The Schumer Schutdown

Last Friday, a stormfront powered by the pollution of petrocapitalism swept through America, leaving carnage and chaos in its wake. Dozens of Americans died from dust storms that blacked out the skies, tornadoes that tore communities to shreds, wildfires that choked the air.

They could not avoid the withering gaze of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), however. Murray, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, was furious that Democrats would give up their only point of leverage over Trump’s takeover of the appropriations process, thereby directly stripping Murray of her power and ceding it to Trump. In the morning, she delivered a sobering lesson on the dangers of the Trump bill.

During the cloture roll call, Murray walked to the floor of the Senate chamber as Durbin and Schatz voted in favor, casting her vote against. She exchanged a few words with Schatz, then took up residence on the floor during the entire vote, staring down every one of her colleagues who chose to betray her, their party, and the Constitution.

Murray spoke briefly Cortez Masto after her aye vote, and also spoke with Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Ralph Warnock (D-Ga.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.). Murray’s conversation with Warner was extended and friendly, as they monitored the voting together.

Fetterman and Gillibrand cast their votes without walking down to the floor, staying out of the gaze of Patty Murray and the C-SPAN cameras.

Gillibrand is the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, responsible for the caucus’s electoral strategy in 2026—recruiting candidates, protecting incumbents, and raising funds. In a closed caucus meeting on Thursday, the junior New York senator expressed her furious belief that doing Trump’s bidding was less damaging to Democrats than fighting Trump.

The electoral logic, such as it were, was that voting for Trump’s coup resolution was toxic, but a temporary shutdown would be worse. So the caucus’s challenge was for cloture to succeed without any Democrat vulnerable in 2026 or any Democrat with presidential ambitions supplying the votes.

Schatz, who blazes with ambition to succeed Schumer as Democratic leader, burned his meticulously crafted image as a coup fighter into ash in order to whip this misbegotten plan. Schatz came to floor with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), chatted briefly with Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), and later held a long discussion on the floor with Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

Schatz’s work to ensure there were ten openly quisling Democrats to take the scorn of the public was much appreciated by each senator who broke late to oppose cloture and appease their constituents. As one lily-livered senator anonymously told Punchbowl’s Walmart-sponsored reporters:

Similarly, retiring senators Peters and Shaheen took one for the team.

Peters, who had entered the chamber earlier, waited to cast his vote between Fetterman and Gillibrand, making him the decisive eighth Democratic vote for the coup bill. After he voted, Peters received a slap on the back from Sen. Bennie Moreno (R-Ohio), the MAGA used-car dealer who beat Sherrod Brown last fall.

Shaheen was the last Democrat to vote aye.

Not only were half of the Schumer Ten members of Schumer’s leadership team, half were Democratic members of the appropriations committee under Murray: Durbin, Shaheen, Schatz, Peters, and Gillibrand. So their votes, cast on the eve of the Ides of March, cut like sharp blades on the Senate floor.

The cloture voting ended with a bloc of cloture opponents, after Republicans and Schumer had secured the 60 votes they needed: Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who in February compared Trump’s first weeks in office to Hitler’s consolidation of power, was the last to vote no.

The final vote was 62-38. An hour later, after Democratic show amendments were quickly dispatched, the coup appropriations act passed 54-46, Shaheen and King crossing the aisle once again—although this time their fealty to Trump was performative, instead of direly consequential.

The Schumer Ten went against the will of almost every faction of the Democratic Party coalition—every House Democrat but one, who banded together to vote against the bill; federal employees facing the government shutdown that began January 20th; progressive, good government, and environmental groups; the lawyers fighting Trump’s executive overreach in the courts; youth climate justice activists willing to be arrested in front of Schumer’s locked Senate offices; thousands of DC residents who came with their children to lobby in person against the vote; millions of Americans horrified by Elon Musk’s oligarchic chainsaw who overwhelmed Senate phones. This fight unified sometime antagonists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden and More Perfect Union leader Faiz Shakir.

We need a Democratic leader who has the strength to fight fascists.

It’s time for Schumer to pass the torch.

1  “The left” here is an epithet for every faction of the Democratic Party other than corporations and billionaires.