselessly utilized by Home members within the minority social gathering to garner consideration after they lack committee gavels or subpoena powers. Schiff desires to normalize this technique within the Senate, saying a future discussion board might look at the GOP push to question judges who situation rulings in opposition to the administration’s agenda.
“We must always vigorously talk with the general public in each implies that we are able to,” Schiff mentioned. “While you’re within the minority, it’s important to be extra targeted on message, extra disciplined on message than the opposite aspect, and it’s important to be extra unified. And we haven’t accomplished that but, and it’s been a lot to our detriment, and it has to vary.”
In an indication of his maneuvering for clout, Schiff was seated on the head of the dais main the questioning with Raskin throughout that current shadow listening to. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the rating member of the Judiciary Committee and the No. 2 Senate Democrat who introduced his retirement this week, sat, for probably the most half, quietly beside him.
“He’s in a novel place,” mentioned Durbin of Schiff through the occasion, “bridging the expertise you had within the Home of Representatives with this administration and now your duty right here in the USA Senate.”
