While Vermont’s two delegates to the U.S. Senate have been united in their opposition to many of President Donald Trump’s actions early in his second term, they’ve staked out different positions on some of Trump’s picks for top roles in his administration.
Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., has backed seven of the 21 Trump Cabinet nominees that the full Senate has taken up so far. (All 21 have been confirmed, with varying levels of support.) Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has voted for just two of the nominees that have reached the Senate floor so far, and voted against all 19 others.
The two picks Sanders supported — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins — also got Welch’s backing. Just one of Trump’s Cabinet nominees is yet to receive a vote: Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., whom the president tapped to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Welch has voted for more Trump nominees than almost three-quarters of his colleagues in the Senate’s Democratic caucus, according to voting records. Sanders, on the other hand, has notched more votes against Trump’s picks than nearly three-quarters of the Democratic caucus.
Sanders is an independent but caucuses with the Senate’s 45-member Democratic minority, as does Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine.
Welch was not present for the March 3 vote on whether to confirm Education Secretary Linda McMahon, though he later said on the Senate floor that he opposed her nomination and would have voted no, calling McMahon “a rubberstamp on President Trump’s agenda to dismantle the Department of Education.”
Welch said in an interview late last month that none of Trump’s picks “would be my first, second or third choice” for the jobs. He said he was adamant in opposing nominees who, in his view, have the most “responsibility over whether our civil rights are maintained,” including Attorney General Pam Bondi, who leads the U.S. Department of Justice, and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.
But Welch said he had less of an objection to some of the leaders of what he called more “functional” Cabinet agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
He said he voted “yes” to fill those roles promptly so that he and other senators could begin making the case to those agencies to reverse many recent Trump actions the senators disagree with, such as, Welch said, cutting some federal grants that support farmers.
“I want, as part of this, education,” he said, including “the ability to encourage those Cabinet folks to come up and hear from our housing people — hear from our farmers — about what they need, and why things that they’re seeing (are) bad policy.”
Welch said that he sees “some merit” to the argument — one his office has heard from constituents in recent weeks — that he should be rejecting all of Trump’s picks as a way to protest the new administration. No senators have voted against all of Trump’s nominees so far, though only one pick — Rubio — has scored unanimous support.
For most of U.S. history, presidential Cabinet appointees have been confirmed with little debate or opposition, though the confirmation process has become increasingly divisive — and increasingly partisan — over the past several decades.
Welch argued, though, that “I think anybody who’s been watching me is not confused on where I stand” on his support for Trump or many of Trump’s actions so far.
He said he is broadly concerned, too, with close Trump adviser and billionaire Elon Musk’s power over the White House. The president drew sharp criticism from many Democrats, including Welch, when Musk attended Trump’s first Cabinet meeting last month, and the president asked Cabinet members if any were “unhappy” with Musk’s “government efficiency” efforts to slash the size of the federal workforce.
“Trump’s got a Cabinet of one,” Welch said, referring to Musk.
Sanders has raised similar alarm over Musk’s role in the White House in recent weeks, including during committee hearings on whether to confirm some of Trump’s picks.
During a Feb. 27 confirmation hearing for Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Sanders said, “We are not voting on who the next secretary of Labor is. The next secretary of Labor, the next secretary of Education, the next secretary of Housing, the next secretary of the Treasury is Elon Musk.”
“Let us understand that reality and not play along with this charade,” he continued.
In response to questions about Sanders’ votes on Trump nominees, a spokesperson for Sanders’ office pointed to an op-ed the senator penned in Fox News the day before Trump’s inauguration in January.
Trump “campaigned in 2024 as an anti-establishment populist prepared to take on the political class and act on behalf of working families. When Trump is prepared to move forward in that direction, I will gladly support him,” Sanders wrote. “When he does not, I will vigorously oppose him.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s US senators have taken different positions on some Trump nominees.