By Stephen Groves, Matt Brown and Steve Peoples / Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic Party was fracturing Friday as a torrent of frustration and anger was unleashed at Senate Democrats who faced what they saw as an awful choice: shut the government down or consent to a Republican funding bill that allows President Donald Trump to continue slashing the federal government.
After caucus leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced Thursday that he would reluctantly support the bill, he bore the brunt of that anger, including a protest at his office, calls from progressives that he be primaried in 2028 and suggestions that the Democratic Party would soon be looking for new leaders.
The division was evident even among Nevada’s usually harmonious Senate delegation — Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) announced Friday afternoon that she would vote against both the bill and cloture, the 60-vote threshold to end debate on the bill. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), meanwhile, announced she would support it.
Since their election losses, Democrats have been hunkered against a barrage of Trump’s early actions in office, locked out of legislative power and left searching for a plan to regain political momentum. But as Schumer prepared to let pass one of the rare moments when the party might regain leverage in Washington, the Democratic Party erupted in a moment of anger that had been building for months.
Many in the party felt the New York Democrat was not showing sufficient fight, arguing that a government shutdown would force Trump and Republicans to the negotiating table. Yet for Schumer, who has led Senate Democrats since Trump took office in 2016, the choice ultimately came down to preventing a shutdown that he believed would only hand Trump more power and leave his party with the blame for disruptions to government services.
“A shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive,” Schumer warned on the Senate floor Friday morning, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency effort led by Elon Musk.
Still, as the Senate headed for a crucial vote on the government funding bill, hardly any Democrats were speaking up in support of Schumer’s strategy. It was a remarkable turn for the longtime Democratic leader, leaving him standing practically alone.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), his longtime ally and partner in funding fights of the past, said in a statement, “Let’s be clear: neither is a good option for the American people. But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.”
Pelosi added that the senators should listen to the women who lead appropriations for Democrats, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA). They had proposed a 30-day stopgap plan instead of the Republican proposal that would provide funding until September. The Republican bill would trim $13 billion in non-defense spending from the levels in the 2024 budget year and increase defense spending by $6 billion.
While Cortez Masto did not directly praise Schumer’s strategy, she agreed with his outlook, saying in a statement that a government shutdown would allow Trump and Musk to accelerate their dismantling of the federal government. Cortez Masto also noted that a shutdown would be harmful to federal employees in Nevada, and that she believed lawsuits were the best way to challenge the administration’s actions.
“Shutting down the government gives President Trump and Elon Musk even more power to cherry-pick who is an essential employee, who they want to fire, and what agencies they want to shutter,” she said in a statement. “And a shutdown would force federal courts to slow work on lawsuits against this administration’s illegal actions.”
Rosen, meanwhile, argued that the spending bill would further empower Trump and Musk. And the state’s junior senator — who campaigned on her bipartisan laurels — said in a statement that Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate with Democrats on the bill was unacceptable.
“Funding the government requires actually working together across party lines to find common ground, and the Republicans in power failed to do so,” Rosen said.
As House Democrats, who almost all voted against the bill earlier this week, concluded a retreat in northern Virginia Friday, they also called for their Senate colleagues to show more fight. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), the Democratic caucus chair, said that House members had been making calls to senators to urge them to vote against the bill advancing in the Senate.
House Democrats felt that supporting the bill made lawmakers “complicit” in Trump’s agenda, Aguilar said, adding, “This has really been about what are our tactics and strategies to defending Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, from what Donald Trump, Elon Musk are seeking to do each, every day.”
Nevada Democratic Reps. Steven Horsford, Susie Lee and Dina Titus all voted against the bill, while Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) voted for it.
Other Democrats, such as Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2028 and also visited the Democratic retreat, called for a broader movement. He mentioned the recent 60th anniversary of peaceful civil rights protests in Selma, Alabama, and argued that Democrats need to find “collective courage.”
“When those individuals marched, there wasn’t one voice,” Beshear said. “There was a collective courage of that group that changed the world. That day opened up the eyes of the country to what was really going on.”
Some were ready to start marching.
“We’re ready to get out of this building and head back to the Capitol at any moment and prevent the government from shutting down,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
“But now is the moment for Democrats to draw a line in the stand and say that we stand very firmly on the side of working class people and against the ultra-rich that are trying to corrupt our government for themselves,” he added.
Meanwhile, some of the nation’s most influential progressive groups warned of serious political consequences for Senate Democrats and predicted a fierce backlash when members of Congress return home next week.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, which has organized hundreds of protests across the nation, said that nearly 8 in 10 of the group’s activists support primary challenges against “Senate Dems who cave on the GOP bill.”
He wrote on social media that the vast majority of those Democratic activists plan to express their anger at town halls or other public events next week. MoveOn, another progressive group that claims nearly 10 million members nationwide, predicted that its activists would also demand answers from Democratic officials in the coming days
“Clearing the way for Donald Trump and Elon Musk to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is unacceptable. It’s past time for Democrats to fight and stop acting like it’s business as usual,” said Joel Payne, a spokesperson for MoveOn.
In a social media post, Anne Caprara, the chief of staff for Illinois Gov. JB Prtizker, argued that the party could unify around a fight with Trump.
“The fight going on in the Democratic Party right now is not between hard left, left and moderate. It’s between those who want to fight and those who want to cave,” Caprara said, adding, “Misread this at your own peril.”
Even in the Senate, Democrats were mostly unwilling to speak up to defend Schumer’s move.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), even suggested that the party should be looking for new leaders in the coming years.
“I think come ’26, ’28, we’ll get some new leadership,” he said. His office later said Warnock was answering the question broadly.
Mostly, though, senators just lamented that they had been jammed by a Republican Party that has found a new sense of unity under Trump. For years, House Republicans have not been able to muster votes for government funding on their own, forcing them into bipartisan negotiations. But this time, they passed the bill on party lines and left Washington.
“We’re stuck with two bad choices presented by a unified Republican front,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA).
He was voting against the bill, yet said of Schumer’s decision: “These are tough, tough calls.”
The Nevada Independent’s Gabby Birenbaum contributed to this report. Associated Press writer Leah Askarinam in Washington contributed. Peoples reported from New York and Brown reported from Leesburg, Va.
