House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Friday called on Senate Republicans to act as a check on the incoming Trump administration — a response to a handful of controversial Cabinet nominations announced by the former president this week.
Jeffries declined to weigh in specifically on Trump’s list of picks, which includes two of Jeffries former House colleagues — Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) — who have been nominated to become attorney general and director of national intelligence, respectively, in the next administration.
But he strongly suggested that they, and other Trump selections, are unfit to command the agencies they’ve been tapped to lead, and he urged Senate Republicans — who will control the upper chamber next year — not to rubber stamp the nominees out of a blind loyalty for the new Republican president.
“The Senate has a job,” Jeffries said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “They should focus — meaning the Senate Republicans — on being a separate and co-equal........