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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“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…