During her successful 2024 election campaign, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Prince George’s County) made multiple visits to the Leisure World community, a long-time bastion of registered Democrats north of Aspen Hill. Last week, she returned to report on the first 100 days of her historic tenure.
“It’s been 103 days; I would daresay ‘Has it been 10 years and three days?’,” she told a packed audience of 200. “This has been a time like no other.”
Sworn in Jan. 3 as the first Black and second woman U.S. senator in Maryland history, Alsobrooks represents a state that—at the outset of the Trump administration—included the nation’s third largest concentration of federal government employees. So it did not take long for her to begin lobbing verbal broadsides at President Donald Trump’s unprecedented effort to slash the federal workforce through executive order.
“It has been for me very, very challenging to watch the attack on Marylanders,” she said, decrying “the witch hunt against our federal employees, against those who are the true patriots of our country.”
But Alsobrooks also was upbeat at times during the more than hour-long Wednesday afternoon session, as she described her efforts to reach across the political aisle and build working relationships with her Republican colleagues — including former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a long-time Democratic bete noire.
In a brief interview afterward, Alsobrooks said: “I have been surprised to some extent that the environment in the Senate has been collegial, that I have been able to reach across and develop some relationships that we’re continuing to develop — because I think it’s going to be important for me, even in the middle of this chaos, to get things done for my constituents.”
“And I know the only way to do that is going to be to build bipartisan relationships,” she added, alluding to the Republican majorities now in control of both houses of Congress.
Alsobrooks had her audience chuckling at times, particularly at one point when she likened her first 100 days to a popular late-night TV show.
“The administration wants us to believe that the cuts are designed — [this is] the greatest fallacy of all — because the people in the government are incompetent, because they are lazy and shiftless,” she said. “Well,if you want to see incompetent … I have been sitting in these hearing rooms and had the unfortunate distinction of having to question some of the nominees that have come before us — and it’s been like a Saturday Night Live skit. I just can’t believe it. Where do they find some of these people?”
A member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she recalled one session in which the Democratic members grilled Sean Donahue, the Trump administration’s nominee to become general counsel of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
“This is an agency that oversees 300 lawyers,” noted Alsobrooks — who served two terms as Prince George’s County state attorney before being elected county executive. “And the direct question was, ‘Sir, how long have you been licensed as a lawyer?’ He said, ‘Four years.’ And they said, ‘Oh really, during that time, have you ever taken a case to decision?’ and he said he had not.”
Amid widespread chortles from the audience, a clearly exasperated Alsobrooks continued to relate the exchange: “ ‘Have you ever taken a deposition?’ [The answer was] ‘I have not’… . ‘Well, sir, you have practiced for how long?’ And he said, ‘A year and a half’. And they said ‘Following that time, you were terminated, is that correct?’ He said it was.”
Declared Alsobrooks: “And so this is the caliber of person they’re sending forward and it is a real problem for all of us.”
Donahue was later approved by the committee’s Republican majority on a party-line vote. He is now awaiting confirmation by the full Senate.
Democrats ‘working really hard’
Unlike for many of her colleagues from far-flung states, the impact for Alsobrooks of the widespread reductions in non-political career employees has been up close and personal: She described frequently coming face-to-face on Capitol Hill with laid-off federal workers who are her constituents.
“So, this has been really devastating to watch,” she said, “because I interface with my constituents after they have lost their jobs. My constituents line the halls and say, ‘I just wanted to come down and let you know that it happened to me today, too.’ ”
Asked later if she was surprised by the speed and aggressiveness of the workforce cuts after Trump took office on Jan. 20, Alsobrooks — who avoided uttering Trump’s name, repeatedly referring to the president merely by pronoun — replied: “I’m surprised at the cruelty, even though I shouldn’t be. I’m surprised at the inhumanity, and just the tone deafness — that they cared nothing whatsoever, even about the people who voted for him.”
Alsobrooks readily acknowledged the Democrats’ limited capacity to block such actions in the short term, outside of the frequent court filings of the past three months.
“We are working really hard, in the Senate in particular, to use every procedural tool available to us to block [and] to delay,” she said, while hastening to add: “I don’t want to pretend that we are able in this moment to stop many of the funding cuts. One of the realities … is that we are in the minority, and so I have filed a number of amendments, but those amendments … so far have not passed.”
While conceding that “I think the Republicans have out-messaged us,” Alsobrooks expressed confidence that the political tide is starting to turn.
She said she was “convinced” the Republicans will lose the House of Representatives during the 2026 midterm elections, while echoing conventional political wisdom that regaining control of the Senate will be an uphill battle for the Democrats next year. “It’s a more difficult map for us to gain a majority in the Senate, but we’re going to have to hang on to the [47] seats we have,” she said, referring to the 100-seat chamber.
Alsobrooks’ confidence in her prediction of a Democratic House takeover appeared in part to stem from recent jobs cuts at one particularly high-profile agency: the Social Security Administration.
“I believe there is a plan by this administration to disrupt Social Security,” she asserted. “I think the American people can see the writing on the wall — that all of these cuts have not been made to make the government more efficient. It’s been done so that they can afford the tax cuts for their billionaire friends. It has been gross and grotesque.”
“It is what is happening … when you suddenly call to check on your Social Security check and discover that there’s no person to answer the phone: The impact of it is actually reaching the people,” Alsobrooks continued, once again taking aim at Trump via pronoun. “The people who voted for him, the people who didn’t, and the people who didn’t vote at all, care about Social Security. I think it’s going to cause a lot of those folks to come out and vote against this administration … in this next midterm.”
Along with some favorable rulings from the judiciary branch, the Democrats in the short-term appear to be relying most on ratcheting up public pressure on congressional Republicans as well as Trump — as Alsobrooks recounted, in unvarnished terms, a recent episode in which Trump modified an initial plan to impose tariffs.
“We know that these tariffs are catastrophic for our economy: All of the economists have told us that we’re racing toward a recession,” she declared. “And so he imposed his tariffs, and then came out with the bravado — it was classic him — and he said, ‘Well, I’m going to pause my tariffs because people are calling me’ and, as he put it — pardon my language — ‘they’re kissing my a–’.
“That’s what he told us. Well, the truth was that they were kicking his a–, and that’s the reason he did the 90-day pause,” Alsobrooks added, as the audience erupted with laughter and applause.
‘Supportive’ of Sen. Schumer
But the senator also had to tiptoe around some audience blowback — such as when a questioner asked her why New York Sen. Chuck Schumer should remain leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Last month, Schumer and a small group of allies split from the large majority of Senate Democrats — and provided the votes for a Trump-backed stopgap government funding bill to become law. The prospect of defeating the bill — at the risk of the government shutdown — “was the biggest leverage the Democrats had,” the questioner told Alsobrooks.
Alsobrooks noted that both she and her senior in-state colleague, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Kensington) had voted against the bill, which cut $13 billion from non-defense programs while adding billions for deportation of undocumented immigrants. She characterized the legislation as “horrible” — but also appeared torn at times as she delivered a lengthy explanation of why Schumer and nine other Democratic Caucus members had voted to move the bill forward.
“There were some in our caucus who believed that this administration was so callous — I’ve been using the word evil — that we would not easily [be able to] reopen the government,” Alsobrooks said. “We would have then been at the mercy of the Republicans… . They would have been in charge of what to reopen. For many of them, it would have been their plan to keep the government shut down.”
“And there was also a concern that we had about three to four weeks of funding to keep our courts open, and if we voted to shut down the government, the courts would close as well,” she added. “And the only place where we’ve seen any ability to affect the actions of this administration is to hold them accountable in the courts.”
“So, as you can see it caused a lot of pain for people who voted one way or the other, because we’re just in a horrible situation.”
Asked afterward whether she favored Schumer remaining as Senate Democratic leader — amid recent calls from some party factions for his ouster — Alsobrooks offered a muted vote of confidence. “I am supportive of Sen. Schumer,” she said, while seeking to shift the focus from the recent infighting among the Democrats.
“The people who are causing the chaos – who are supporting the cruelty of this administration — are not Democrats,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do in improving the way that we message. We have a lot of work to do to ensure that we’re continuing to hold pressure to this administration. But what we need in this moment is to ensure that our Republican colleagues are speaking out as well.”
Referring to her Republican colleagues and their relationship with Trump, she told the audience: “In private, many of them say they do not agree with him — but they’re frightened of voting against him. I’ve heard some have been physically threatened. So it is the Republicans who bear the brunt of the blame.”
Amid such pointed comments, Alsobrooks described her efforts to build bridges with some of those same Republicans. “At some point, some of these folks on the other side are going to see that what is happening is wrong,” she said, adding, “We’re beginning to see it, slowly but surely.”
In the meantime, Alsobrooks said, “We’ve got to oppose this administration and get some things done for the people of Maryland, which is why I’m working to develop relationships on the other side.”
She has reached out to Sen. Shelley Moore Capitol of West Virginia, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee on which Alsobrooks serves — and, like Alsobrooks, a Duke University alumna. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Republican among the five current Black members of the Senate, “has approached me on many occasions and said he’s very interested in working with me on historically Black colleges and universities,” Alsobrooks said. “So I’m going to be following up with him.”
Then there’s McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who a decade ago earned the lasting enmity of Senate Democrats for refusing, as majority leader, to hold votes or hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of then-Judge Merrick Garland during the final year of President Barack Obama’s administration. Having stepped down from his long-time leadership role and set to retire next year, McConnell recently has emerged as something of a political maverick after a years-long fraught relationship with Trump.
“The first meeting I had was with Mitch McConnell: I invited myself to his office,” Alsobrooks related. “And he said to me, ‘I want to give you some advice… . Be patient, because I’ve been here 40 years and it goes up and down and up and down, this is going to be OK’.”
“Let’s not become discouraged,” Alsobrooks urged as she closed the session on her first 100 days. “We’re going to fight this all the way through.”
Noting that she was elected to a six-year term in November, she added with a grin: “I’ve been saying that these people in this administration have four years – and I have six. So, we’re going to be here when they’re gone.”
