By Candy Woodall
February 9, 2025
Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) questions Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. Kennedy testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.
U.S. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks is, perhaps unsurprisingly, voting no on President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees.
That became especially evident when the Democrat from Prince George’s County questioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health & Human Services — during a recent Senate committee hearing. Her reasons for voting against him are multifold, including his views that Black people have different immune systems and should follow alternate vaccine schedules, and his plans to gut the federal workforce.
Kennedy and his allies defend his moves as part of a plan to “make America healthy again.” They have criticized the U.S. for being the wealthiest nation with the highest rates of chronic illness.
During an interview on MSNBC on Sunday morning, Alsobrooks acknowledged that the impact of Trump’s new administration is already acutely felt in Maryland, which is home to about 160,000 federal workers. She is especially concerned about “horrifying” cuts at the Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health.
Life-saving research, including cures to cancer, will be jeopardized, she said.
“And you know who will be harmed? The American people,” Alsobrooks said. “This will literally cost lives.”
Cuts at the NIH and other federal agencies impact people responsible for Americans’ safety and health care — workers who ensure water is clean and food is not poisoned, the senator said.
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat and Maryland’s senior senator, on Saturday warned in a statement that “Trump and Musk are slashing funding for lifesaving cancer research and much more.”
“More Americans will die as they take a sledgehammer to decades of medical progress and cripple research institutes in Maryland and nationwide,” Van Hollen said. “We are fighting this with everything we’ve got.”
Upon taking office, Trump immediately began sweeping actions to remake the federal government, ordering massive staff cuts throughout several agencies.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has defended the moves as the administration being “good stewards” of taxpayer money. She said the 40,000 federal workers who have accepted buyout offers — which Democrats have warned against — will save Americans tens of millions of dollars.
If federal workers don’t want to show up to the office, as a return to in-person work is instituted, “if they want to rip the American people off, they are welcome to take this buyout, and we will find highly competent individuals who want to fill these roles,” she said.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll 11 days ago showed 61% of those surveyed supported Trump’s efforts to downsize the government. A similar Reuters/Ipsos poll four days ago showed 56% of respondents supporting cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides foreign aid, while 62% were against freezing federal aid and grants domestically.
The Trump administration moved late last month to downsize, furlough and reclassify federal workers as “at-will” employees. Messages to agencies also said standards would be enhanced to ensure federal workers’ loyalty and reliability.
Trump’s moves have set off numerous legal challenges, and judges have delayed his plans. For example, a federal judge has halted the administration’s plan to put thousands of USAID workers on leave.
Although Alsobrooks said Sunday that this is a “very, very serious situation,” she also acknowledged that the minority party is limited in what it can do because Republicans hold the majority in the U.S. House and Senate. Most of what Democrats can do is use delay tactics.
“We’re using every procedural tool we can in the Senate to make sure that we are blocking, slowing down some of the proceedings,” she said.
She added that she’s voting no “to all of these upcoming Cabinet-level nominees because Marylanders have been so severely impacted by the witch hunt that this administration has put forward against these civil servants.”
Cabinet nominees pass the Senate with a simple majority vote. To stop the Trump administration’s plans from being implemented, Democrats would need Republicans to join them in decisions. So far, that seems highly unlikely.
“They have the majority,” Alsobrooks said. “That is a reality that has to be spoken.”