After Funding Vote, Group Wants a New Minority Leader

Indivisible, a grassroots progressive organization, has called on Sen. Chuck Schumer to step down as minority leader in response to his support for the Republican bill to fund government. After long saying he'd block the measure, Schumer instead backed it, helping to secure passage while arguing that the alternative of a government shutdown was a worse outcome. "After weeks of constituents demanding that Democrats use this rare, precious point of leverage on the government funding bill, Schumer did the opposite," Ezra Levin, Indivisible's co-director, said in a statement, Politico reports. "He led the charge to wave the white flag of surrender."

Indivisible said Saturday that 82% of its leaders in New York and 91% nationally voted to push Schumer to quit the role. When Schumer announced his switch on Thursday, Levin immediately urged Democratic senators to defy him and vote no, per NBC News. "If your strategic analysis ends with you voting for the bill that Mike Johnson, John Thune, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk want, you should rethink your strategy," he said. Congressional Democrats also are unhappy with Schumer's decision; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to express confidence in his leadership.

"Let me explain," Schumer told the New York Times on Saturday. "A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential. So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown. Two days from now in a shutdown, they could say, well, food stamps for kids is not essential. It's gone. All veterans offices in rural areas are gone. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. They're not essential. We're cutting them back. So it'd be horrible. The damage they can do under a shutdown is much worse than any other damage that they could do." (More Chuck Schumer stories.)