Paul Bass file photo
DeLauro takes on another leadership role.
(Washington) Rep. Rosa DeLauro has been in the forefront of Democratic efforts to push back against President Donald Trump, and on Monday she got a new title to reinforce her role.
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee — the panel that writes the spending bills each year to fund the federal government — will be one of three co-chairs of the new “Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group.”
The group will be chaired by House Assistant Minority Leader Joe Neguse, Democrat of Colorado. Besides DeLauro, the other co-chairs will be Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
The new task force is the latest Democratic effort to formally build an opposition infrastructure to President Donald Trump and his ally, Elon Musk, who are cutting agencies and programs previously approved by Congress.
DeLauro and other Democrats also have talked about using the March 14 deadline for avoiding a government shutdown by withholding their votes for a spending bill without guarantees that the money already approved by Congress be spent.
Leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress do not have enough GOP votes to pass a spending bill without Democratic support, giving the minority party a seat at the table.
“We are engaged in a multifaceted struggle to protect and defend everyday Americans from the harm being inflicted by this administration,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, said Monday in announcing the task force leadership.
That includes working with outside groups that are filing lawsuits to block Trump’s actions. Federal judges have done just that, and one of them, U.S. District Judge John McConnell said the administration has violated ’the “plain text” of the restraining order by continuing to block spending.
The state of Connecticut is a party to one of the lawsuits.
“We are a nation of laws,” DeLauro said late Monday. “I implore my Republican colleagues to stand up for the rule of law, for the separation of powers, for Congress’s proper constitutional role, and for the survival of our shared experiment in self-government. The Trump administration must end the lawlessness, end the destruction, and end the attacks on our constitutional order.”
That was the latest criticism from the pulpit she has by virtue of her committee leadership post.
Over the weekend, she criticized Trump’s new policy capping indirect costs for National Institutes of Health research grants despite a federal law preventing such actions. She said the cuts would cause “irreparable damage to ongoing research to develop cures and treatments” for numerous diseases.
On Friday, she questioned why taxpayers should spend $49,900 for “emergency painting” of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s government-provided residence. “How does that use of funds comply with the administration’s stated goal of government efficiency?” DeLauro and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the top Democrat on the Appropriations military construction subcommittee, wrote to Hegseth.
She earlier joined other members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees in a letter to Acting U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Dorothy Fink, saying that “the department’s actions over the last two weeks have done nothing to improve the health of Americans” while disrupting early childhood education, domestic violence programs, opioid treatment programs and research and clinical trials to find cures for diseases.
The New Haven Democrat also criticized Senate Republicans for confirming Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, blaming him for the Trump administration’s “chaos, confusion, and flagrantly unconstitutional actions.”