Tenure
In 2007, the National Journal ranked Whitehouse the second-most liberal senator.
In the spring of 2007, Whitehouse joined other senators in calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation. After Gonzales's first appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee related to the controversy, Whitehouse told NPR, "he had a hard sell to make to me, and he didn't make it". He continued to question Gonzales's service in the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.
Whitehouse voted to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Upon Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement in September 2014 of his intention to step down, some speculated that Whitehouse could be nominated as Holder's replacement.
In February 2016, after U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died, USA Today named Whitehouse as a possible nominee to fill the vacancy. Whitehouse's service as a U.S. Attorney and as Attorney General of Rhode Island gives him both legislative experience and experience as a legal official, though not as a judge. Whitehouse was not nominated.
In August 2024, Whitehouse said that if Democrats won control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives in the 2024 elections, they would be "virtually certain" to pass a Supreme Court reform bill by a simple majority, evading the 60-vote requirement for cloture. Whitehouse said Democrats would include 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and establish ethics and recusal rules in an omnibus package that would also include a bill creating a national right to abortion.
In February 2025, the ethics watchdog group Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust filed a complaint accusing Whitehouse of violating ethics policies by advocating for legislation to award his wife's nonprofit, Ocean Conservancy, $7 million in federal funding. The ethics complaint seeks to clarify whether it is a conflict of interest for Sandra Whitehouse to earn money from a group that has benefited from legislation Senator Whitehouse supported.
Whitehouse supported the candidacy of Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee in the 2026 United States Senate election in Maine. In June 2026, The New York Times reported allegations that Platner engaged in disturbing and physically threatening behavior toward women he had dated. When asked about these allegations, Whitehouse said: "Seems like a lot of nothing. I mean, the only one who had anything to say that seemed 'unsettling' was a woman who works for right-wing political operations." On July 7, 2026, one day after reports emerged that Platner had been accused of sexual assault, Whitehouse withdrew his support for him. Whitehouse later told Jake Tapper and The Dispatch that he remained skeptical of Platner's initial accuser, saying, "No corroboration and a highly motivated person working for the politicians on the other side—I think there are grounds for skepticism." The Dispatch noted that Platner's initial accuser "has not worked in politics for years, and there was in fact corroboration for her accusations in the form of a diary entry and comments she had made to friends years ago."
Whitehouse has faced some criticism for alleged insider trading, avoiding big losses by trading stocks after top federal officials warned congressional leaders of "the coming economic cataclysm" on September 16, 2008. After meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on September 16, and being briefed on the unfolding financial crisis, Whitehouse sold a number of positions, valued between $250,000 and $600,000, over the next six days. After coming under scrutiny due to possible insider trading, a spokesperson for his office denied it, saying Whitehouse "is not actively involved in the management" of the implicated accounts and that he "neither directed his financial advisor to undertake any transaction during that time, nor ever took advantage of any exclusive or secret information".
In March 2022, Business Insider reported that Whitehouse had violated the STOCK Act, which is designed to combat insider trading, by failing to disclose two personal stock purchases by the federal deadline. The stocks in question were for the Target Corporation and Tesla, Inc. Whitehouse's office acknowledged that he missed the disclosure deadline, blaming it on a staff transition in his office.
In September 2022, an investigation by The New York Times found that Whitehouse was among the members of Congress who had bought or sold stock that intersected with his congressional work, including trading stock in public companies that came before the committees on which he serves.
