Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has shut down his book tour amid anger over his vote to prevent a government shutdown. The Democrat had been scheduled to appear in Baltimore; Washington, DC; New York City; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; and San Francisco this week to promote his new book Antisemitism in America: A Warning, but the tour has been postponed indefinitely, CNN reports. "Due to security concerns, Senator Schumer's book events are being rescheduled," a spokesperson said. Progressive groups had called for protests at Schumer's tour, starting with the Baltimore event Monday night.
Schumer is facing a huge backlash from fellow Democrats over his support of the GOP-led funding bill, which cuts $12 billion from non-defense government programs, the Hill reports. Schumer—one of 10 Senate Democrats who voted to pass the bill—admitted that it was "terrible" and "deeply partisan" but argued that a shutdown would be even worse. "Trump, Musk, and DOGE would use the power of a shutdown to shift into overdrive," he said in a post on X Friday. "And the courts, one of our best places to fight these autocrats, could quickly run out of money."
The New York event was scheduled to include a conversation between Schumer and Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, NBC News reports. In a post on X Friday, Torres joined numerous other House Democrats criticizing the "Yes" votes from Senate Democrats, calling it a "strategic miscalculation that we as a party might live to regret." The spending bill, he said, was "the best (and possibly only) leverage that we as Democrats will have to halt or impede Donald Trump's systematic decimation of the social safety net—particularly Medicaid." Indivisible, one of the groups that planned to hold protests at Schumer's events, is calling for him to step down. (More Chuck Schumer stories.)
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