Senator Chris Van Hollen—a lawmaker who thinks creatively about deploying congressional processes toward progressive ends—announced Thursday night on MS NOW that he’s challenging Chuck Schumer for the post of Senate majority leader. Listen to the interview carefully and you’ll notice that around half-a-dozen times, Van Hollen consciously emphasized the word “power.”
Here’s why that matters. Van Hollen is unlikely to prevail against the deeply connected Schumer. But his bid could still accomplish something important. It could force a serious discussion in the Democratic caucus about how far to go in wielding congressional power—and which authorities they’re willing to fully deploy—to check Trump’s lawlessness and derail his efforts at authoritarian consolidation, which are very much ongoing despite last week’s electoral bloodbath.
That’s the big public argument among Democrats we need right now. Because on this particular question, the party is all over the place.
Van Hollen wants his leadership bid to be understood in such terms. “I believe that we should use our full power in the United States Senate to respond to the calls of the American people,” he told MS NOW’s Jen Psaki. He cited the need to defund Trump’s Iran war as an example, saying Democrats should end it “now” because it’s “illegal and senseless.”
Van Hollen’s intended message is clear: The next Democratic leader should be willing to use maximal power to check Trump’s illegal and lawless conduct. So what should a big public argument over how to do this look like?
This week, Brian Beutler and I published a long TNR piece on exactly this topic. The threshold issue, we argued, is as follows. It’s nice that Democrats are vowing aggressive oversight and accountability efforts. But what will they be willing to do when Trump and his co-conspirators contemptuously decline cooperation with congressional demands, by throwing subpoenas in the garbage, laughing at letters requesting information and documents, and possibly even refusing to appear at hearings?
How will Democrats respond at that point? As Beutler and I argued, the most potent recourse might be a willingness to aggressively wield the power of the purse as a weapon, by, say, being willing to defund parts of agencies that refuse to comply with legitimate oversight demands. Will Democrats be willing to do this? That’s the critical question. It will help decide—far more than boilerplate promises of “accountability” will—how successful Democratic efforts to stop Trump’s corruption and lawlessness will actually prove to be.
On that topic, Van Hollen’s interview with MS NOW’s Psaki—which was otherwise good and illuminating—didn’t shed much light. Indeed, it raised some causes for concern.
For instance, while Van Hollen did strongly support impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, he was strangely resistant to impeaching Trump himself. Van Hollen also opposed impeaching Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has enthusiastically carried out Trump’s staggeringly corrupt orders for prosecutions of Democratic critics, including sitting members of Congress. Van Hollen asserted that they do merit impeachment but insisted it might take time from “kitchen-table issues,” which should be a “priority.”
Yet this answer revealed a strange disconnect. Van Hollen did stress that Blanche’s Justice Department shenanigans should face intense oversight. But left undiscussed was the fact that impeachment boosts congressional authorities and tends to produce more insider witnesses of malfeasance. This would make it easier for Democrats to overcome inevitable DOJ resistance to that oversight. Impeaching Trump might do the same more broadly.
In fairness, one might argue that even though impeachment does maximize congressional investigative authorities, it still detracts too much from addressing voters’ affordability concerns and signals lack of concern over them. (Beutler and I offered our own rebuttal to this in our piece.) But even if so, the likelihood that impeachment would put more teeth in accountability must at least be engaged with. Van Hollen should say why he’s willing to forego that additional oversight advantage.
A leadership battle is exactly where such debates can be fleshed out.
On MS NOW, Van Hollen did strongly argue for Democrats to stand firmly for defunding the Iran war as the December 11 deadline for new government funding looms. He said Democrats should be willing to shut down the government to force an end to the war. That bodes well, suggesting he’d be willing to wield the power of the purse aggressively to force oversight compliance. But we need more clarity. Shutting down chunks of agencies to compel cooperation will create awkward political moments. We need to hear Van Hollen and Schumer debate how far to go in this regard.
Similarly, Representative Jamie Raskin has said Democrats should use the spending power to defund corrupt and baseless prosecutions ordered by Trump. That will also create politically challenging moments. We need Van Hollen and Schumer to debate this, too.
The big defunding question will become a fault line in Democratic politics soon enough. The progressive group Indivisible—which backs Van Hollen’s bid—has sent a memo to Democrats on Capitol Hill arguing that real accountability must include the following:
Deploying the power of the purse: refusing to appropriate an agency or department, or even specifically the salary of the executive branch member who is being subpoenaed until information is supplied.
As Leah Greenberg, a co-founder of Indivisible, told me, the next Senate leader must charge Democrats with being “creative in using every tool they can to hold the Trump administration accountable.”
It seems self-evident that Van Hollen is more likely to carry out this mission than Schumer. That said, Schumer can now surprise everyone by signaling newfound aggressiveness himself. The key threshold question is: Will Democrats be willing to deploy all the congressional authorities at their disposal to stop Trump’s lawlessness and thwart his ongoing effort to consolidate an authoritarian state? On this urgent matter, a leadership battle could prove illuminating indeed.
