Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who announced she’s leaving the Democratic Party, would keep her committee assignments.
“She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed,” Schumer said in a statement to news outlets on Friday. With Sinema as an independent, Democrats will hold majorities on committees and will have more subpoena power following Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) reelection earlier this week.
“We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes,” he proclaimed. Schumer did not provide more details.
Earlier on Friday, Sinema made the announcement because “Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties’ rigid partisanship, which has hardened in recent years,” according to an opinion article she wrote for AZCentral. “Pressures in both parties pull leaders to the edges, allowing the loudest, most extreme voices to determine their respective parties’ priorities and expecting the rest of us to fall in line.”
