Democrats across the ideological spectrum are sharply criticizing Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for caving on his threat to block a Republican bill to avert a government shutdown.
Schumer on Wednesday announced Democrats would filibuster the legislation, but then on Thursday revealed that he himself planned to vote for it, signaling that the filibuster likely wouldn’t happen after all.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, compared Schumer unfavorably to former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“McConnell abused the filibuster to make America worse,” Casten wrote on social media. “Schumer is refusing to use the filibuster to… accomplish what, exactly?”
“I think it is a huge slap in the face, and I think that there’s a wide sense of betrayal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a leading progressive, told reporters.
“Democrats unwillingness to stand up for Congress’s constitutional right to prevent Trump from unilaterally shutting down social security offices or firing veterans is craven,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), another progressive, said on social media. “If we’re afraid of blame, we need to get better at persuasion—not rolling over.”
The House passed the bill on Tuesday with all Democrats except Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voting against the measure. The vote was a rare feat of unity for Republicans, with even far-right members who hate government spending lining up behind House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President Donald Trump, who threatened to punish dissenters.
All eyes then turned to the Senate, where Democrats have the power to block the bill, since it takes 60 votes to pass legislation and Republicans hold only 53 seats. The threat of a filibuster and subsequent government shutdown represented one of Democrats’ few points of leverage to check Trump and his billionaire adviser, Elon Musk.
Even though Musk and Trump have been unilaterally canceling congressionally mandated spending and flattening federal agencies, Schumer reckoned that a government shutdown would only give them more leeway to do what they wanted. In a shutdown, it would be up to the Trump administration to determine which personnel and policies count as “essential” and are allowed to continue.
“A shutdown would give Donald Trump the keys to the city, the state and the country,” Schumer said on the Senate floor when he announced his decision.
But nobody really knows how a shutdown would be different this year than in years before. Other Democrats said not shutting the government would have essentially the same result Schumer described. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told reporters Wednesday that the House bill “provides, in my view, a continuing blank check to shut down government agencies, as they’re doing right now.”
The legislation funds the government until September. It omits language Democrats had sought to prevent Trump from continuing his efforts to stifle spending. Its harshest provision will force the city of Washington, D.C. to cut around 5% from its budget, potentially meaning layoffs for hundreds of teachers and police officers.
Past government shutdowns, on the other hand, have resulted in thousands of federal workers being sent home without pay, with interruptions to nonessential functions such as food inspections, customer service at national parks and benefits verification at the Social Security Administration. Of its own initiative, of course, the Trump administration has been sending workers home and considering potentially major alterations to the way Social Security interacts with beneficiaries.
The limited public polling indicates voters were set to blame Republicans for the shutdown. A Quinnipiac University survey released Thursday found just 32% of registered voters would have blamed congressional Democrats for a shutdown, while 31% would have blamed congressional Republicans and 22% would have blamed Trump.
On social media, a wide range of liberal pundits, including many frequently loyal to the Democratic Party, called for a primary challenge to Schumer, who is not up for reelection until 2028.
The criticism did not exclusively come from the party’s left wing. Stefanie Feldman, a longtime aide to former President Joe Biden, did not directly name Schumer but suggested on social media that Democrats were doing little but giving up congressional authority.
“The shutdown is already happening. It is called Trump and Musk’s demolition of our government,” she wrote. “The question is whether Congress will cede its remaining checks on the powers of the president.”
Among the few Democrats willing to defend Schumer was Adam Jentleson, a former top aide to Sens. John Fetterman and the late Harry Reid, who argued Democratic leverage in the moment is minimal.
“Schumer is right. Dems are understandably spoiling for a fight but this was not it,” Jentleson wrote on social media. “The idea that there was leverage in a shutdown was magical thinking – it’d be a gift to DOGE, more people would be hurt and it would’ve ended with a worse deal.
Go Ad-Free — And Protect The Free Press
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
Speaker Johnson adjourned the House after Republicans approved the bill on Tuesday, sending representatives home from Washington. House Democrats headed to nearby Leesburg, Virginia, for an annual retreat billed as an issues conference. Lawmakers looked at their phones Thursday afternoon eager for news about the Senate vote and anxious that their colleagues would cave.
“We keep hearing this mandate language when in fact, the election was far closer than people will give credit to and at the end of the day, we’re basically an evenly split nation,” Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, told HuffPost. “And right now, we’re being forced by a slim majority in the House of Representatives to eat what they’re dishing out, and we’re not willing to do that.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a Republican. He is a Democrat.
