What The Hell America!

THE REPUBLICAN FUNDING BILL THAT ten members of the Senate Democratic caucus helped pass last Friday is a disgrace. It’s also a sham.

Defenders of the bill have called it a continuing resolution, arguing that it simply kept in place the spending levels of the last year of Joe Biden’s administration. But it cannot be called that. This partisan legislation, written by Republicans without any input from Democrats, whose votes they needed to overcome the Senate filibuster, gutted billions of dollars of federal programs. We’re talking cuts to health care, cancer research, housing, infrastructure, and veterans’ services. Maybe worst of all, House Republicans used a procedural measure before final passage of the bill that prevents Congress from having to vote on keeping or getting rid of Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular tariffs, which are raising prices and otherwise tanking the U.S. economy.

By the time the final product came to the floor, all except one House Democrat voted against it. At a minimum, it appeared, this vote could have been used against Republicans in the 2026 elections to flip the House and Senate.

But then Sens. Brian Schatz, Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Kirsten Gillibrand, Angus King, Maggie Hassan, Gary Peters, Chuck Schumer, and Jeanne Shaheen broke from their Democratic colleagues to advance it.

These Senators could have used the filibuster to demand that Republicans come to the table to negotiate a bipartisan agreement. Instead, they folded. In doing so, they became emblematic of a neutered and feckless opposition party that has outraged and demoralized Democratic voters (and donors) since the November election.

The condemnation from within the party was near-unanimous, and the critics included fellow members of Congress, who publicly laced into Senate Minority Leader Schumer in unusually harsh terms. In the House, the most revealing commentary was a non-comment. In response to separate questions asking if it was time for new leadership in the Senate, and if he had lost confidence in Schumer, House minority leader and fellow Brooklynite Hakeem Jeffries deflected each time, saying, “Next question.” The message was clear; take it from someone who has served with Hakeem.

It was worse in the upper chamber, where Senate Democrats are privately mulling replacing Schumer. Before having an aide try to clean up his statement, Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia told the press, “I think come ‘26, ‘28 we’ll get some new leadership.” Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said he was concerned Democrats had lost their leverage by allowing the bill to move forward. These two men represent some of the swingiest states in America, both of which Trump won in 2024. Their statements should put to rest any notion that Schumer’s vote was really about providing cover to his vulnerable members. In fact, he may have harmed them.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is already running ads accusing Sen. Jon Ossoff of voting to shut down the government. Now, because of Chuck Schumer and a few others, Sen. Ossoff will be unable to point to any policy concessions made by the Trump administration as a result of holding up the funding bill.

The nicest thing that can be said is that Schumer and the rest genuinely believed their capitulation was the best path forward for the country. But that perspective only underscores an existential problem for Democrats. Our central, defining task right now is to stand up to a lawless bully in the Oval Office. Even the federal workers who stood to be most directly impacted by a government shutdown understood this; the American Federation of Government Employees urged senators to vote against cloture.

As someone whose successful campaign for Congress in 2020 began as a primary challenge to a sixteen-term incumbent and chair of the House Appropriations Committee, in which I argued that Democrats needed to fight harder for the things we said we believed in, I can see another reckoning within the Democratic party coming. On CNN Friday night, Van Jones said he had “never seen this level of volcanic anger at a Democrat, ever.” The 2018 and 2020 cycles, during the first Trump presidency, saw an uptick in the number of bold, progressive candidates winning primary challenges in the Northeast and Midwest. Given the recent backlash to leftist policies, successful primary challengers in the 2026 and 2028 cycles (if we are fortunate to still have elections) will win by convincing voters not that they are more progressive, but that they will fight harder against Donald Trump and MAGA extremists than the out-of-touch incumbents they seek to replace.

As the horrors of the second Trump presidency continue to unfold, there will be an increasingly anxious electorate waiting to see that fight and hear that message. That is the reason last week’s vote won’t be forgotten—because it was the main leverage Democrats in Congress will have for the remainder of the year.

It is notable that New York once again finds itself the staging ground for The Resistance. Even before last week, a poll showed 56 percent of New Yorkers would like to replace Gov. Kathy Hochul next year. Her charismatic lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, has been calling for a new generation of leadership and is widely viewed to be preparing a campaign to unseat her. In a statement Friday night, Delgado criticized Schumer and the other Democrats who caved, but Hochul’s handpicked chairman of the state party came to Schumer’s defense. Meanwhile, the discussion among Democrats about a 2028 primary challenge to Schumer by Reps. Pat Ryan or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has reached a fever pitch. (Schumer will be 78 and has served in office, starting in the New York State Assembly, since age 24.)

Any Democrat looking to serve in high office these days needs to understand that this is not 2010. It is not even 2020. Emboldened by never having to run for office again, the most powerful person in the world is working to end our democracy and punish his perceived enemies. Since his inauguration eight weeks ago, Trump has already made a lot of progress. The opposition party cannot afford to give an inch. Brute power must be met with brute resistance, and I know from having had enough debates with my ex-colleagues in Congress that the Senate Democrats who voted for cloture don’t understand that imperative. But their voters do.

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