After serving in the U.S. House for 23 years, there wasn’t much of a learning curve for Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who was sworn in last December to finish the final weeks of the late Sen. Diane Feinstein’s term.

He jumped right in to grilling Trump cabinet nominees from his perch on the Senate Judiciary Committee, verbally sparring with the likes of Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

But Schiff admits there was a bit of a mindset shift he had to get used to.

“I remember after the first two months here and spending day after day voting on nominees, you know, not just for cabinet positions, but all these other positions, asking one of the Senate veterans on my staff, ‘how long does this go on?’ Because I thought this was probably something that only happens in the beginning of a new administration,” recalled Schiff with a smile. 

“The answer was ‘six years,’ meaning your entire term is taken up with a lot of time on nominees and confirmations because once you confirm the first crowd, within a year or two, they leave, and then there are new people to vet and confirm. So that was a big surprise, because you don’t do any of that in the House.”

And while the pace and responsibilities of representing over 40 million people who live in California is quite different from representing the 750,000 he once did in his Burbank district, Schiff said he is relishing every moment.

“The highlight is definitely getting all around the state, meeting incredible people from every part of California. I think I visited 23 of the counties — about half of the counties in California — meeting with farmers, meeting with people in the tech field, being in the far south and the far north of the state, diverse, incredible, productive, beautiful, that part has been wonderful,” he told Spectrum News during an exclusive interview this week. 

With the Democrats in the minority, it’s difficult for a freshman senator to influence policy. But Schiff would not be deterred. He recently notched a victory in securing an investigation by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General into the Trump administration’s attempts to terminate $7.6 billion in grants to California and other states targeted for their perceived lack of support of the president. 

“You’re not allowed to just arbitrarily cancel energy projects, even if you’re the President of the United States, and you certainly, certainly can’t do it as part of your retribution campaign,” said Schiff. 

“As everyone knows, with artificial intelligence, there are these data centers that are going to be sucking up a lot of energy and risk pushing up people’s utility bills, which are already too high. If you kill new energy coming on your supply is not going to increase while demand is increasing, and it means bills are going to go up to the roof, and they are already,” he continued. “So if we’re going to keep energy costs down, utility bills down, we need new energy projects, and we need to investigate when people are arbitrarily, arbitrarily or lawlessly trying to cancel them.”

There have also been frustrations in this first year — including the failure of the president and the Republican majority in Congress to address California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for $34 billion in disaster relief following the Los Angeles wildfires nearly a year ago.

“Even though California has millions and millions and millions of Republicans who did vote for him, he’s willing to punish them, along with everyone else, because he lost the state in the election,” accused Schiff.

Congress could act on its own by proposing and passing a bipartisan supplemental aid package, but Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has declined to do so.

Schiff said he believes this sets a dangerous precedent.

“We’re a donor state in California; we give a lot more to the Treasury than we get back. I don’t think we want to go down a road where it’s every state for themselves, because, yeah, we’re getting hurt right now after these fires, but a lot of these other states have a lot less capacity to deal with disaster than we do. And if we’re all going to say, ‘okay, we’re just going to look after ourselves,’ they’re going to get hurt much worse than California,” he said.

Despite moving to Congress’ upper chamber, one thing that hasn’t changed is the target the president has put on Schiff’s back. The senator has been a chief foil for the president since Schiff led the first impeachment trial in 2020.

Schiff is one of the president’s adversaries that the Trump Department of Justice is investigating to determine if they committed mortgage fraud. Schiff maintains he has done nothing wrong, and seems to make light of the attack from the president.

“The first time he accused me of treason, and he’s accused me of being a traitor. Mortgage fraud —pretty big letdown after those other big allegations,” said Schiff. “It’s all a bunch of hooey, and they know there’s no there there, but nonetheless, they want to attack anyone who stands up to the President.”

But what Schiff says is no laughing matter is the state of our democracy.

“I don’t think it’s ever been so much at risk. A lot of the rules that we thought were unbreakable, turned out to be just norms that you could violate and violate with impunity,” he said, placing some of the blame on the Supreme Court and in particular, Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts authored the decision that gave Trump and future executives presumptive criminal immunity for “official acts.”

“The President feels completely liberated by that terrible decision to commit whatever offense, to engage in whatever kind of corruption, to bring in money, hand over fist with meme coins and crypto deals. The corruption is rampant, and the American people are the ones who suffer,” said Schiff. “While the President is focused on his personal enrichment made possible by his immunity, while he’s building his ballrooms, you’re paying more on your utility bills, you’re paying more for your housing, you’re paying more for your health care. He’s not looking out for the American people, and it’s part of the reason, I think, why we have this affordability crisis.”

Schiff said that the crisis is exactly what Democrats will be focused on in the coming year, and believes they can flip the House and potentially the Senate come November.

President Donald Trump said that he would bring the cost of living down on day one, and Schiff says Trump failed to deliver.

“The American people are no longer content with his blaming the people that went before him. They understand that tariffs are costing them more. They understand their life is becoming more difficult under him, not better. They’re not buying what he’s selling, and he can literally yell during his press conferences and they’re not going to buy it,” said Schiff. “I think we are breaking through, and we just have to keep a laser-like focus on meeting the needs of families, and that means bringing down costs.”