Adam Schiff is bringing House-style confrontation to his new seat in the Senate — and defying the chamber’s more staid, seniority-driven sensibilities along the way.
In the five months since the California Democrat left his two-decade House career for the Senate, he has blasted his leadership’s decision to advance a Republican bill to prevent a government shutdown; led a bicameral mock hearing as the junior-most member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and pledged to block Trump’s controversial nominee to be the District of Columbia’s top federal prosecutor.
First-year senators typically ease into the spotlight, wary of upstaging more senior colleagues. But Schiff — a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee who catapulted to national fame as the leader of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial — has positioned himself at the center of confirmation fights. He’s even launched his own Substack, where he posts direct-to-camera videos explaining what’s happening in Washington.
Schiff, in an interview, said he might have been content with a more low-key launch had Vice President Kamala Harris won the election in November.
“I did arrive very intent on being seen and not heard, and I think frankly, if it had been a Harris presidency, I would have continued to be seen and not heard,” Schiff, 64, said. “But given that every day is a new crisis, none of us can afford to be seen and not heard.”
That approach, though, has not been well-received by all of his new Senate peers. In the House, interpersonal disputes and bickering often bleed into regular legislative business, and members focus on developing their own social media followings and personal brands. The Senate has a reputation for more understated maneuvering, with a tradition of civility and bipartisanship of which many longtime lawmakers are fiercely protective.
“Dump the House stuff,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said in an interview of what advice she’d give her new colleagues, including Schiff.
The Senate, she said, is a place where lawmakers work across the aisle, where “today’s foe is tomorrow’s conduit for something that you really need for your state.” And while she acknowledged it was important for Democrats to “articulate” opposition to the Trump administration, she said, “we don’t want to become the House.”
Schiff’s more aggressive posture, however, is giving Senate Democrats a playbook for more forcefully countering Trump and his legislative agenda. A resistance road map is something much of the base has been clamoring for, especially since the government funding fight last month left large swaths of the party questioning longtime Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership.
As a frequent target of the president’s ire, Schiff is also used to being a pariah among Republicans. In 2023, he was removed from the House Intelligence Committee by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and was censured by the GOP-controlled House for his part in Democratic-led investigations into Trump.
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who was early to endorse Schiff in his Senate primary race against two fellow House Democrats — vented frustrations in a recent interview about how Senate Democrats have handled confirmation proceedings for Trump nominees, arguing her party should have been more aggressive in battling the president’s Cabinet picks.
“In my view, this is the worst Cabinet we’ve ever had in the history of our country,” said Pelosi, another Californian. “I think that [Democrats] should have been tougher” in opposing them.
Schiff, in contrast, “has been particularly dogged about” calling out the nominees at confirmation hearings, said Pelosi. She added that her former protege was bringing “the House enthusiasm” to the process.
In one well-watched exchange during Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing to lead the FBI, Schiff pressed the former House Intelligence Committee aide about whether he was “proud” of his alleged involvement in fundraising off a musical recording from a group of rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He asked Patel to turn and face the Capitol Police officers in the hearing room whose force defended the building against the violent siege.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and the lead manager for Trump’s second impeachment trial, also praised Schiff for still operating with the urgency of the House. In the context of the stopgap funding measure, Raskin reflected, Schumer might have been thinking about the consequences of the government shutdown fight for the long term, but the current moment required Congress to see the fight through “a much more immediate lens.”
“The House was set up to be … much more of a weather vane of what’s going on in the country right now, whereas the Senate was designed to be a place where passions could cool off and people could take a longer view,” Raskin said in an interview. “But I think that Adam maintains the cadence and the rhythm of the House.”
Schiff said he sees benefits to the more collegial and congenial tone of the Senate, where bipartisanship is common and personal attacks in committee hearings are rare. At the same time, he said he and his fellow freshmen won’t be “wallflowers” and called old traditions about new senators waiting months for their first major speech on the chamber floor “completely outdated.”
Schiff was one of five House Democrats elected to the Senate last year, joining Sens. Andy Kim of New Jersey, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Each joined Schiff in voting “no” on moving forward with the government funding bill, with Gallego characterizing Schiff’s ethos as an approach shared by the whole class: “I think we all brought House energy to the Senate.”
Still, Schiff is arguably experiencing the biggest adjustment in terms of losing his seniority inside his caucus. He tried to put himself back into the public eye earlier this month, teaming up with Raskin to convene Democrats from both chambers to hear testimony from former Justice Department officials who have since departed the Trump administration.
The so-called shadow hearing is a tactic frequently used by House members in the minority party to garner attention when they lack committee gavels or subpoena powers. Schiff wants to normalize this strategy in the Senate, saying a future forum could examine the GOP push to impeach judges who issue rulings against the administration’s agenda.
“We should vigorously communicate with the public in every means that we can,” Schiff said. “When you’re in the minority, you have to be more focused on message, more disciplined on message than the other side, and you have to be more unified. And we haven’t done that yet, and it’s been much to our detriment, and it has to change.”
In a sign of his maneuvering for clout, Schiff was seated at the head of the dais leading the questioning with Raskin during that recent shadow hearing. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and the No. 2 Senate Democrat who announced his retirement this week, sat, for the most part, quietly beside him.
“He’s in a unique position,” said Durbin of Schiff during the event, “bridging the experience you had in the House of Representatives with this administration and now your responsibility here in the United States Senate.”