While the rest of the Senate was in recess, the Banking Committee held a hearing Thursday morning featuring Trump administration nominees — a move that the panel’s leading Democrat called out of bounds.

The panel convened fewer than 12 hours after the Senate gaveled out for the midterm recess late Wednesday night. The chamber won’t meet again until after the election for a lame-duck session.

But a handful of Banking panel members stuck around to question four White House nominees — Matthew Jones to be assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Jeremy Wiggins to be assistant Treasury secretary; David Slade to be first vice president of the Export-Import Bank; and Michael Rigas to be a member of the Export-Import Bank board.

Ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said committees almost never hold nomination hearings when the Senate is in recess. She said it deprives some senators of a chance to question the nominees.

“But instead of waiting until the Senate is back in session, you’re ramming through [President] Donald Trump’s lapdogs without a full and fair hearing, the kind that the American people deserve,” Warren said to Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C.

Scott defended the timing of the hearing, saying it had been announced more than a week ago and that Senate rules allowed hearings during recesses.

He acknowledged he was tempted to head home but decided the hearing was a higher priority than getting on a plane Thursday morning.

“But more important than the jet fumes I’ve been enticed with in the past is the fact that we have four prepared nominees and we have a country that wants us to do our jobs,” Scott said. “Let’s get on with it.”

Warren used the hearing to criticize Trump administration policies over which a couple of the nominees would have influence, such as Jones being HUD’s Federal Housing Commissioner and Slade and Rigas helping determine the companies to which the Export-Import Bank extends loans.

She tore into a decision announced Wednesday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency to significantly cut funding for its inspector general.

Warren said the agency’s IG would not be able to function properly under the allocation. A Thursday letter from Senate Banking Democrats to FHFA Director William Pulte said the agency would allocate $20 million to the IG office, a 60 percent reduction from its fiscal 2026 operating budget.

She entered into the record a Wednesday letter from the FHFA IG that said the proposed funding level would “substantially inhibit our ability to conduct independent, objective, and effective audits, reviews, and assessments of the Agency’s programs and operations and criminal investigations.”

Warren said Pulte was slashing the FHFA budget in order to prevent it from probing Pulte’s attempts to use mortgage information against individuals that Trump targets for perceived slights. Last year, Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook for alleged mortgage fraud.

“These cuts will mean more fraud in the mortgage market, more cheating of families, higher costs for people trying to buy a home,” Warren said. “And why? So that Bill Pulte can dismantle a watchdog that would hold him accountable for his misconduct weaponizing the FHFA to persecute President Trump’s perceived political enemies.”

The FHFA said in a statement Wednesday that it was cutting its IG’s allocation “to ensure the budget is efficient and right-sized” after finding that the function “was an extraordinary budgetary outlier among its peer OIGs.”

Separately, Warren pressed Slade about reports that the Export-Import Bank is considering making a loan to a mining operation in Kazakhstan in which Trump’s sons are major investors.

“Let’s say the White House called and told you to approve an Ex-Im loan that benefits the president’s son,” Warren said. “Would you take the call, or would you report it to Congress and the inspector general?”

Slade said he would “apply the highest ethics standards.”

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., gave Wade a chance to say that the bank has only sent the Kazakhstan firm a letter of interest.

“There is no loan,” Slade said. There is “no promise of financing.”

He said the bank wouldn’t explore potential conflicts until getting to the loan stage.

Scott backed each of the nominees, saying they would help U.S. companies “compete overseas” and families “afford a home.”

“President Trump needs a qualified group of people in place to carry out his agenda, and the American people deserve leaders who understand whom they work for,” Scott said.