North Carolina Democrat floats ‘shadow cabinet’ to take on Trump administration

With President-elect Trump headed back to the White House and Republicans in the majority in Congress, Democrats have few options to push back against the GOP agenda.

But one enterprising North Carolina lawmaker thinks his minority party should look across the pond to the United Kingdom for the answer to “go toe to toe” with Trump. Rep. WIley Nickels, D-N.C., has proposed that Democrats create a “shadow cabinet” to organize the opposition and challenge each decision by the government.

“Across the Atlantic, the British have something we don’t: a team from the opposition that mirrors the government’s cabinet members. They watch the cabinet closely, publicly challenging, scrutinizing and offering new ideas. It’s another form of checks and balances — a quiet guardrail that keeps power accountable,” Wiley argues in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

His proposal is to appoint 26 Democratic leaders in Congress to mirror Trump’s Cabinet-level officials and challenge each initiative of the incoming administration. Sen.-elect Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for instance, could be a shadow attorney general who would call out Trump’s efforts to replace career Justice Department attorneys with those loyal to the president. Or Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, D-N.Y., might be a shadow Secretary of State who would loudly oppose potential action by the Trump administration that would decrease support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

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Representative Wiley Nickel, a Democrat from North Carolina, speaks during the DC FinTech Week event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“We have to step up our game. We have to go toe to toe with Trump. And it’s not just about saying, you know what, what we’re against. It’s about saying what we’re for and putting our best messengers out there,” Nickel told CNN’s Laura Coates in a recent interview. 

In the U.K., a shadow cabinet is a team of opposition leaders that reflect the ruling party’s cabinet members. The shadow cabinet has a counterpart for every minister in the ruling coalition’s government. 

It’s a system Nickel argues has worked for a century. 

“They watch the Cabinet closely, publicly challenging, scrutinizing and offering new ideas,” Nickel wrote in his op-ed. “It’s democracy’s insurance policy. And it strengthens the government, too: There is no room for lazy ideas when rivals stand ready.”

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Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer unveils his party’s manifesto with members of the shadow cabinet at the Co-op headquarters in Manchester whilst campaigning for this year’s General Election on July 4. (Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty Images)

There are key differences between the U.S. and U.K. governments that might complicate this idea. The most obvious being that the U.K. uses a parliamentary system, where multiple parties form coalition governments as opposed to the dual party system Americans have. The U.K. prime minister is the head of government and leads the Cabinet, which exercises the executive power. 

The American founders intentionally created a different system. The U.S. Constitution invests the legislative power in Congress and the authority to enforce laws in the Executive Branch, which is led by the president. The president’s cabinet officials each head different executive agencies, which are created by Congress but not administered by lawmakers. 

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Several of President-elect Trump’s Cabinet picks will need Senate confirmation. Pictured are defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, ambassador to the United Nations nominee Elise Stefanik, Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to be director of national intelligence and Lee Zeldin, Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.  ((Getty Images))

Members of the cabinet are nominated by the president and confirmed with the “advice and consent” of the Senate. Nickels’ proposed shadow cabinet officials would not be subject to similar checks on power. In addition, in the absence of a definite constitutional authority, it is unclear what powers a “shadow cabinet” might exercise, or what purpose it would serve other than to voice objections to Trump’s policies – which every member of Congress can already do during legislative debate.

In an interview with LiveNow from FOX, Nickel clarified that his idea is a “communications push.”

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“It’s about putting out our positive message to counter what we’re seeing from Trump. And if Trump or his Cabinet secretaries step out of line we’ve got somebody ready to go and answer, and be accountable to the American people on things we care about,” he explained. 

“This is about putting a point person for advocacy groups, for the public, a lead messenger … we need to organize our opposition,” Nickel said. “We can do our own American version of a [shadow cabinet] that will help Democrats do the thing we didn’t do, which is get out our positive message and talk about the things that folks are rightly concerned about.”