The Senate is nearly done confirming Trump’s Cabinet. How did N.J.’s senators vote?

Following the confirmation of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer earlier this week, the Cabinet of President Donald Trump’s second administration is nearly complete, with only one spot out of 22 Cabinet-level positions still vacant. New Jersey Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker, both Democrats, were opposed to nearly all of it.

Over the course of 21 Cabinet votes, Kim voted “no” eighteen times, with three exceptions: Secretary of State Marco Rubio (who was confirmed unanimously), CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Booker voted for four nominees – Rubio, Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Agriculture Secretary – and was not present for three other votes.

In some cases, the two senators were simply aligning with the rest of their caucus in voting against deeply controversial nominees like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On other votes, however, Kim and Booker were in the minority even within their own caucus; Kim in particular is among the most consistently anti-Trump members of the Senate.

Speaking to the New Jersey Globe yesterday, Kim said that he had two things in mind when looking at nominees: how qualified they were individually, and how he thought they would behave in office. The former consideration varied significantly nominee by nominee, Kim said, but he ultimately came to the conclusion that every nominee will bow down to one man – Donald Trump – which made their nominations unacceptable in his eyes.

“What is the day-to-day job that they’re doing? That’s what’s become much more clear: they don’t actually run the show,” Kim said. “With someone like Rubio, when you hear him clashing with [Elon] Musk in a Cabinet meeting, it shows that he doesn’t have control over his own department – it’s crazy that Musk is able to wield that kind of influence. There’s this type of tension on that front.”

That tension led Kim to declare last month he wouldn’t be supporting any more Trump Cabinet nominees, and to admit that he would have voted against the three he did support if he had known what the Trump administration would do with federal funding and government agencies. Even the best possible nominees, Kim said, won’t pass muster under this president.

“The consideration is, ‘Is this the best person we can imagine that Trump would appoint?’” he said. “And in some cases, it might have been, but that’s still not enough for me because of what we’ve seen in terms of how this White House and Musk have short-circuited that, and not let these Cabinet secretaries actually do the role that they’re supposed to do.”

Booker never made that kind of firm commitment about his votes, but he too has said he was alarmed by the way that Trump’s Cabinet officials had behaved as their boss ran roughshod over many agencies. He’s had some especially choice words for the controversial nominees who went through the Judiciary Committee on which he serves, like FBI Director Kash Patel (“dangerous, dishonest, and unqualified”) and Attorney General Pam Bondi (who he worried would not stand up to Trump’s “unacceptable, unprecedented, and dangerous attacks” on her department’s independence).

With the Cabinet largely complete – the lone exception is U.N. Ambassador nominee Elise Stefanik, who remains a member of the House for now in order to pad Republicans’ narrow majority – the Senate has now begun turning to lower-level nominations, and Kim and Booker have proven largely hostile to those as well thus far. The pair voted against deputy secretary nominees at the Justice, Homeland Security, and Transportation Departments and against the new Secretary of the Army, though they did support the Justice Department’s new antitrust division chief.

Perhaps the most important nomination from a New Jersey perspective, though, is still in flux: U.S. Attorney. Trump’s initial pick for the job, State Sen. Doug Steinhardt (R-Lopatcong), turned the offer down, and Trump instead installed John Giordano, a Philadelphia lawyer (and Burlington County native) who can hold the post on an interim basis for 120 days. It’s not yet clear whether Trump is considering nominating him to hold the position long-term – or whether Kim and Booker would try to stall his nomination if Trump does.

Kim said that he has not yet spoken with Giordano, nor with Steinhardt for that matter, about the U.S. Attorney role. He has, however, begun discussions with the Trump administration about working together to find an acceptable nominee.

“I have had a phone call with the White House counsel about the process going forward, in terms of judge nominations, U.S. Attorney,” Kim said. “And at least initially, there was an agreement that we’d try to find some common ground. I’m going to try to pursue that and try to find names that I can recommend… But I told them, if I feel like that’s not being agreed upon, then they will hear from me.”