Jim Himes had a front-row seat watching President Donald Trump govern the first time around, and he learned a few lessons. Key among them was when to engage.
The congressman from southwestern Connecticut thinks about it on a spectrum. On one end, Himes said, he believes the president-elect’s posturing over the Panama Canal and Greenland is “obvious nonsense.” An example of the other extreme, he said, was the rhetoric that led to the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
But proposals that fall in the middle ground will mostly drive the debate — and potential fights — with the administration in the coming four years, Himes said. For example, Trump’s bid to levy steeper tariffs on Chinese imports.
“In the first term, I was probably lighting myself on fire once a day over whatever crazy, dangerous thing Donald Trump had said that day,” Himes said. “The signal to noise ratio with Donald Trump is pretty low, and you just can’t chase the noise.”
Himes’ colleagues in Washington, D.C., along with other Democratic officials in Connecticut, are taking a similar approach as they gear up for the next four years and mark Trump’s return to the White House at Monday’s inauguration.
All of Connecticut’s congressional delegation served during at least half of Trump’s first administration. And some of the state’s constitutional officers — Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Attorney General William Tong — also overlapped with Trump.
The seven federal lawmakers, as well as Lamont, will be in attendance for the inauguration — which, for the first time in 40 years, will take place inside the U.S. Capitol due to frigid temperatures in D.C.
They warned against having knee-jerk reactions and getting drawn into rhetoric that seems “performative.” But they also see opportunities where they’re hopeful they can once again work with the Trump administration, whether on trade, permitting reform or child tax credit proposals.
For many, it’s a two-pronged approach: Don’t rock the boat, but fight back when the stakes are high. In Congress, Connecticut’s delegation described themselves as a backstop against policies they oppose or view as harmful, though their power is more limited as members of the minority party now, in both the House and Senate.
While they tread cautiously on a second Trump White House, Democrats acknowledge they are experiencing a reckoning after the president-elect won the popular vote and the GOP made overall gains in November. In Connecticut, most towns shifted red amid depressed Democratic turnout. In some cases, Trump made headway compared to previous elections.
Because Republicans are in full control of Congress, states like Connecticut could increasingly land on the front lines of pushing back against Trump’s agenda and defending its own laws.
Lamont experienced the first Trump White House when he became governor in 2019. During the last two years of that presidential administration, Lamont interacted with the administration mainly on COVID-related business. This time around, he has a mentality similar to Himes and other Connecticut Democrats: “Don’t poke the bear.”
In an interview ahead of Monday’s inauguration, Lamont said he’ll be one of the few Democratic governors in attendance. It’s a quick trip in and out of D.C. to mark the peaceful transfer of power, with some extra time for catching up with Republican governors he’s worked with as part of the National Governors Association.
Those relationships could be helpful over the next four years for Lamont. And he was quick to note Trump has allies with Connecticut ties; Linda McMahon, who has been nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Education, is one. Not every Democrat has embraced McMahon in this new capacity, and Connecticut’s U.S. senators are raising concerns about Trump’s promise to significantly overhaul or end the agency she’s been tapped to lead. But both senators supported her nomination in 2017 to lead the U.S. Small Business Administration.
“These relationships are helpful as you navigate around,” Lamont said. “There’s a lot of loud rhetoric up at the top, but sometimes you get stuff done underneath that umbrella.”
Lamont said he doesn’t have major concerns over the state of federal infrastructure funding, but he noted the state is working to spend that money expeditiously and avoid a possible scenario where it could get clawed back.
The red lines for Lamont and other Connecticut Democrats are over cuts to Medicaid funding and immigration measures like mass deportation that could affect undocumented immigrants including individuals known as “Dreamers,” who arrived in the U.S. as children.
Connecticut’s Trust Act placed limits on when state and local law enforcement can detain people who are being sought by federal immigration officials, though it makes exceptions for sharing information about an undocumented immigrant who has been convicted of a certain felony or a potential terrorist.
State policies like the Trust Act have come under a microscope in recent weeks by a group led by Trump deputy chief of staff and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller. In a letter last month, the Miller-led organization America First Legal threatened Lamont with criminal prosecution over the state’s immigration laws, though it went to an invalid email.
“It’s just a case in point where there’s a lot of hot rhetoric that I thought was going to end during the campaign, but it hasn’t,” Lamont said, referring to the letter threatening prosecution for enforcing state policies. “I’m going to try and work with people as best I can, but I’m going to draw the line when they try and deport a Dreamer.”
Shortly after Trump gets sworn into office Monday, he’s expected to follow through on some of the campaign promises he said he would implement on Day 1. That could include ending birthright citizenship, which allows anyone born in the U.S. to become a citizen regardless of their parents’ own legal status.
Such an effort would draw a flurry of litigation, including from Connecticut’s own attorney general. The 14th Amendment has been interpreted to cover birthright citizenship. Tong has framed the issue personally, noting that he is the first in his immediate family to be born in the U.S.
Medicaid could also face a dramatic transformation in the Trump era. The Affordable Care Act expanded the program, which funds medical care for low-income and disabled Americans, but it could be at risk. Changes to Medicaid may include lowering federal matching funds, shifting to block grants that would cap how much the federal government provides to states, or implementing work requirements.
Republicans are looking for ways to cut trillions of dollars in federal spending as they consider sweeping legislation that could include priorities like tax reform. But many of these issues will first come before Congress. Connecticut’s delegation has a close eye on what could be on the chopping block.
For U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., potential cuts to veterans health care or disability benefits are a non-starter.
“If they want to decimate those programs, veterans are going to be deeply damaged and disserved, and I’ll just fight them, and my hope is Republicans will join me in that fight,” said Blumenthal, who is the ranking member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Still, they remain hopeful there will be issues where Democrats and Trump find alignment. During his first term, some in the congressional delegation commended his administration for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Himes also pointed to the opportunity zones program in Trump’s broader tax bill, which provided tax incentives for investments in lower-income areas.
“I’m happy to work with the new administration where we can. I will oppose it if somebody wants to talk about eliminating the Department of Education,” said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District. “If people want to talk about how we can have more worker-centric trade agreements, and there’s evidence of that, I’m happy to work” with them.
Since the beginning of the new Congress on Jan. 3, Connecticut’s delegation has seen an early preview of the kind of legislation to expect under Republican control.
That included a more targeted immigration bill that would detain people in the country illegally who have been charged, arrested or convicted of burglary or theft. Republicans have also proposed legislation banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at schools that receive federal funding. The immigration measure split some members of the Democratic delegation, while all five lawmakers who serve in the House opposed the latter bill.
Republicans in Connecticut say the Congressional delegation’s priorities are inconsistent with those of the general public.
“Folks in Connecticut and throughout the country are looking at Democrats and saying, ‘You’re just tone deaf.’ People want to change where we’re going,” said Ben Proto, chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party who has worked with past Trump campaigns.
Those accusations of being out of touch have been largely met with introspection. Democrats are in the midst of reexamining where they went wrong in the November elections and how they can win back voters who have strayed from the party.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., has been outspoken for months about how Democrats failed to connect with voters. His approach echoes that of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arguing the party needs to do better reaching out to working-class voters and pushing for more accountability for corporations and billionaires.
Himes concedes that his party miscalculated when not taking into account how much concerns over the southern border weighed on voters. It will be up to Democrats, he said, to pick up the pieces as they simultaneously confront a second Trump administration.
“In 2017, everyone was so shocked, and we’d never seen Donald Trump govern before. We couldn’t believe that he’d won in 2016,” Himes said.
This time things are different, he said. “You sort of have to say … ‘What’s our responsibility here?’ And the answer is, not nothing. Our responsibility is to really rethink our message and our standing with the American people.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
