Senate Democrats continued to hold the line on their standoff with Republicans as the government shutdown went into its second day on Thursday.
Already, President Donald Trump has said he would meet with Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, “to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”
That should not come as a surprise to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who predicted as much as part of his reasoning for making the exact opposite decision in March, when faced with another continuing resolution that the House crafted without any Democratic input.
“In effect, a shutdown gives Trump and his minions, keys to the city and the country,” Schumer told reporters way back then, a whole six months ago. “A shutdown gives the executive branch — in this case, Trump, Russ Vought and DOGE — pretty much complete freedom as to what parts of the government to fund and what parts not.”
Prescient words. And ones that Schumer appears to have forgotten when he decided to stand firm and try and force Republicans to extend enhanced subsidies in the Affordable Care Act marketplace that expire at the end of the year in their continuing resolution this week.
The main argument he made at the time was that if Democrats voted against a continuing resolution, as ugly as it might have been, that would have allowed Trump to cut whatever he wanted via the Department of Government Efficiency, then led by Elon Musk.
“I told my caucus this, there’s no off-ramp,” the 74-year-old Schumer said in response to a question from The Independent.
“A total off-ramp of a shutdown, how you stop the shutdown is totally determined by the Republican House and Senate, and that is totally determined because they’ve shown complete blind obeisance to Trump, DOGE, etc. They could keep us in a shutdown for months and months and months.”
That proved to be true. So far, Republicans have refused to re-open the government. In fact, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Independent that his constituents “like the idea that government’s shut down, they think it’s too big anyway.” Republicans have also refused to even begin talks and negotiations or discuss Democrats’ hopes to extend the enhance subsidies.
So what changed? Well, a few things. For one, back then, Democrats were still in a catatonic state after losing to Trump. They had lost the Senate and the White House and had failed to flip the House.
Democrats thought they would need to pivot to the center on immigration and the border and felt that, despite Trump winning only narrowly, they needed to give him some rope. That’d also explain why Democrats voted for many of Trump’s nominees such as Kristi Noem, Marco Rubio, Chris Wright and Scott Bessent.
But Schumer also faced massive consequences back home. His approval rating plummetted in New York and in the Brooklyn native’s New York City in the ensuing months.
Almost immediately, Democrats began to talk about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), staging a primary challenge against Schumer. Nancy Pelosi even criticized Schumer’s approach and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to offer him a lifeline.
But Schumer need only look at his former counterpart, the longtime Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, to see how to handle angry activists. On numerous occasions, Republicans cursed the 83-year-old McConnell’s name after he worked with then-Vice President Joe Biden to avoid government shutdowns.
Yet no Republican dared challenge McConnell because nobody understood the Senate as well as him. McConnell passed sweeping tax cuts and reshaped the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, for a generation. Conservatives could also never muster a legitimate primary challenge to him.
And the House always dislikes the Senate. It’s why Democrats used to say, “Republicans are not the enemy. They’re the opposition. The Senate is the enemy.”
Schumer got a few things correct in March. For one, Trump has become less popular, even in areas where he once polled strongly like crime, inflation and immigration. The uncertainty around the economy and rising costs thanks to Trump’s tariffs have caused his approval to nosedive.
“A lot of these Republican appropriators don’t like what happened, but they’re so afraid of Trump, they went along,” he told reporters in March. “But whether that will happen in September, I think there’s a very good chance Trump will not have to strengthen popularity. We might get them to work with us.”
In addition, Trump continued to slash the civil service even without a government shutdown. And the courts gave him the green light to do so. He’s also continued to do it after Musk left the administration.
But he made one major miscalculation: Even as Trump has become more unpopular, Republicans have not broken from him. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted for the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” despite her misgivings.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a gastroentrologist and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has not called for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign as Health and Human Services Secretary despite Kennedy gutting public health infrastructure.
And Trump forced Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) into retirement after he opposed the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act’s cuts to Medicaid. If anything, the more unpopular Trump becomes, the closer the GOP clings to him.
Schumer is still in the early stages of the shutdown and he might still win over concessions. But if he folds after people already lost their jobs, he might be in a worse spot than he was at the beginning of this shutdown.
