A handful of Democrats buckled and signed onto a deal to reopen the government, enraging progressives.
Ever since his decision to help Senate Republicans clear a filibuster on a government funding bill in March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) has become persona non grata in many progressive circles.
That long-simmering resentment exploded into public view over the past 24 hours after a handful of Democrats buckled and signed on to a bipartisan compromise to end the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history.
“This is a bad deal, and the old way of doing things is clearly not working,” wrote 2026 Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow in a social media post. “We need new leaders in the Senate.”
“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership,” Representative Seth Moulton, who is hoping to oust his home state’s incumbent Senator Ed Markey in 2026, wrote in a Sunday evening social media post. If Schumer “were an effective leader,” Moulton continued, “he would have united his caucus to vote ‘No’ tonight and hold the line on healthcare.”
“Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” griped Representative Ro Khanna, an ambitious California Democrat widely considered a potential 2028 presidential contender. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate Democrats have rallied around as a bridge to the kind of working-class voter they’ve struggled to retain in the Trump era, also accused Schumer of selling out and called on him to step down.
“This happened because Chuck Schumer failed in his job yet again,” Platner said.
That opposition to Schumer is now considered a litmus test of sorts among ambitious 2026 Senate candidates and 2028 presidential aspirants shows just how far — and how quickly — the New York Democrat has fallen as leader of his party, not even one year into Donald Trump’s second term.
Of course, the intra-party frustrations with Schumer have been brewing since the spring. Democratic outrage with Schumer’s leadership first broke through in March, when the Senate minority leader joined a handful of Senate Democrats in helping Senate Republicans clear a procedural hurdle to pass a stopgap funding bill to avert a shutdown. In Schumer’s view, Democrats would get the blame for a shutdown, and a closed government would only empower the Trump administration to eviscerate government programs and lay off workers at an even faster speed.
This time around, Schumer’s No. 2, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), took the heat instead by joining a handful of Democrats Sunday evening in helping Republicans clear a procedural hurdle to take up legislation to end the current record-long shutdown. “This bill is not perfect, but it takes important steps to reduce their shutdown’s hurt,” Durbin said in a statement defending his vote.
But even though Schumer voted “no” in Sunday’s procedural vote, the party’s activist base and many elected officials in his own caucus still fault Schumer — either for orchestrating the compromise behind the scenes, or for failing to stop it.
Up until this weekend, Congress had been embroiled in a weekslong stalemate over how to proceed, with Democrats holding out against a House-passed continuing resolution to fund the government through late November over health care demands. For weeks, Thune brought the legislation to the floor for repeated votes, only for Senate Democrats to reject the bill more than a dozen times.
Now eight Democrats, none of whom are up for reelection in 2026, are agreeing to back a Senate Republican compromise to fund the government through January 30. The deal includes a handful of sweeteners for Democrats, including a commitment to rehire federal workers who were laid off at the start of the shutdown and a pledge by Senate Majority Leader John Thune that the upper chamber will hold a vote by mid-December on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.
If the stopgap funding compromise clears the Senate this week, the legislation could pass the House before the weekend.
Most Democratic lawmakers are outraged by the deal. In their view, out-of-power Senate Democrats are relinquishing any remaining leverage Democrats have in exchange for a deal that simply guarantees Thune will bring legislation involving the expiring ACA subsidies to the Senate floor — not that there will be enough Senate Republican support for any such legislation to advance it to the House. What’s more, while Thune has pledged to bring ACA-related legislation to the floor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) has not.
The vast majority of congressional Republicans are opposed to extending the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that were created and briefly extended by Democrats — even with reforms.
“Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise — it’s capitulation,” warned Congressional Progressive Caucus chairman Greg Casar (D., Texas).
All this, many Democrats warn, after the party had an exceptional Election Night last week in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere. In other words, why cave to Republicans when there are finally signs that Democrats are gaining ground electorally?
Against this backdrop, 74-year-old Schumer is still struggling to navigate the first year of the second Trump administration, when Democratic brand is still in the toilet according to surveys and the party is still at war over ideological, generational, and strategic change.
And he’s still getting flak from his own party for refusing to endorse New York City’s 34-year-old Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described Democratic socialist whose happy-go-lucky radicalism and criticism of Israel have endeared him to the progressive base in the Big Apple and beyond. After months holding out on an endorsement, his fellow New York Democrat and House counterpart, House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries, eventually caved and threw his endorsement weight behind Mamdani.
But Schumer never did, and progressives won’t let him forget it.
“I’m moving forward,” Schumer told the New York Times in a post-election interview. “We work very well together,” Schumer said of Mamdani. “I’m confident of that, and I know he has told me he is confident of that.”