Hello and welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, Sunday edition. I’m Leigh
Ann Caldwell.
I wasn’t at the Gridiron, a sad affair according to reports from friends who attended. Few Republicans and no major administration officials turned up—a major shift from previous years. The annual white tie event, hosted by the Gridiron Club, is traditionally an opportunity for the most high-profile journalists and politicians to make light-hearted jokes at each other’s expense. Last night, I’m told, it was just depressing.
Instead, I was in bucolic
Morgantown, West Virginia, where I watched my son’s swim meet at the Mylan Park Aquatics Center. Mylan, as it happens, is the pharmaceutical company formerly run by Joe Manchin’s daughter, Heather Bresch, who was hauled before Congress about a decade ago to explain the 500 percent increase in the cost of EpiPens. Anyway, I overheard a conversation in the bleacher row behind me between a pair of locals. One West Virginian asked his companion: “Are you still a big
Trump supporter?” The man responded, “Is anybody?”
The two proceeded to talk about the economy and the cratering stock market. Whether this was a meaningless one-off conversation or a hint about the country’s evolving mood, it was a noteworthy micro-detail in a state that Trump won by 42 points.
In today’s issue, I’m back on the Democrats. Last Wednesday, as Senate Democrats were agonizing about how to vote on the Republicans’ funding bill, I
previewed Chuck Schumer’s profound indecision and lack of leadership. Now that the minority leader has decided to help prevent a government shutdown, Schumer faces the wrath of party loyalists—and grave implications for his tenure as leader.
But first…
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- Trump’s global retreat: It’s been another wild weekend in the White House: President Donald Trump launched military strikes in Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthis; invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which hasn’t been used since WWII, against Venezuelans suspected of involvement in the violent gang Tren de Aragua; then deported hundreds of them, without due process, despite a federal restraining order. (The MAGA mob is calling for the impeachment of the judge who issued
it.)
Trump, moments after Congress funded the government, also signed an executive order on Friday night to eliminate seven more government agencies—including the parent agency of Voice of America, the international broadcaster created to counter Nazi, and later communist, propaganda. When Trump nominated the right-wing political candidate and former journalist Kari Lake to lead V.O.A., she was expected to shift the editorial bent in a more Trump-friendly direction. But
Trump is now just trying to dismantle it entirely, unilaterally strangling a news source that counters authoritarian propaganda and that Russia and China, for instance, have tried with mixed success to censor. Despite Trump’s obsession with projecting strength to other world leaders, he obviously cares little about U.S. soft power.
Speaking of global impacts, don’t miss this Nicholas Kristof
report from the ground in South Sudan and Kenya, in which he identifies some of the people already dying due to the absence of USAID. His analysis projects that more than 3 million people could die from a lack of U.S.-funded food, medicine, and vaccines by the end of this year.
- Polling problems: Two new,
nearly identical polls out this morning signal major challenges for both President Trump and Democrats. Both CNN and NBC News have clocked the lowest approval rating for
the Democratic Party—at 29 percent and 27 percent, respectively—since polling started on the question in the early ’90s. Both also reveal that most Democrats want their party to fight Trump harder—a warning sign for leadership, especially since both polls were taken before the whimpering conclusion of the shutdown drama. (More on this below…) Meanwhile, the president still enjoys strong support among Republicans, but in these polls he’s losing independents 2 to 1 (for now), and a majority of
voters are dissatisfied with how he’s handling the economy and inflation.
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Last week, the Senate Democratic leader finally made a decision to avert a
government shutdown. Now he faces the music within his own party.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, arguably the most powerful
Democrat within his feckless party in Washington, is facing a crisis of confidence. He’s defied his party’s activist base, ignored angry donors, and bucked 212 House Democrats who united against the Republican party’s government funding bill—and he did it all while visibly waffling and failing to foment a strategy. In the end, he delivered the votes from his Senate caucus to keep the government open and, according to critics, caved to Donald Trump and Elon Musk
without even putting up a fight. It was a hell of a week!
In the process, of course, Schumer underestimated the anger and angst within his party, which erupted in the aftermath of the vote and has flowed through the weekend. His decision to support the G.O.P. funding bill—not because of its contents, but because he feared the alternative—underscores his perilous position: out of touch with his own party’s most vocal contingent, outmaneuvered by a disruptive president and a blindly devout
Republican party, and struggling to manage a divided Democratic leadership team. Sure, Schumer’s move was quietly celebrated in some corners of the Senate, since it allowed some members to take a politically expedient “no” vote without having to suffer the consequences of a shutdown. But it reinforced Schumer’s reputation as a guy uncomfortable with confrontation and chaos, at his best when handshaking ideological opponents and crafting bipartisan deals—a strength that’s irrelevant under a
Republican trifecta with no use for negotiations, let alone compromise.
Schumer, according to some Democrats I’ve spoken with, has now bungled the first and perhaps only real legislative fight of the year. As a result, questions are swirling about whether he can lead in a moment that they say demands bold, fearless, and disruptive action. Liberal activists, never huge Schumer fans, are already launching an offensive, vowing not to forgive what they see as his colossal error. Indivisible
is calling for him to step aside as leader; MoveOn plans to flood Schumer’s office with calls of protest; the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is riling up its 1 million members in opposition to him. And protests are being arranged to accompany Schumer’s tour for his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning, which is horribly timed to commence in Baltimore on Monday (though everyone in town is predicting that he’ll be forced to cancel the appearance).
Schumer is
also facing the wrath of Democrats in the House, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who issued a statement ahead of the Senate vote condemning the “false choice some are buying” between “a government shutdown or a blank check” to Trump and Musk. (They never had a tight relationship, and she has always been the bulldog of
the duo.) Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t throw specific shade on Schumer, but was blindsided by his decision, I’m told, and didn’t defend him, either, saying only “next question” when asked whether it was time for new Senate leadership. Indeed, Schumer is nearly alone on an island with his own “internal gyroscope,”
which he told The New York Times is what “tells me I’m right.”
So far, according to my conversations with half a dozen Senate aides over the weekend, any ambitions of pushing Schumer out of leadership are mere fever dreams. This sort of weighty decision would be rendered by the Democratic caucus, and there are no imminent
plans. And yet there is a pervasive sentiment that Schumer, with his confrontation-shirking and compromise-seeking disposition, is not meeting the moment. I’ve received texts from both Republicans and Democrats contrasting Schumer specifically with Harry Reid, the former Senate Democratic Leader who not only didn’t fear fights, but also often escalated them.
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Leaving aside the outcome of the funding vote, the real reputational damage to Schumer is how he
managed the talks leading up to it. Democrats have questioned why he didn’t start laying out demands for Republicans weeks ago in exchange for the Democratic votes necessary to move the bill forward. “There’s no negotiation here. That’s what was hardest,” Faiz Shakir, Senator Bernie Sanders’ former campaign manager, told me, echoing what Senate Democratic aides said on background. “There didn’t seem to be any price inflicted on Trump to
get any of those votes.”
Truthfully, though, Schumer never had the votes to support a shutdown, according to several sources I spoke to throughout the week. Given the math—and Schumer’s own conviction, as described to me by some Democrats, that a shutdown was never a good idea—these people say he should have never let the shutdown even appear to be a remote possibility.
But the same sources pointed out that Schumer was genuinely surprised in private meetings, on Tuesday
and Wednesday, by the level of outrage and anger from his members—many of whom expressed vexation about the lack of strategy and demands. Why, they wondered, wasn’t their party fighting harder? Throughout those discussions, Schumer seemed out of step with what his members were hearing from angry constituents itching for a fight. He made the situation worse, according to one Democrat, by going to the floor on Wednesday to say that there weren’t the votes to fund the government, effectively
“gaslighting” activists.
Schumer spent much of Thursday calling members into his office to make sure those who agreed with him were still aligned, and to try to persuade others, including members of his leadership team, to vote to keep the government open, three Democratic aides said. It was notable that moments after he announced that he would vote for the funding bill, his chief funding negotiator and top lieutenant, Senator Patty Murray, released a
scathing statement against it, and encouraged Democrats both privately and publicly to oppose it.
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Of course, Schumer can rebuild his rep. But given the near-universal frustration with his
double-barreled mismanagement and capitulation, Democrats are worried about how Schumer will handle upcoming fights with Republicans. They are girding for more battles: on the next funding bills coming up later this year, which will need Democratic votes; an upcoming vote to lift the nation’s borrowing limit, which is expected to be tapped out in the coming months; and of course, the Republicans’ reconciliation bill to extend tax cuts and slash the federal budget.
Schumer and his allies
maintain that this government funding showdown wasn’t the right battle to wage because of the potentially nightmarish consequences and lack of a clear offramp. And Schumer still has support within the caucus because he took the position that others couldn’t, multiple Democratic sources said. “People are relieved that he took the hit and admire him for that,” one Democratic aide told me. Schumer argues that the upcoming vote on the Republican tax-and-spending bill is the more logical and
productive fight for Democrats, since Republicans could slash Medicaid and other government benefits in their quest for massive cuts to federal spending. But what angers some Democrats is that the party actually has less leverage there than they had this past week, since that bill, a so-called budget reconciliation, can pass with only a simple majority—i.e., without Democrats. Thus the vote will just be an exercise in political messaging—an opportunity to generate campaign
attack ads against Republicans, but not one for actually stopping the administration.
Schumer likely faces his biggest threat in his next election should he run again, which won’t be for nearly another four years. Liberal activists already wanted him to face a primary last cycle—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was encouraged to challenge him at the time but didn’t. This time, the threat could be much more real. He’ll be just three weeks shy of 78
on Election Day in 2028, and A.O.C., who called Schumer’s move to pass the funding bill “dangerous” and “reckless,” didn’t rule anything out this time.
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