Russell Vought isn't a normal Cabinet pick. Democrats were right to make a scene.

This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 30 episode of "The Rachel Maddow Show."

On Thursday, Donald Trump’s nominee for budget director, Russell Vought, passed through his Senate committee hearing 11-0, a unanimous vote. Vought's nomination will now go to the full Senate.

After hearing it was a unanimous vote, you may be asking yourself: Did all Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee vote for Vought? The same man who says the president can refuse to spend the money Congress tells him to spend, no matter the chaos, no matter the authority vested in Congress by the Constitution?

While Vought’s nomination did pass 11-0, it was not because Democrats on the committee voted for him. Yes, the vote was unanimous but it was also homogeneous because only Republicans voted.

Earlier Thursday, Democrats announced they would boycott the vote and they let the public know why: "Budget Committee Democrats are boycotting today’s committee vote on Russell Vought’s nomination to OMB," Democratic members said in a post on X. "We will not vote for someone so clearly unfit for office."

Rather than take part in voting on this nominee — and knowing they’d be in the minority even if they all did show up and vote no — Democrats instead decided not to show up at all.

They decided to make a point that this nominee, the architect behind Project 2025 — a strategy to consolidate all government power in the presidency and essentially render Congress powerless — is not a normal nominee and that he doesn’t even deserve their no votes.

In other words, they made a fuss. They made a scene. It’s in keeping with what Democrats around the country have been asking the elected members of their party to do: Do not participate in what the Trump administration is doing here. Shut it down.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly heard that message Wednesday night from half a dozen Democratic governors, who, according to The New York Times, were "all but begging the minority leader to persuade Senate Democrats to block whatever they could."

We have heard it from the press. The Washington Post editorial board wrote Wednesday, "Senators who back Vought are choosing to undermine their own institution and give away their power of the purse."

Also Wednesday, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus wrote that if Vought's nomination ultimately goes through and Trump grabs the power of the purse, "lawmakers might as well pack their bags. There won’t be much of a constitutional role left for them."

The progressive group Indivisible, which has chapters across the country, has been demanding that Democrats effectively shut down the Senate.

"We need Democrats to use every procedural maneuver to grind things to [a] stop and use every media tool to raise alarm and allow public pressure to build," the group’s co-founder said in a statement Tuesday.

And Thursday, Senate Democrats — in this way, on this vote — did what they could. They may not be able to stop this particular nomination, but they are doing everything they can to say to the American people: This is a disaster.

Allison Detzel contributed.