Adam Schiff is bringing House-style confrontation to his new seat in the Senate — and defying the chamber’s more staid, seniority-driven sensibilities along the way.

In the five months since the California Democrat left his two-decade House career for the Senate, he has blasted his leadership’s decision to advance a Republican bill to prevent a government shutdown; led a bicameral mock hearing as the junior-most member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and pledged to block Trump’s controversial nominee to be the District of Columbia’s top federal prosecutor.

First-year senators typically ease into the spotlight, wary of upstaging more senior colleagues. But Schiff — a former chair of the House Intelligence Committee who catapulted to national fame as the leader of President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial — has positioned himself at the center of confirmation fights. He’s even launched his own Substack, where he posts direct-to-camera videos explaining what’s happening in Washington.

Schiff, in an interview, said he might have been content with a more low-key launch had Vice President Kamala Harris won the election in November.

“I did arrive very intent on being seen and not heard, and I think frankly, if it had been a Harris presidency, I would have continued to be seen and not heard,” Schiff, 64, said. “But given that every day is a new crisis, none of us can afford to be seen and not heard.”

That approach, though, has not been well-received by all of his new Senate peers. In the House, interpersonal disputes and bickering often bleed into regular legislative business, and members focus on developing their own social media followings and personal brands. The Senate has a reputation for more understated maneuvering, with a tradition of civility and bipartisanship of which many longtime lawmakers are fiercely protective.

“Dump the House stuff,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said in an interview of what advice she’d give her new colleagues, including Schiff.

The Senate, she said, is a place where lawmakers work across the aisle, where “today’s foe is tomorrow’s conduit for something that you really need for your state.” And while she acknowledged it was important for Democrats to “articulate” opposition to the Trump administration, she said, “we don’t want to become the House.”

Schiff’s more aggressive posture, however, is giving Senate Democrats a playbook for more forcefully countering Trump and his legislative agenda. A resistance road map is something much of the base has been clamoring for, especially since the government funding fight last month left large swaths of the party questioning longtime Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership.

As a frequent target of the president’s ire, Schiff is also used to being a pariah among Republicans. In 2023, he was removed from the House Intelligence Committee by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and was censured by the GOP-controlled House for his part in Democratic-led investigations into Trump.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who was early to endorse Schiff in his Senate primary race against two fellow House Democrats — vented frustrations in a recent interview about how Senate Democrats have handled confirmation proceedings for Trump nominees, arguing her party should have been more aggressive in battling the president’s Cabinet picks.

“In my view, this is the worst Cabinet we’ve ever had in the history of our country,” said Pelosi, another Californian. “I think that [Democrats] should have been tougher” in opposing them.

Schiff, in contrast, “has been particularly dogged about” calling out the nominees at confirmation hearings, said Pelosi. She added that her former protege was bringing “the House enthusiasm” to the process.

In one well-watched exchange during Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing to lead the FBI, Schiff pressed the former House Intelligence Committee aide about whether he was “proud” of his alleged involvement in fundraising off a musical recording from a group of rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He asked Patel to turn and face the Capitol Police officers in the hearing room whose force defended the building against the violent siege.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and the lead manager for Trump’s second impeachment trial, also praised Schiff for still operating with the urgency of the House. In the context of the stopgap funding measure, Raskin reflected, Schumer might have been thinking about the consequences of the government shutdown fight for the long term, but the current moment required Congress to see the fight through “a much more immediate lens.”

“The House was set up to be … much more of a weather vane of what’s going on in the country right now, whereas the Senate was designed to be a place where passions could cool off and people could take a longer view,” Raskin said in an interview. “But I think that Adam maintains the cadence and the rhythm of the House.”

Schiff said he sees benefits to the more collegial and congenial tone of the Senate, where bipartisanship is common and personal attacks in committee hearings are rare. At the same time, he said he and his fellow freshmen won’t be “wallflowers” and called old traditions about new senators waiting months for their first major speech on the chamber floor “completely outdated.”

Schiff was one of five House Democrats elected to the Senate last year, joining Sens. Andy Kim of New Jersey, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. Each joined Schiff in voting “no” on moving forward with the government funding bill, with Gallego characterizing Schiff’s ethos as an approach shared by the whole class: “I think we all brought House energy to the Senate.”

Still, Schiff is arguably experiencing the biggest adjustment in terms of losing his seniority inside his caucus. He tried to put himself back into the public eye earlier this month, teaming up with Raskin to convene Democrats from both chambers to hear testimony from former Justice Department officials who have since departed the Trump administration.

The so-called shadow hearing is a tactic frequently used by House members in the minority party to garner attention when they lack committee gavels or subpoena powers. Schiff wants to normalize this strategy in the Senate, saying a future forum could examine the GOP push to impeach judges who issue rulings against the administration’s agenda.

“We should vigorously communicate with the public in every means that we can,” Schiff said. “When you’re in the minority, you have to be more focused on message, more disciplined on message than the other side, and you have to be more unified. And we haven’t done that yet, and it’s been much to our detriment, and it has to change.”

In a sign of his maneuvering for clout, Schiff was seated at the head of the dais leading the questioning with Raskin during that recent shadow hearing. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and the No. 2 Senate Democrat who announced his retirement this week, sat, for the most part, quietly beside him.

“He’s in a unique position,” said Durbin of Schiff during the event, “bridging the experience you had in the House of Representatives with this administration and now your responsibility here in the United States Senate.”

CENTRAL ISLIP, New York — A federal judge on Friday sentenced disgraced former Rep. George Santos to more than seven years in prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in a case that resulted in his expulsion from Congress and capped a colorful flameout for the first-term Republican.

The 87-month sentence for Santos, who wept as it was announced, comes after a memorable one-year stint in Congress in which he was exposed, in prosecutors’ words, as a “pathological liar and fraudster.”

In imposing the lengthy sentence, U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert decried his “flagrant thievery,” describing him as “an arrogant fraudster talking out of both sides of his mouth.”

His voice shaking, Santos told the court, “I betrayed the confidence entrusted to me by constituents, donors, colleagues and this court.”

He must report to prison by July 25. Seybert also ordered him to pay more than $373K in restitution, due immediately, and to serve two years supervised release.

Santos’ political saga gripped Washington and New York, where he flipped a Long Island House seat in a little-watched 2022 race that led to his prominent rise and ultimate downfall. After prosecutors charged him in May 2023, he refused to resign, buoyed by the support of many House Republicans. That support eventually dwindled, however, and Santos became the first member since the Civil War to be booted from the House without a conviction.

In August 2024, he pleaded guilty to two felony charges and acknowledged he used his campaign fundraising apparatus for personal gain. He admitted to submitting false reports to the FEC during his congressional run and to stealing the personal identity and financial information of elderly and cognitively impaired campaign donors. He fraudulently charged their credit cards, making unauthorized contributions to his campaign and others.

He also admitted to persuading donors to contribute money to a company that he claimed was a social welfare organization or super PAC, when in fact he used their contributions to put himself up at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, shop at Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Brooks Brothers, pay off his credit cards and gift himself thousands of dollars in cash.

“His campaign for Congress didn’t turn him into a fraudster,” prosecutor Ryan Harris said at the sentencing. “It simply revealed him for what he already was.”

The criminal investigation and a separate congressional inquiry, coupled with significant media coverage, revealed that Santos had promoted scores of lies about his educational and professional background, as well as numerous other falsehoods, including that his mother died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The House of Representatives voted to expel Santos in 2023 after the ethics committee released an explosive report that found “significant evidence” of Santos’ criminal wrongdoing. Democrats last year won back his Long Island seat in a special election.

“From his creation of a wholly fictitious biography to his callous theft of money from elderly and impaired donors, Santos’s unrestrained greed and voracious appetite for fame enabled him to exploit the very system by which we select our representatives,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.

They had recommended he receive an 87-month sentence, in large part because, they argued, he wasn’t remorseful. In fact, after prosecutors submitted their sentencing memo, they provided an additional filing to the court highlighting Santos’ social media posts to demonstrate that he remains “unrepentant.”

In one post, he referred to himself as a “scapegoat,” and in another, he denied having used campaign contributions to shop at Hermès. “No matter how hard the DOJ comes for me,” he wrote in another post, “they are mad because they will NEVER break my spirit.”

In a letter to the court, Santos argued that he is “profoundly sorry for the criminal conduct to which I pled guilty,” but that he has the right to “protest” the Justice Department’s request for the lengthy sentence. Santos himself suggested he serve two years, the legal minimum for one of the counts to which he pleaded guilty.

A bipartisan Senate delegation will attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome on Saturday.

“It is a tremendous honor to be selected to lead this bipartisan delegation of United States Senators to Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Francis and pay our respects to his life and legacy,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who is leading the trip, said in a statement Friday.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Ed Markey of Massachusetts will join Republican Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Eric Schmitt of Missouri as part of the Collins-led Senate contingent.

The group marks the first official congressional delegation to announce plans to attend the pope’s funeral, though House members have also discussed traveling to Rome for the event. Lawmakers heard from Francis in a joint meeting on Capitol Hill in 2015 — the first time a pope has ever delivered such an address.

Francis had struggled with health issues in recent years and died at 88 on Easter Monday after a stroke. Tens of thousands of mourners have also lined up to view him lying in state inside St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of the funeral this weekend.

In addition to the showing from Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump is one of several heads of state expected to attend the funeral. It will mark Trump’s foreign trip since the start of his second administration.

CHICAGO — Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and his party’s top leader on the Judiciary Committee, announced Wednesday that he won’t seek a sixth term in 2026.

“I know in my heart it’s time to pass the torch,” the veteran senator said in a social media post Wednesday.

Durbin, who is 80, confirmed what many Democrats have expected for months — that the veteran senator would step aside after three decades in office.

His departure comes at a perilous moment for the judicial system as the Trump administration repeatedly tests the limits of executive power and challenges the authority of the courts.

Illinois Democrats have already been lining up in anticipation of his announcement, hoping for a chance at the Senate seat. Reps. Robin Kelly, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Lauren Underwood, as well as Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton and state Sen. Robert Peters, have all signaled an interest in the seat.

Durbin’s exit also opens up a top slot in the Senate Democratic leadership for the first time in a decade. Many in the party have eyed Durbin’s retirement as a prime opportunity to elevate a younger voice into the senior ranks.

Durbin made headlines last month for being one of 10 Democrats who voted with Republicans to advance a GOP-crafted stopgap spending bill. Durbin drew criticism from progressive groups, who used the words “profoundly disappointed” and “cowardice” in calling out his vote.

He told reporters he believed the vote was the “responsible thing to do” to avoid a government shutdown.

The criticism was a blip in Durbin’s career advocating on high-profile national issues and for the state of Illinois.

In 2001, Durbin introduced the DREAM Act, which gives undocumented immigrants who grew up in the U.S. a chance to become citizens. A decade later, he successfully urged then-President Barack Obama, another Illinois native, to stop the deportation of Dreamers. That move led to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that exists today.

Durbin has also championed efforts to reform sentencing laws, curb credit card fees and ban smoking on commercial airline flights.

In 2005, Durbin met Tammy Duckworth, then an Army National Guard Blackhawk helicopter pilot who 12 weeks earlier had lost both her legs after being shot down in Iraq. He would become a mentor and advocate for Duckworth as she pursued a political career as assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs and then as a member of the House and Senate.

And in 2022, Durbin led the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the high court.

“In the years to come, one of my grandchildren may ask where I was on the historic day of April 7, 2022, when America broke down what seemed like an impossible racial barrier and voted to send the first Black woman to serve on our highest court,” Durbin said on the Senate floor before her confirmation vote “I will be proud to say I was on the Senate floor, standing at my desk, and casting my vote for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.”

Illinois residents know Durbin for his work advocating for infrastructure funding, securing federal dollars to modernize Illinois airports and helping establish the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, which earlier this week honored him for his career.

Durbin was first elected to the Senate in 1996, succeeding Democratic Sen. Paul Simon. In the primary that year, Durbin defeated Pat Quinn, who would later become governor of Illinois. In the general election that year, Durbin defeated Al Salvi, the husband of Kathy Salvi, who now chairs the Illinois Republican Party.

Before his career in the Senate, Durbin practiced law in Springfield, Illinois, and served as legal counsel to Simon and then the Illinois State Senate Judiciary Committee. He then won a U.S. House seat in 1982, serving seven terms before running for Senate.

Rep. Don Bacon, a prominent Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, became the first sitting GOP lawmaker Monday to suggest President Donald Trump should fire Pete Hegseth — calling the chaos at the Pentagon one reason why many Hill Republicans were privately uneasy with the Defense secretary’s nomination in the first place.

“I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience,” Bacon, a former Air Force general who now chairs of the subcommittee on cyber issues, said in an interview. “I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern.”

The Nebraska lawmaker also said that while he didn’t feel it was his place to call on Hegseth to resign, he wouldn’t stand for Hegseth’s mismanagement were he the occupant of the Oval Office.

“If it’s true that he had another [Signal] chat with his family, about the missions against the Houthis, it’s totally unacceptable,” said Bacon, referring to the New York Times report that Hegseth shared sensitive information about military operations in Yemen in a private chat on the Signal app that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer. It’s the second report of administration officials using an unclassified messaging platform to share sensitive information.

“I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge,” Bacon continued.

Hegseth’s decision to use a private device or Signal to communicate classified information was especially troubling, said Bacon, given vast interest among foreign adversaries to hack the phones of officials at the highest levels of government.

“Russia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all these phone calls at the very top, and the No. 1 target besides the president … would be the secretary of Defense,” said Bacon. “Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right. He’s acting like he’s above the law — and that shows an amateur person.”

Bacon’s comments come amid a larger string of high-level firings, public dramas and disagreements over the handling of sensitive and classified information within the administration, with the lawmaker casting judgment on the apparent dysfunction inside the Pentagon specifically.

His condemnation also follows harsh words from former top Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, who stepped down last week and blamed Hegseth for plunging the department into chaos in a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece published Sunday night.

“It looks like there’s a meltdown going on,” Bacon said. “There’s a lot — a lot — of smoke coming out of the Pentagon, and I got to believe there’s some fire there somewhere.”

Four more Democratic lawmakers have landed in El Salvador as the party ramps up its efforts to secure the release of a Maryland man the Trump administration now admits it erred in deporting.

Democratic Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon are demanding the White House abide by a court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. They’re planning to meet with officials at the U.S. embassy in El Salvador to advocate for Abrego Garcia’s release and to get information on other detainees transferred to El Salvador from the U.S.

Frost, in a statement, accused the Trump administration of “running a government-funded kidnapping program — illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting innocent people with zero due process,” of which Abrego Garcia is the “latest victim.”

“What happened to Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not just one family’s nightmare — it is a constitutional crisis that should outrage every single one of us,” Dexter said in a separate statement. “We will not rest while due process is discarded, and our constitutional rights are ignored.”

Their trip follows the high-profile visit from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who traveled to El Salvador last week to meet with Abrego Garcia, and more Democratic lawmakers could follow. Democrats say the Trump administration is denying Abrego Garcia his right of due process, and of plunging the country into a constitutional crisis by ignoring the Supreme Court order to bring him back. President Donald Trump and his allies are continuing to link Abrego Garcia to the MS-13 gang member, even as a federal judge said the Justice Department has offered no evidence to that effect.

House Republicans last week denied Democrats’ requests to send an official delegation to the country, arguing it would “waste taxpayer dollars.” The Democratic lawmakers said they are not using taxpayer dollars to fund their trip.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday pushed back on David Hogg’s effort to fund primary challengers against select Democrats in deep blue seats, arguing in favor of a more efficient allocation of party resources.

“Here’s the thing,” Jeffries told Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week.” “I’m gonna really focus on trying to defeat Republican incumbents so we can take back control of the House of Representatives and begin the process of ending this national nightmare that’s being visited upon us by far-right extremism.”

Leaders We Deserve, an organization co-founded by Hogg, now the Democratic National Committee vice chair, last week said it would shell out $20 million to younger, more progressive challengers of Democratic incumbents in safe blue seats.

The resultant schism has pitted Hogg and allies looking to inject fresh faces and enthusiasm into the party against key Democrats and insiders who are preaching unity and believe that money could be spent on winning back the House majority.

But on Sunday, Hogg told Karl during an ABC panel discussion that his initiative had two goals, resolving friction within the party and energizing American voters by “giving people something to vote for.”

“We cannot just be the party that is against Donald Trump,” Hogg said. “We have to be a party that doesn’t have a 27 percent approval rating from our own base. That is not a survivable future. And the way that we change that is making sure that we have some different characters.”

Former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, also on the panel, attacked the Democrats by saying he agreed that they needed a fresh message but added if Hogg were working for him: “I mean, unfortunately, David, I’d have you removed from the party.”

Donna Brazile, who chaired the DNC throughout the 2016 election, urged Hogg to exercise caution in deciding which primary challengers to fund.

“My position is many of these so-called safe blue seats, and I can get in trouble, many of them are seats that women and minorities finally had an opportunity to come and sit in because there were no seats at the table for us,” she said at the panel Sunday. “So before you start wiping clean the menu and the plates and the seats, be very careful.”

But Hogg defended the initiative. Messaging is only part of the battle, he told Karl.

“You can have Shakespeare write the best script in the world,” Hogg said. “If you have bad actors, it doesn’t matter.”

Chris Van Hollen has spent nearly a decade as an under-the-radar lawmaker. But the Maryland Democrat, who gave up a leadership trajectory in the House to serve in the Senate, may now finally be meeting his moment.

Van Hollen has grabbed the national spotlight amid a two-day trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration on erroneous charges of gang membership. After being initially blocked from entering a maximum-security prison by the Salvadoran government, Van Hollen ultimately succeeded in sitting down Thursday with his constituent, who had since been transferred to another detention facility.

“If you deny the constitutional rights of one man, you threaten the constitutional rights and due process for everyone else in America,” Van Hollen said Friday at a press conference at Dulles International Airport, shortly after returning from El Salvador.

He was flanked by advocates holding signs emblazoned with the words, “Thank you Senator Van Hollen.”

The episode has vaulted Van Hollen into a new hero of the so-called resistance, with some progressives now seeing the 66-year-old lawmaker as someone who can provide a roadmap for how to fight President Donald Trump and effectively message about the human consequences of the administration’s immigration crackdown.

“We’re not in the majority, and we don’t control the legislative agenda on the floor; we have to take whatever creative steps we can outside of the normal course of business to influence events,” said House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin, Van Hollen’s successor in representing the suburban Washington district that’s home to a sizable Salvadoran population. “Van Hollen’s trip down there definitely helped to galvanize people’s attention and to keep it in the front of everybody’s mind.”

It’s also the latest leg of a long journey for Van Hollen that could now change the course of his career at a moment when Democrats are just starting to discuss the need for generational change atop the leadership ladder.

“We’ve been flailing since Trump won. I’d be lying if I said morale wasn’t shot over here,” said one Democratic aide for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Van Hollen is a member.

“The Dems really need something to rally the troops,” said the aide, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “[Sen. Cory] Booker’s floor speech did that. Van Hollen’s trip is doing that.”

Democrats have found unity in opposing many of Trump’s policy priorities, but they’ve also struggled to get on the same page on a variety of issues since losing the White House, including immigration. They’ve also privately and publicly griped over their party’s inability to tamp down the lighting speed at which Trump’s MAGA agenda has upended norms while flouting Congress and the courts.

Van Hollen’s moves to defy the president — and take on a personal safety risk by going to El Salvador — have handed Democrats an antidote to some of their doom and gloom. Many progressives also consider Van Hollen’s framing of Abrego Garcia’s plight an example of the type of the principled stand on immigration that could help win back disaffected voters.

“If ever Democrats were looking for a strong place to pick a fight on immigration — the whisking people off the streets without due process … [this] is the place to pick the fight,” said Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Leah Greenberg, the cofounder of the anti-Trump advocacy group Indivisible, echoed the sentiment.

“This demonstrates that Democrats are moving to an alternate position, which is that, if you take a clear stance and you robustly defend it, you bring people along with you,” said Greenberg, whose group has been pushing Democrats to be more aggressive in their opposition to Trump.

Abrego Garcia was deported last month despite a judge’s ruling that he be allowed to remain in the United States because he faced a risk of being targeted by a gang in his homeland. A federal judge has since ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and the Supreme Court has upheld the order.

But while Trump administration officials have acknowledged their error, they are refusing take steps to rectify the situation and have since doubled down in saying Abrego Garcia must remain in El Salvador. The episode has erupted in a political firestorm, with Van Hollen now in the eye.

“By the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back,” the White House posted Friday on social media.

El Salvador’s president and a staunch Trump ally, Nayib Bukele, also piled on.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” he posted on X with photos of the two meeting at a restaurant. There is no evidence that Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia were drinking cocktails.

Van Hollen was elected to the House in 2003, where he rose through the ranks to lead the party campaign arm through top cycles and serve as the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee — both positions to which he was appointed by Nancy Pelosi, then the House Democratic leader.

He was a member of Pelosi’s extended leadership circle for years, and there was extensive reporting about the Californian’s interest in positioning Van Hollen to succeed her when the time came to step aside. But when then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski announced she would retire in 2016, Van Hollen chose the comfort of a Senate seat over the gamble of remaining in the House with no guarantee of a promotion.

In the Senate, Van Hollen spent one term as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee but has otherwise served more quietly in the rank-and-file, his options limited in a caucus that frequently rewards seniority over ambition.

However, Van Hollen has also long been a champion of a human rights-centered foreign policy platform, even when it’s meant breaking with his own party or challenging U.S. allies. For instance, he emerged as a leading Senate critic of the Israeli government’s conduct during the war in Gaza, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing war crimes and urging then-President Joe Biden to withhold aid.

“If you know Senator Van Hollen, you know he is particularly passionate about international issues,” said fellow Maryland Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth. Separately, Raskin floated the possibility that Van Hollen could have been on “a very short list” to be Secretary of State if former Vice President Kamala Harris had won the presidency.

At the airport press conference Friday, Van Hollen nodded to his colleagues who were also exploring visits to El Salvador — and perhaps their own moments in the spotlight.

“I’ve told the vice president of El Salvador but I might be the first senator — the first member of Congress — to come down to El Salvador, but I won’t be the last,” he said. “There are others coming.”

Booker, who captured the nation’s attention when he recently broke the record for the longest talking filibuster on the Senate floor to protest Trump’s agenda, has said he is planning his own trip. Democratic Reps. Delia Ramirez of Illinois, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Robert Garcia of California have asked Republican committee chairs to organize official delegations, but Mark Green of Homeland Security and James Comer of Oversight have declined.

In a sign of how much the episode has become a partisan flashpoint, Ramirez said in a statement that her “Republican colleagues have continued to reinforce their complicity,” while Comer told Frost and Garcia in a letter they were welcome to “spend your own money” to drink “margaritas garnished with cherry slices with a foreign gang member.”

Van Hollen, at the press conference, dismissed accusations of “Margaritagate,” saying, “nobody drank any margaritas, or sugar water, or whatever,” and that prop drinks were placed on the table by Salvadoran government officials to create an a false impression.

In prepared remarks he said he drafted on the airplane home, he emphasized the legal rights that had not been afforded to Abrego Garcia and pledged to continue the fight to bring him back to Maryland, and that both the Trump administration and the government of El Salvador are complicit in an “illegal scheme.”

“This should not be an issue for Republicans or Democrats,” Van Hollen said. “This is an issue for every American who cares about our constitution, who cares about individual liberty, who cares about due process and who cares about what makes America so different, which is adherence to all these things. This is an American issue.”

Connor O’Brien, Joe Gould, Robbie Gramer and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.

Democrats are celebrating Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia as a victory in their fight to secure the wrongfully deported man’s release.

But President Donald Trump is claiming the meeting as a win, too.

The two parties are locked into warring narratives on Abrego Garcia’s case, which has taken center stage amid an escalating battle between Trump and the courts over the administration’s mass deportation policy.

Van Hollen on Thursday secured a face-to-face meeting with Abrego Garcia, who was illegally deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador and held in the country’s CECOT mega-prison for the past month. The Maryland senator has led the charge for Democrats pushing for accountability from the administration.

After the Salvadoran government initially blocked his attempt to visit the notorious prison, the senator succeeded in his mission to meet Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran native who lived in Maryland until his deportation — on Thursday, writing in a post to X: “I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance.”

Democrats immediately branded the meeting a success, lauding Van Hollen for his leadership and perseverance in pushing to see Abrego Garcia.

“This is what leadership looks like. I’m proud of my partner and our senior Senator,” Van Hollen’s fellow Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks wrote on X. “We won’t stop until we bring Kilmar home.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Friday also thanked Van Hollen for his trip, writing on X: “Mr. Abrego Garcia was wrongfully imprisoned. As the Supreme Court indicated, there was no basis for his warrantless arrest. The Trump admin must obey the law. He must be returned home.”

But President Donald Trump and top administration officials say Van Hollen’s visit played right into their hands.

Trump bashed Van Hollen on Truth Social Friday morning, writing: “Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!”

The official White House account on X posted side-by-side photographs of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia and Trump’s Oval Office conversation with the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman whose killer — who was convicted this week — was an undocumented immigrant, drawing a comparison between the two visits.

“We are not the same,” read the post, which is now pinned atop the White House’s profile.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai took aim at Van Hollen in a post Thursday night, emphasizing the administration’s line on the contrast between the two parties’ priorities, writing: “Chris Van Hollen has firmly established Democrats as the party whose top priority is the welfare of an illegal alien MS-13 terrorist. It is truly disgusting. President Trump will continue to stand on the side of law-abiding Americans.”

The White House has for days sought to frame Democrats’ advocacy for Abrego Garcia as the rival party working on behalf of someone who the administration has branded an MS-13 gang member and terrorist, even as a federal judge has said the evidence presented by the administration is weak.

By contrast, the administration has projected itself as a champion for justice for the Morin family as they reel from the loss of their daughter.

Trump has resisted efforts to bring back Abrego Garcia despite repeated orders from the courts to do so. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return to the States after government lawyers admitted Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error,” and has previously cast the evidence of gang affiliation presented by the government — a tip from an informant and the fact he has worn Chicago Bulls attire — as very flimsy.

The Supreme Court subsequently upheld Xinis’ order to facilitate his return. A federal appellate court opinion — authored by one of the nation’s most prominent conservative appellate judges — issued hours before Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garica was made public also excoriated the Trump administration’s handling of the case.

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done,” 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, wrote.

He continued: “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

The unanimous three-judge panel refused to lift Xinis’ order calling for the U.S. to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

The White House Friday posted an edited headline from The New York Times, calling Abrego Garcia an “MS-13 illegal alien” who is “never coming back.”

The administration has also found a willing partner in its intensifying messaging campaign on Abrego Garcia’s case: Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

Bukele has appeared to join forces with the Trump administration, claiming that his hands are tied, too. During a visit to the White House Monday, the Salvadoran president said he would not release Abrego Garcia — asking, “How can I return him to the United States? Am I going to smuggle him?” — granting Trump the leeway to claim that he was unable to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

Bukele also broke the news of Van Hollen’s meeting with Abrego Garcia Thursday night with a mocking tone.

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture’, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!,” Bukele said, appearing to take a jab at Democrats who had warned of the severity of the conditions in CECOT.

The El Salvadoran president also indicated that the fight over Abrego Garcia is far from over, writing that the Maryland man “gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

“I love chess,” Bukele wrote in a separate post as reactions to Van Hollen’s visit poured in. The Trump War Room, an account run by the president’s political operation, reposted the message.

El Salvador refused Thursday to allow Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen to see the Maryland man who the Trump administration mistakenly whisked off to a notorious prison in his Central American homeland.

The Maryland senator said he traveled to El Salvador to check on the health condition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the administration sent to the prison despite a judge’s order that he be allowed to remain in the U.S. Van Hollen said soldiers blocked their approach.

“Nobody has had any communication with him since he was illegally abducted from Maryland,” he said in a video posted to social media.

The case has become a flashpoint for Democrats and other critics of the administration’s deportation efforts. The Supreme Court has directed the government to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who had been allowed to remain in the U.S. after a judge determined he had a legitimate fear of persecution in El Salvador.

President Donald Trump and El Salvador’s leader, President Nayib Bukele, have said they have no basis to bring him back.

Van Hollen, who tried to visit Abrego Garcia with an attorney for the family, was denied access despite the fact that Republican members of Congress have been able to enter a facility that has drawn condemnation for the harsh conditions of confinement.

“Today’s purpose was just to see what his health condition is, and these soldiers were ordered to prevent us from going any farther from this spot,” the senator said in the video.

Democrats have taken on Abrego Garcia’s plight as part of what they’ve called a growing constitutional crisis under the Trump administration. In a press conference, Van Hollen said that his deportation should spark fears of a greater violation of due process rights.

Some House Democrats moved to arrange a Congressional visit to CECOT to see Abrego Garcia, where others like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have started planning their own visits to El Salvador.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee, shut down the idea of a Congressional sponsored trip to El Salvador in a statement Thursday.

“There is no excuse for Democrats to waste taxpayer dollars visiting and defending a transnational gang member and reported domestic abuser,” Green wrote. “If Democrats care so much about defending this individual, they can use their own personal credit cards—not taxpayers’ money—to virtue-signal to their radical base.”