Kim, Booker take harder stance on Trump nominees amid DOGE, funding battles

In the early days of the second Donald Trump administration, New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, were willing to give some of the president’s Cabinet nominees the benefit of the doubt. Both joined the rest of their Senate colleagues in voting for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for instance, and they even broke with most fellow Senate Democrats in a couple of cases, such as when Kim supported loudly pro-Trump South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to be the Secretary of Homeland Security.

But since the Trump administration has begun taking the hatchet to federal agencies like the United States Agency for International Development, both senators have taken a much harder stance against Trump’s nominees, even those who got support from a majority of Democratic senators. Since last Tuesday, the Senate has confirmed eight nominees; Booker and Kim did not vote for any of them, though Booker was absent for two of the votes.

The two senators told the New Jersey Globe yesterday that their votes stem directly from efforts by Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to freeze federal funding and curtail the government’s reach – efforts that will in many cases be overseen by the Cabinet nominees that the Senate is voting on.

“Right now, they’re trying to assault our Constitution, and we see a lot of these Cabinet officials pledging to do whatever Trump wants to do,” Kim said. “That’s not in New Jersey’s interest, from my perspective.”

“Given everything that’s going on, I think we’re trying to make a lot more of a discerning decision,” Booker agreed. “It’s not necessarily just about the individual candidate, but really about what this administration is doing.”

Case in point: Kim and Booker were both prepared to vote for Sean Duffy, a former Wisconsin congressman and current New Jersey resident who was nominated to lead the Department of Transportation. But after the Trump White House issued a directive attempting to freeze vast amounts of federal funding, including for transportation and infrastructure projects, Kim, Booker, and 20 of their Democratic colleagues withdrew their support.

Following a vote yesterday evening, one of the architects of that spending freeze, Russell Vought, is now the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Senate Democrats were unanimous in their opposition to Vought, a key figure in Project 2025, and Booker and Kim each spent an hour speaking on the Senate floor about the dangers of confirming him.

“We have a crisis of confidence in our government,” Kim said in his remarks. “It’s a crisis that’s being driven by the Trump administration with one goal in mind: to let the well-off and the well-connected play by their own set of rules, while you, the American people, continue to scrape by. It’s a crisis that puts us at a crossroads: will we take the steps necessary to address corruption and restore trust, or will we break our institutions even further and usher in a golden age of corruption?”

Also coming up for a vote this week was Pam Bondi, formerly the attorney general of Florida and now the United States Attorney General. Democrats, among them Judiciary Committee member Booker, raised the alarm about Bondi’s close personal connections to Trump – she was one of his defense attorneys during his first impeachment trial – and about Trump’s attempts to reduce the independence of the Justice Department, but she was confirmed 54-46.

“Given Trump’s actions and the clear attacks on the independence, transparency, and accountability of the Justice Department, I cannot support his nominees for key leadership positions at the Justice Department,” Booker said in a statement prior to the vote. “I will vote against Ms. Bondi for attorney general as an express condemnation of Trump’s larger actions against the important norms and traditions of the Justice Department.”

Early on in the Cabinet confirmation process, Kim said that he believed incoming presidents elected by the American people should have at least some ability to craft a federal leadership team as they see fit.

“Generally, I am somebody that, when it comes to the executive branch, does think that the president does have some leeway to build their team,” Kim said. “I do think that that is a prerogative, and I would hope to see that courtesy afforded to Democratic presidents in the future.”

But Kim added that “there is a limit” to his support when he doesn’t believe a nominee is fit to lead a federal agency – and the Trump administration has started reaching that limit again and again.