Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will be under the microscope as he fights to regain the trust of his members while also seeking to stonewall President Donald Trump’s policy agenda.
Returning from a weeklong recess that included calls from some in the party for Schumer’s ouster over siding with Republicans to avert a government shutdown, Senate Democrats are eager to turn the page on a divisive saga. However, they warned that a major course correction in strategy is needed to present a unified front.
“We need to be an opposition movement, not the minority party,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said. “Good oppositions are not in disagreement with each other.”
Schumer’s job appears relatively safe — at least for now.
He was unanimously elected by the caucus in December to remain party leader, a role he’s held since 2017. It would take a majority to forcibly remove the 74-year-old from his post, and Democrats lack a natural successor, with other aging leadership members in their 70s and 80s.
However, as congressional Republicans look for a legislative breakthrough in the coming weeks on a Trump-inspired budget bill, Schumer will quickly be put to the test again.
“I don’t think it’s a great time to be going around and saying, ‘Ditch this person,’ or ‘Get that person.’ There’s time for that [later],” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) told the Washington Examiner. “Right now, I feel we’ve got to reorient everybody and say, ‘We need positive energy,’ that we can turn this ship, and we can deliver things that people care about.”
Senate Democrats admittedly don’t yet know what their path forward looks like with limited power in the minority, even with the 60-vote filibuster. They’ll meet Tuesday during lunch for the first time as a caucus since the party ruptured over Schumer and nine other Senate Democrats earlier this month helping Republicans advance a government funding bill.
Republicans’ budget process, known as reconciliation, can clear Congress with a simple majority and won’t require the help of Democrats, all but entirely diminishing their ability to derail the GOP’s plans. However, Republicans will need the help of Democrats on various other policy matters in the coming months, including raising the debt ceiling, likely sometime in the summer, and passing legislation to fund the government by Oct. 1.
Schumer said over the weekend that he has no intentions of relinquishing his post, a defensive posture he’s been forced to strike in the face of resignation calls from House Democrats and outside activist groups.
“I’m not stepping down,” Schumer said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
The New York Democrat went on to distance his situation with the Democratic Party revolt against former President Joe Biden before he ultimately dropped his reelection bid.
“I did this out of conviction. And in my caucus, we have a disagreement as to why some people voted one way, and some people voted the other. But we’ve all agreed to respect each other because each side saw why the other side felt so strongly about it,” Schumer said of the government funding episode. “I believe, by 2026, the Republicans in the House and Senate will feel like they’re rats on a sinking ship because we have so gone after Trump and all the horrible things he’s doing.”
All of the explicit calls within Congress for Schumer to step aside have come from House Democrats. However, there’s been a deafening silence from some in the Senate on their faith in Schumer and eyebrow-raising comments from others, such as Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who told town hall attendees last week it was “important for people to know when it’s time to go.”
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Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), who was adamant about his confidence in Schumer, suggested those in the House fueling resignation calls were operating outside of their appropriate political lanes.
“I’m not aware of my [House] colleagues voting for the leader of the Senate, the same way that senators don’t vote for the speaker of the House,” Lujan told the Washington Examiner.
