In the past month, Senate Democrats have held nearly a dozen “spotlight forums” to draw attention to what they claim are the Trump administration’s harmful policies.
But amid a jam-packed news cycle dominated by President Donald Trump and GOP reconciliation infighting, the shadow hearings struggle to break through the noise.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), along with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, will lead the latest of these meetings today, with a focus on how the reconciliation bill impacts women.
“It educates the public that the reconciliation bill is taking away health care from millions of Americans and adding to our deficit and debt,” Cortez Masto said.
Senate Democrats insist the forums — which have ranged from slamming Department of Education cuts to today’s event exposing the GOP reconciliation bill’s “Big Betrayal of Women” — are critical means of oversight at a time when their base is demanding action but they’re only in the minority.
“It’s about making the case in Washington with our colleagues, because Republicans aren’t doing it,” Klobuchar told us. “They’re not holding hearings about the impact of this bill, so we’re going to.”
The vision: Democrats launched the spotlight series this year with the aim of getting beyond the press conference format to push back against the White House. The goal was to get local news attention, attract eyeballs online and create social media content.
Yet the forums are no substitute for actual oversight mechanisms, such as subpoenas and calling Cabinet officials to testify. Many of the events struggle to attract national media attention, although Democrats insist D.C. headlines aren’t the goal. Instead, the spotlight series can serve as a roadmap of what Democrats will do when the party regains committee gavels.
Viewed in full, the spotlight forums aren’t the most eye-catching affairs. But the events can produce easily clippable moments that can serve as evidence to a restless activist class that the party is fighting back against Trump.
For example, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has been active in holding forums on GOP cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Connecticut Democrat said the events serve as a “very valid way to break through the Republican ideological fence.”
The local angle: While the spotlight forums don’t always get play in national media, the events receive more vigorous local coverage.
Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) recently led a forum on “the GOP’s Assault on SNAP,” and warned hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans could lose benefits. The event got major billing from multiple in-state media outlets, where SNAP is a major issue.
“We’re getting information out to the American people,” Luján said. “Our Republican colleagues refuse to hold any hearings.”
The topics: Forums include deep dives into “partisan voting attacks on voting,” “Trump’s destruction of HHS,” “reckless cancellations of VA contracts,” “the abuse of immigrants” and “the household impact of Trump’s tariffs.”
