7/28: Face the Nation

Are Democrats About to Walk Into a Devastating Trap?

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Russell Vought is probably looking forward to Wednesday.
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images

Democrats and Republicans must agree on a temporary spending bill by the end of Tuesday to avoid a government shutdown. And as of Monday morning, a shutdown — of undetermined duration — looks more likely than not. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appear determined to play hardball, as restive Democratic voters demand their leaders take a more aggressive posture against an administration they loathe — and which has steamrolled Congress on spending. Democrats are demanding an extension of Obamacare subsidies in exchange for the Senate votes necessary to meet the 60-vote threshold and keep the government open. (The two Democratic leaders are meeting with their Republican counterparts and President Donald Trump on Monday, slightly raising the odds of a last-minute deal.)

The party demanding concessions usually takes the blame for a shutdown and its attendant downsides. But this time around, there’s another factor for Democrats to keep in mind: the Trump administration’s mission to cripple the administrative state. Russell Vought, the powerful head of the Office of Management and Budget, has threatened to institute mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown, to which Democrats have reacted defiantly. But how realistic is the threat? For clarity on that question and the Trump administration’s efforts to lay waste to government in general, I spoke with Don Kettl, a professor emeritus and former dean at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, who is an expert on the federal bureaucracy.

There was almost a government shutdown back in March. One of the reasons Democrats gave for not going down that path was that the Trump administration could have used such a shutdown to wreak even more chaos on the federal government. This time, Democrats are, as of now, barreling forward and basically saying “Screw you. This is a bluff.” To what extent do you think they’re playing with fire?
I think this is not a bluff. It’s entirely possible that the Republicans wouldn’t mind at all taking the short-term hit of whatever blowback there may be from a government shutdown in exchange for gaining more power over both the budget and the personnel system. They’ve been campaigning across the board for the power to be able to fire anybody they want to fire, from Federal Reserve Board members to people working in local social-security offices. There is a large group of people on the right, many of whom work inside the administration, who believe that the president has that power — that all federal employees ultimately are at will, and they think they can trace it back to the time of the founding. So they want to try to establish that policy and use this as a precedent, and then combine that with the power of impoundment. So I think they would not be very disappointed if it turns out they can blame the Democrats for having triggered the shutdown, then use that shutdown to be able to expand the president’s power into areas where they’ve wanted to move.

What is it about a shutdown that enables them to do so much more than they are already doing in terms of layoffs?
I can’t get inside their heads, and this certainly is not what I would recommend to anybody, but it could work something like this: There’s no money appropriated, there’s no continuing resolution, and there’s a shutdown. So then there’s a question of what actually gets shut down. And OMB, as it turns out, is who decides which employees and which functions are essential and which ones are not. Russell Vought has already said that he’s going to tell everybody that the most essential functions are ones that were in the Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the ones that weren’t are not. So they could say, “We’re really sorry, but you’re gone, because you’re doing a nonessential function and there’s no money to pay you.”

And I imagine it will be a challenge to get that overturned, since the Supreme Court has been very much on Trump’s side with this sort of thing.
That’s true, but even before you get there, it would be hard for the most liberal justices to argue that OMB needs to be punished because it’s committing to spending money that Congress hasn’t yet appropriated. It would really put the Supreme Court in the middle of a separation-of-powers question of Article One versus Article Two, where it doesn’t really have a role. What’s the court going to do? Say you have to spend money that Congress hasn’t appropriated?

There is a looming Supreme Court case about those very issues: separation of powers and impoundment. The Trump administration is trying to claw back foreign-aid money for AIDS patients that Congress already appropriated. On Friday, the Supreme Court gave permission for the Trump administration to withhold that money for now, but the case itself won’t be resolved for a long time. Is that the only thing holding the Trump administration back from pretty much controlling the power of the federal purse?
They don’t have a single thrust against impoundment that they’re using — it’s that they are working on multiple fronts. So the question, at this point, is whether or not they are cleverly trying to trigger a shutdown so they can even more fully expand their power, beyond what I think perhaps maybe even they imagined at the beginning. And that, I think, is a very real possibility.

To step back a bit on the Trump administration’s plans: When we first spoke last December, we were talking about Schedule F, the job classification the Trump administration used to try to fire federal workers at the end of his first term. It seemed like that would be the mechanism they’d use against the federal workforce in the second term. But they went a different way, right?
I tell people I’m the biggest sucker that ever lived because I spent four years telling everybody you better watch out for Schedule F. It was going to be a way to try to remake the workforce in the image and likeness of Trumpism. And they just completely suckered me in, because that turned out to be a nothingburger by comparison to everything else.

How so?
Schedule F was dropped almost at the very end of the first Trump administration. The idea was to allow the administration to take anybody who was in a policymaking or policy-influencing position in government and put them into a new schedule of the federal workforce, which would remove their civil-service protections and make it possible to dismiss them at will. And that involved how many people? Well, we never got a chance to find out.

The administration comes in this time and says that essentially there was so much flak around Schedule F that we’re now going to call it “Schedule Policy/Career.” Somehow they didn’t check the acronym and ended up with “Schedule PC.” This is an administration that’s really good at messaging, and that’s a message that they didn’t get quite right. But with Schedule PC, it’s essentially the same thing: It allows them to ultimately dismiss anybody in a policy position. But with Schedule PC, you’ve got to work with people who were already there and move them into a Schedule PC from which they can potentially be dismissed.

Now they’ve rolled out Schedule G, where you can appoint somebody from scratch whose only qualification is the willingness of the president to appoint them — that is, loyalty — and then have the person be dismissed at any point, at any time for any reason. So it creates a potentially unlimited number of political appointees who were intended to last through the administration and then be dismissible at the end. For the defenders of Schedule F at the end of the last administration who said “you have to understand, this is not an effort to try to reassert the spoils system — well, schedule PC might not have been, but Schedule G sure is. And what it is a way to essentially appoint as many people as you want into these positions without regard to any qualification except loyalty and to dismiss them at will.

What we don’t know is how many people were put in Schedule PC and how many people were appointed in Schedule G. We don’t know how many people have been dismissed, how many people were RIFed, how many people took the buyout. We just don’t know anything really about any of that stuff at this point. The administration has let a few numbers out, but we have no idea what the overall piece looks like. So we’ve got this advantage of operating behind a smokescreen.

They’ve been very clever in their approach to all of this.
Yeah. They have developed and used techniques and tools that I don’t think I had seen even discussed or breathed of up to this point.

And yet there’s still a large percentage of federal workers still in place. It’s not like the Trump administration has come close to replacing every single person in the workforce and made them pledge loyalty to Trump, right?
No, they certainly haven’t fired everybody and they haven’t tried to, but they have terrified everybody for sure. And that, I think, is something that is at least as important to them, as a way to try to bring employees to heel. At this point, nobody really knows for sure how stable their job might be. So they’ve succeeded through a whole collection of strategies and tactics to do more, both to clean house where they wanted to clean house up to a point, and then to put everybody on notice. Because at this point, it’s hard to know what it might be that would stop them.

In our last conversation, you said that when it came to dismantling the federal bureaucracy, it was going to be a fight between the Elon Musk way of doing things and the Russell Vought way of doing things. DOGE is still operating in some form, but Musk flamed out of government. So now we’re certainly firmly in the Vought era, and it’s probably not going away anytime soon, right?
You never say anything is forever with Trump, but he is one of the truly indispensable people in the administration because he has a big, large ring of keys that open up any door where the administration would want to go. And it’s impossible to overstate how invaluable that is. You just can’t get anything done. If you want to do a shutdown, if you want to figure out what legal authorities you can use to be able to do that, if you want to know which line or which appropriations covers what, it takes a long time to accumulate that kind of knowledge. He’s got it. And there’s nobody else in the foreground who does.

Would they do DOGE again if they had a chance? I think the answer is mixed. On the one hand, I think just about everybody would say that DOGE done as it was was a mistake in so many ways. But on the other hand, it had two advantages. One is that it threw so much into the air that it provided an opportunity through the chaos, and we know one of Trump’s favorite political strategies is generating chaos so that he can just then find the way through that he finds the most useful. The other is that Vought comes on looking like a staid, button-down firebrand by comparison. So it allows him a lot more room to do what he’s doing in ways he might have had a hard time with if it weren’t for DOGE.

Let’s say the Trump administration ends up losing the impoundment case at the Supreme Court — which it seems to have a good chance of winning — or the big Lisa Cook Federal Reserve case, or some of the other cases working their way through the courts. How much could any of that slow them down?
You can drive down the highway at 90 miles an hour and maybe one or two parts of the car fall off, but you can keep the rest of the car going. And you can lose a fair number of these cases and still create enough forward momentum to be able to keep things going. They’re really in a powerful, powerful position because the administration is taking big, bold steps and the courts, by their very nature, take small, relatively incremental steps. So the administration’s always going to outrun the courts.

Yeah, that’s been a dynamic from day one of this administration. By the time courts even consider what the administration has done, it’s too late to stop a lot of it.
Exactly. Or even if they stop one piece of it, the other 90 percent of what was wrapped around it is continuing.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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September 29, 2025

Trump to meet with US congressional leaders in last-ditch effort to avoid shutdown

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Donald Trump has reversed course and is purportedly planning to host a bipartisan gathering of the top four US congressional leaders at the White House on Monday afternoon in a last-ditch effort to avoid a looming government shutdown, the House speaker and the US president’s fellow Republican Mike Johnson said on Sunday.

Trump’s climbdown comes days after he scrapped a planned meeting to discuss the crisis with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the respective Democratic minority leaders in the House and Senate.

The president accused the pair of making “unserious and ridiculous demands” in return for Democratic votes to support a Republican funding agreement to keep the government open beyond Tuesday night – but left the door open for a meeting “if they get serious about the future of our nation”.

Johnson, appearing on CNN, said he spoke with Trump at length on Saturday, and that the two Democrats had agreed to join him and John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, for an Oval Office discussion Monday.

He did not say if Trump would be negotiating directly with the Democrats – but portrayed Trump as keen to “try to convince them to follow common sense and do what’s right by the American people”.

Schumer, talking to NBC’s Meet the Press, said he was “hopeful we can get something real done” – but was uncertain of the mood they would find Trump in when they sat down for the 2pm ET discourse.

“If the president at this meeting is going to rant, and just yell at Democrats, and talk about all his alleged grievances, and say this, that, and the other thing, we won’t get anything done,” Schumer said.

“We don’t want a shutdown. We hope that they sit down and have a serious negotiation with us.”

According to CBS News on Sunday, meanwhile, Trump is not hopeful the meeting will lead to an agreement.

The network’s chief national correspondent, Robert Costa, told Face the Nation he spoke with Trump by phone Sunday morning and that a government shutdown “looks likely at this point based on my conversation … He says both sides are at a stalemate.”

Costa said: “Inside the White House, sources are saying president Trump actually welcomes a shutdown in the sense that he believes he can wield executive power to get rid of what he calls waste, fraud and abuse.”

If no deal is reached, chunks of the federal government are set to shut down as early as Wednesday morning, with the White House telling agencies to prepare to furlough or fire scores of workers.

Republican and Democratic leaders have been pointing fingers of blame at each other for days as Tuesday’s deadline for a funding agreement approaches.

The narrow House Republican majority passed a short-term spending bill known as a continuing resolution earlier in September that would keep the government funded for seven weeks – but it faces opposition in the Senate, where it needs the support of at least eight Democrats to pass.

Democrats have made the extension of expiring healthcare protections a condition of their support, warning that planned Republican spending cuts would affect millions of people.

“If we don’t extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, more than 20 million Americans are going to experience dramatically increased premiums, copays, deductibles, in an environment where the cost of living in America is already too high,” Jeffries told CNN on Sunday.

“We’ve made clear that we’re ready, willing and able to sit down with anyone, at any time and at any place, in order to make sure that we can actually fund the government, avoid a painful Republican caused shutdown, and address the healthcare crisis that Republicans have caused that’s [affecting] everyday Americans.”

But Trump and Republicans have repeatedly accused their political opponents of exploiting the issue to force a shutdown while there was still plenty of time to fix healthcare before the subsidies expire on 31 December.

“The Obamacare subsidies is a policy debate that has to be determined by the end of the year, not right now, while we’re simply trying to keep the government open so we can have all these debates,” Johnson said.

“There is nothing partisan about this continuing resolution, nothing. We didn’t add a single partisan priority or policy rider at all. We’re operating completely in good faith to get more time.”

Thune, on Meet the Press, also attempted to blame Democrats for the potential shutdown and said “the ball is in their court” as to the next development.

“There is a bill sitting at the desk in the Senate right now, we could pick it up today and pass it, that has been passed by the House that will be signed into law by the president to keep the government open,” he said.

“What the Democrats have done is take the federal government as a hostage, and by extension the American people, to try [to] get a whole laundry list of things that they want.”

But US senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who has previously urged his party leadership to be stronger in standing up to the Trump administration, said the problem was Republicans handing “a complete blank check” to the president to spend money on his own political interests, and not those of the nation.

“Until now the president has said he’d rather shut down the government than prevent those healthcare costs from spiking,” he told CNN.

“Democrats are united right now on this question. I’m glad we’re finally talking. We’ll see what happens.”

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September 28, 2025

Trump to meet with congressional leaders ahead of shutdown deadline

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President Trump will meet with congressional leaders on Monday, just ahead of an Oct. 1 deadline for lawmakers to reach an agreement on a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown, multiple sources familiar with the plans told CBS News Saturday.

Mr. Trump will meet with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the sources said.

Earlier this week, Mr. Trump said that he had canceled a meeting with Schumer and Jeffries, calling their “demands” for the spending bill “unserious and ridiculous.”

In a joint statement Saturday, Schumer and Jeffries said that Mr. Trump had “once again agreed to a meeting in the Oval Office,” and adding that they were “resolute in our determination to avoid a government shutdown.”

With the deadline fast approaching, Schumer called Thune on Friday and urged him to get Mr. Trump to meet, an aide to Schumer told CBS News.

Punchbowl was first to report the meeting.

Lawmakers are facing a deadline of midnight Tuesday, when the 2026 fiscal year begins, to reach a deal on full-year spending bill, or a continuing resolution, which is a temporary stop-gap measure.

Last week, a Republican-backed short-term funding bill passed the House, but failed in the Senate.

Democrats have pushed for the bill to include a permanent extension of tax credits for Americans who are enrolled in health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, as well as a roll back of Medicaid cuts that were in the recently passed “big, beautiful bill.”

If a shutdown were to take effect, it would impact what are considered non-essential government programs, and it would also likely halt the pay of hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

In a move that appeared to raise the stakes for a deal, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget sent a memo to federal agencies Wednesday telling them to prepare layoff plans in the event of a shutdown.

The memo, obtained by CBS News, told agencies to consider reduction-in-force notices — a federal term for layoffs — for employees in programs that receive discretionary funding that stops on Oct. 1, or that don’t have any alternative sources of funding.

“Programs that did not benefit from an infusion of mandatory appropriations will bear the brunt of a shutdown, and we must continue our planning efforts in the event Democrats decide to shut down the government,” the memo read.

Democratic leaders blasted the memo, with Schumer calling it “an attempt at intimidation.”

Aaron Navarro,

Caitlin Yilek,

Nikole Killion and

Kaia Hubbard

contributed to this report.

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September 27, 2025

House passes GOP funding bill, teeing up shutdown fight in Senate

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Washington — The House on Friday passed a Republican measure to keep the government funded until Nov. 21, teeing up a fight in the Senate over the GOP plan to avoid a shutdown.

The short-term funding bill passed the House in a 217 to 212 vote, with one Democrat voting in favor and two Republicans in opposition. Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted against the bill, while Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine supported it.

The measure faces serious headwinds in the upper chamber, where 60 votes are required to advance a funding bill. With a 53-seat majority, Republicans will need to earn the support of at least seven Democrats to move the bill forward. At this point, Senate Democrats appear nearly united in their opposition, with most citing Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate over Democratic priorities, notably health care.

The Senate is expected to vote on the House measure on Friday, as well as Democrats’ own proposal. Both votes are expected to fail, leaving lawmakers without a clear path forward to avoid a funding lapse at the end of the month. Both chambers are currently scheduled to be in recess until Sept. 29.

“Republicans know that this partisan, reckless, dirty spending bill is dead on arrival in the United States Senate, and yet Republicans continue to refuse to even discuss protecting the health care of the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said on the floor before the vote.

Asked after the vote if he was open to negotiating with Democratic leaders in the event of a shutdown, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said “heck no,” as long as Democrats are dug in on their funding demands.

Earlier this week, House GOP leaders unveiled their bill, which would extend current spending levels for seven weeks. The legislation also funds additional security for lawmakers in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination, to the tune of $30 million for Congress and $58 million for the executive and judicial branches. Johnson said Friday that the House could pass additional security funding in a standalone bill next month.

Democrats have proposed a counteroffer to the funding bill that would keep the government open for a month and provide more than $320 million in security funds. But it would also permanently extend enhanced tax credits under the Affordable Care Act that expire at the end of the year, roll back Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and restore funding for public broadcasters that was rescinded earlier this year.

All are nonstarters with Republicans, who say those provisions do not belong in a short-term funding bill.

“This is what my friends on the other side asked for — a clean bill. No partisan riders, no tricks, no things. And give it to us for a short period,” said Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican. “You got exactly what you asked for.”

Though Democrats often support measures to keep the government funded, the party is under intense pressure to stand up to Republicans and the White House. During the last funding fight in March, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer allowed Republicans to move ahead with their spending bill, a move that earned him severe criticism by members of his own party. Many Democrats argued it would have been better to allow the government to shut down than to go along with Republicans.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, told Punchbowl News on Thursday that he believes that Republicans would bear the brunt of the blame for a shutdown this time around, and that Democrats’ position is “quite strong.” He struck a defiant tone on the Senate floor after the House bill passed.

“When we were in the majority for four years, there was not a shutdown. Not one. Why? Because we did what you’re supposed to do: talk in a bipartisan negotiation and each side has input. The reason we’re having a shutdown now is you and your leadership refuse to talk to Democrats and have any input, and want only your imprimatur on the bill, which we believe hurts Americans badly with health care,” Schumer said, addressing Republicans.

Democratic leaders have urged their Republican counterparts to negotiate with them on a funding plan. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, and Johnson suggested there’s no need, since Democrats regularly support “clean” continuing resolutions to keep the government funded.

“Chuck Schumer’s counteroffer is not a serious one,” Johnson told reporters Friday. “He knows these are not negotiable items. … We were very careful to put no partisan measures in this. There’s no poison pills. None of that.”

House passes short-term spending bill to avert government shutdown

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September 19, 2025

Chuck Schumer questions whether Epstein was ‘the real reason’ Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was canceled

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After news broke that late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was canceled by Disney over his comments about Charlie Kirk, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took to social media to question the motivations behind the abrupt cancellation.

Schumer wondered in a Thursday afternoon post on X whether “Epstein” was “the real reason” Kimmel was forcibly scrubbed from the airwaves.

“IS EPSTEIN THE REAL REASON TRUMP HAD KIMMEL CANCELED?!” Schumer asked in the post, which also included a screenshot of a New York Times article about how all the popular late-night hosts, including Kimmel, have used the newly released Epstein documents to roast the president over his alleged association with the disgraced financier.

Fox News Digital reached out to Schumer’s representatives for more details on what Schumer was attempting to imply but did not receive a response in time for publication.

JIMMY KIMMEL CANCELLATION SPARKS FIERCE CELEBRITY SPLIT IN HOLLYWOOD

Sen. Chuck Schumer has raised the possibility that Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show was canceled due to his statements about Jeffrey Epstein, right. (Getty Images)

Nexstar Media Group, which owns hundreds of television stations, announced Wednesday that it would be pulling Kimmel’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” talk show from its ABC affiliates “for the foreseeable future” and would replace it with other programming over his comments about alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson.

“Mr. Kimmel’s comments about the death of Mr. Kirk are offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse, and we do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views or values of the local communities in which we are located,” Nexstar’s broadcasting chief, Andrew Alford, said in a press release.

“Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue.”

Trump spoke about the cancellation Thursday while he was in the United Kingdom, telling reporters that Kimmel “was fired” because he had bad ratings.

ABC’S ‘JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!’ HEMORRHAGED VIEWERS OVER PAST DECADE, LOST 72% AMONG KEY DEMO

Donald Trump on Jimmy Kimmel's show in 2015

President Donald Trump was a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Dec. 16, 2015. (Randy Holmes/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images)

“Jimmy Kimmel was fired ’cause he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person, he had very bad ratings and they shoulda fired him a long time ago,” Trump said during a press conference Thursday alongside United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer in England.

“He was fired for lack of talent,” Trump added.

Meanwhile, in a social media post on his platform, Truth Social, on Wednesday night, Trump called the cancellation “great news for America.”

The Kirk comments in question reportedly stem from a Monday airing of Kimmel’s show, during which he accused conservatives of reaching “new lows” in their efforts to try to pin Kirk’s assassin as connected to some form of left-wing ideology.

Jimmy Kimmel’s popular late-night show was canceled following comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, right. (David Russell/Disney via Getty Images; AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said.

Following news of the cancellation, Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr applauded local television stations for “standing up to serve the interests of their community.”

Fox News Digital’s Joseph Wulfsohn and Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.

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September 18, 2025

Schumer accuses Trump of exploiting Charlie Kirk’s death to launch political ‘witch hunt’

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused President Donald Trump of exploiting the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in order to go after critics.

Schumer’s charge came as Senate Democrats teed up legislation called the “No Political Enemies Act,” which would prohibit Trump and his administration from weaponizing government agencies. It comes in the wake of late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel’s sidelining by ABC over comments he made related to Kirk.

The top Senate Democrat said freedom of speech is “one of the great hallmarks of our country” but that the Trump administration “is trying to snuff it out.”

HOUSE DEM WARNS BOTH SIDES ON ‘ROAD TO RUIN’ AS POLITICAL DIVIDE DEEPENS OVER KIRK ASSASSINATION

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused President Donald Trump of exploiting the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Those who break the law, of course, resort to any source of violence ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Schumer said. “But using the tragic death of Charlie Kirk as an excuse to supercharge the political witch hunt against critics is abhorrent, obnoxious and as un-American as it gets.”

“To attack civil society, whether it’s Jimmy Kimmel, civil society organizations or the Trump administration’s perceived political enemies, its crusade is unending,” he continued. “And this is one of the saddest parts of all, because of congressional Republicans’ obeisance to Trump, it’s unchecked because they are scared to stand up to Trump.”

BONDI ‘HATE SPEECH’ REMARKS SPARK TORRENT OF CRITICISM FROM CONSERVATIVES

Charlie Kirk speaks at CPAC in Oxon Hill, Maryland. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Democrats’ legislation would prevent the administration from using agencies like the Justice Department, FBI and the IRS from going after people for criticizing the government, according to a one-page description of the bill.

It would also hold officials accountable for using their office to go after critics, ensure courts quickly dismiss “abusive actions,” and provide due process for U.S. nonprofits that the government tries to “label as criminal or terrorist organizations.”

FOLLOWING KIRK’S ASSASSINATION, LAWMAKERS REACT TO LETHAL POLITICAL CLIMATE: ‘VIOLENT WORDS PRECEDE VIOLENT ACTIONS’

President Donald Trump walks to Air Force One at Morristown Airport on Sept. 14, 2025, in Morristown, New Jersey. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Their legislative push also comes after Attorney General Pam Bondi said earlier this week that the administration would “go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., called her comments “bone chilling.”

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“The shooting of Charlie Kirk was a national tragedy,” he said. “It should have been a line in the sand, an opportunity for President Trump to bring this country together to do whatever is necessary to stamp out political violence that’s targeted both Republicans and Democrats, political violence that emanates from both right-wing and left-wing radicalization.”

“But Trump and his lieutenants are choosing a different path,” he continued. “They are choosing to exploit this tragedy, to weaponize the federal government to destroy Donald Trump’s political opposition.”

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and Justice Department for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.

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September 18, 2025

Democrats unveil funding alternative to counter GOP in shutdown brawl

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Congressional Democrats released bill text Wednesday night for their own stopgap spending proposal as they dig in against a House Republican-backed measure that would fund the government until late November.

The new Democratic proposal links funding the government through Oct. 31 to two of the party’s other priorities: health care assistance and placing limits on President Donald Trump’s ability to unilaterally roll back funds previously approved by Congress.

The Democratic stopgap bill has virtually no chance of passing the Senate — much less getting to Trump’s desk before the end-of-the-month deadline to avert a shutdown. But it allows Democrats to rally behind a plan that will win a broad swath of support among their members in the House and Senate.

“We invite Republican leadership to finally join Democratic leadership at the negotiating table, which they have refused for weeks to do, to prevent a shutdown and begin bipartisan negotiations to keep the government funded,” Congress’ top Democratic appropriators, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Washington Sen. Patty Murray, said in a joint statement.

The Democrats’ bill would extend boosted Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies that will otherwise expire on Dec. 31. It also would reverse cuts to Medicaid and other health programs that Republicans enacted as part of their party-line megabill this summer.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn’t explicitly demanded that an extension of the expiring health care subsidies be attached to the stopgap bill, but Democrats also believe Congress can’t wait until the end of the year because Americans will need to make decisions about health insurance before that time.

The bill contains several mandates for how the Trump administration can spend money, in an attempt to stifle the president’s moves to freeze, shift and cancel funding Congress approves.

Under the measure, the president would be barred from carrying out his budget request while the government is running on a temporary funding patch. That includes increasing, reducing or eliminating funding unless Congress enacts those changes into law.

The bill would also hamperTrump’s attempt this month to unilaterally cancel almost $5 billion. The president is planning to withhold the funding through its Sept. 30 expiration, but the bill would extend that date to thwart the cancellation of funding.

This Democratic alternative comes after House Republicans unveiled their own funding proposal to punt the shutdown deadline to Nov. 21, which they want voted on their chamber floor by Friday. That offer also would include $30 million for lawmaker security and another $58 million in security assistance requested by the White House for the Supreme Court and executive branch.

But Democrats have bristled over the GOP proposal because Republican leaders are, so far, not negotiating with them. Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent two letters to Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson requesting a meeting but said they had been ignored.

“Donald Trump continues to push for a shutdown by not negotiating with us but are confident when the American people contrast these two proposals they are going to side with us,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday after the Democratic proposal was released.

Thune opened the door Tuesdayto meeting with Schumer. But Democrats largely brushed off his comments, accusing Republicans of bending to Trump after the president said in a Fox News interview late last week that he didn’t need Democratic support. The Senate will need 60 votes to advance the spending deal, which will necessitate help from Democrats.

Despite both Senate leaders now claiming they are willing to meet, as of early Wednesday evening nothing was on the books yet.

Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

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September 17, 2025

Republicans unveil a bill to fund the government through Nov. 21. Democrats call it partisan

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House Republicans unveiled on Tuesday a stopgap spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21, daring Democrats to block it knowing that the fallout would likely be a partial government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year.The bill would generally fund agencies at current levels, with a few limited exceptions, including an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The proposed boost comes as lawmakers face an increasing number of personal threats, with their concerns heightened by last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would prefer the Senate take it up this week as well. But any bill will need some Democratic support to advance through the Senate, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have been asking their Republican counterparts for weeks for a meeting to negotiate on the bill, but they say that Republicans have refused. Any bill needs help from at least seven Democrats in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and advance to a final vote.The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that by “refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country toward a shutdown.””The House Republican-only spending bill fails to meet the needs of the American people and does nothing to stop the looming healthcare crisis,” Schumer and Jeffries said. “At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums.”Republicans say it’s Democrats who are playing politics by insisting on addressing health coverage concerns as part of any government funding bill. In past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.This time, however, Democrats are facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump. They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiums for millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.Some people have already received notices that their premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to spike next year. Insurers have sent out notices in nearly every state, with some proposing premium increases of as much as 50%.Johnson called the debate over health insurance tax credits a December policy issue, not something that needs to be solved in September.”It’ll be a clean, short-term continuing resolution, end of story,” Johnson told reporters. “And it’s interesting to me that some of the same Democrats who decried government shutdowns under President Biden appear to have no heartache whatsoever at walking our nation off that cliff right now. I hope they don’t.”Thune said Republicans are simply providing what Schumer has always requested in the past when Democrats were in the majority — “a clean funding resolution to fund the government.” He said that if the House passes the measure and Trump is prepared to sign it, then “it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.”

WASHINGTON —

House Republicans unveiled on Tuesday a stopgap spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21, daring Democrats to block it knowing that the fallout would likely be a partial government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1, the start of the new budget year.

The bill would generally fund agencies at current levels, with a few limited exceptions, including an extra $88 million to boost security for lawmakers and members of the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The proposed boost comes as lawmakers face an increasing number of personal threats, with their concerns heightened by last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The House is expected to vote on the measure by Friday. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would prefer the Senate take it up this week as well. But any bill will need some Democratic support to advance through the Senate, and it’s unclear whether that will happen.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have been asking their Republican counterparts for weeks for a meeting to negotiate on the bill, but they say that Republicans have refused. Any bill needs help from at least seven Democrats in the Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and advance to a final vote.

The two Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that by “refusing to work with Democrats, Republicans are steering our country toward a shutdown.”

“The House Republican-only spending bill fails to meet the needs of the American people and does nothing to stop the looming healthcare crisis,” Schumer and Jeffries said. “At a time when families are already being squeezed by higher costs, Republicans refuse to stop Americans from facing double-digit hikes in their health insurance premiums.”

Republicans say it’s Democrats who are playing politics by insisting on addressing health coverage concerns as part of any government funding bill. In past budget battles, it has been Republicans who’ve been willing to engage in shutdown threats as a way to focus attention on their priority demands. That was the situation during the nation’s longest shutdown, during the winter of 2018-19, when President Donald Trump was insisting on federal funds to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall.

This time, however, Democrats are facing intense pressure from their base of supporters to stand up to Trump. They have particularly focused on the potential for skyrocketing health care premiums for millions of Americans if Congress fails to extend enhanced subsidies, which many people use to buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act exchange. Those subsidies were put in place during the COVID crisis, but are set to expire.

Some people have already received notices that their premiums — the monthly fee paid for insurance coverage — are poised to spike next year. Insurers have sent out notices in nearly every state, with some proposing premium increases of as much as 50%.

Johnson called the debate over health insurance tax credits a December policy issue, not something that needs to be solved in September.

“It’ll be a clean, short-term continuing resolution, end of story,” Johnson told reporters. “And it’s interesting to me that some of the same Democrats who decried government shutdowns under President Biden appear to have no heartache whatsoever at walking our nation off that cliff right now. I hope they don’t.”

Thune said Republicans are simply providing what Schumer has always requested in the past when Democrats were in the majority — “a clean funding resolution to fund the government.” He said that if the House passes the measure and Trump is prepared to sign it, then “it will be only the Democrat leader that is standing between this country and a government shutdown and all that means.”

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September 16, 2025

Susan Collins fires back at Schumer-linked PAC ads accusing her of stock ‘greed’

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FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is pushing against a pair of ads from a group linked to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that suggests she has enriched herself with stocks over her nearly three decades in Washington.

The Majority Forward PAC, a political action committee that is affiliated with the Schumer-linked Senate Majority PAC, launched a $700,000 ad campaign against Collins, who is eyeing a bid for a sixth term in the Senate, but has yet to officially launch her campaign.

The pair of ads, one a 30-second spot titled “Greed,” the other a 15-second spot titled “This Life,” target Collins for her opposition to a congressional stock trading ban by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. However, her office argued that through images of private jets and Collins in glamorous attire, the ads suggested that she has personally enriched herself through trades while working as a lawmaker.

SUSAN COLLINS HECKLED AT MAINE RIBBON-CUTTING TO DELIGHT OF LEFTIST CHALLENGER AS PIVOTAL SENATE RACE HEATS UP

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, pushed back against Majority Forward, a Democratic PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for ads that suggest she has spent her career in Washington trading stocks to enrich herself. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The ads accuse Collins of “the worst kind of greed; using insider information to trade stocks.”

“She’s opposing a bipartisan bill that would ban members of Congress from trading stocks,” the narrator said. “Our representatives should be serving the people of Maine, not lining their own pockets.”

While Collins does not directly own any stocks, according to disclosure filings, her husband Tom Daffron does. However, a trade has not been made since last year, and her office argued that Daffron’s holdings are made by a third-party advisor.

TRADING BLOWS: TRUMP AND HAWLEY MAKE UP, BUT GOP ANGER CONTINUES OVER STOCK TRADE BAN

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a press conference

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer D-N.Y., (Left) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., (Right) speak at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on June 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“Senator Collins has never bought, sold, or owned any shares of stock during her entire Senate tenure,” her office told Fox News Digital. “Tom Daffron’s investment decisions are made exclusively by a third-party advisor without his consultation. No individual stocks have been bought or sold from his account in almost three years.”

Majority Forward spokesperson Lauren French fired back in a statement to Fox News Digital that the ads go after Collins “for her refusal to support a stock trading ban for members of Congress and their families — bipartisan legislation that 95 percent of Mainers support.”

“Nowhere in the ad does it say Senator Collins regularly buys, sells, or owns stocks (though her husband does) — but if she is still confused, we’ll be happy to continue airing it throughout Maine so both she and her constituents can understand how her opposition to ending stock trading is enabling her colleagues to benefit from their positions of power,” French said.

‘MAINE’S MAMDANI’: MAINE GOP CHIEF ISSUES WARNING ABOUT NEW CHALLENGER LOOKING TO OUST SUSAN COLLINS

President Donald Trump has dismissed suggestions that he would target political enemies, but Trump’s combative approach reflects a pattern that has defined both his career and American politics more broadly. (Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Senate Democrats are hoping that their prized candidate, Gov. Janet Mills, D-Maine, jumps into the race to take on Collins. However, Mills, who is term-limited, has not made an official announcement on her plans and the Democratic primary has fast become crowded.

Collins told the Bangor Daily News that she did not support Hawley’s bill last month, and instead argued that there should be more enforcement of already existing rules that bar members from insider trading.

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The White House similarly panned the bill, which would has included a carve out for both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, and all Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Accountability Committee, except for Hawley, voted against the bill. Collins is not a member of that committee.

However, Trump has since warmed to the idea of a congressional stock trading ban, and lauded the push by Rep. Anna Paulina, R-Fla., as a “MASSIVE WIN” on Truth Social.

Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.

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September 9, 2025

Government shutdown deadline only weeks away: What’s ahead? – WTOP News

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Congress only has a few weeks to avoid a government shutdown, but leaders of both parties are still a long way from agreeing on a stopgap spending bill to keep federal workers on the job.

For all the latest developments in Congress, follow WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller at Today on the Hill.

Congress only has a few weeks to avoid a government shutdown, but leaders of both parties are still a long way from agreeing on a stopgap spending bill to keep federal workers on the job.

Lawmakers need to approve legislation by Sept. 30, when a current funding measure runs out, ahead of the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1.

One of the few things that Republicans and Democrats do agree upon is that they will need to pass a continuing resolution, since there is not enough time to approve all 12 appropriation bills.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has pointed out that the Senate managed to pass three major appropriations bills before the August recess.

That’s a departure over the past seven years, when not a single appropriations bill was approved during the summer months by the upper chamber.

Still, Thune acknowledged, “There’s a lot more to do.”

Lawmakers in the House and Senate didn’t give themselves much time to work on a short-term spending bill, since they only returned from their summer break last week.

Leaders prepare for shutdown blame game

Leaders of both parties are already laying the political groundwork for assigning blame if they can’t reach an agreement before the shutdown deadline.

“The only way to avoid a shutdown on Sept. 30 is to work in a bipartisan way,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said recently on the Senate floor. “But Republicans are once again threatening to go at it alone, which will lead our country straight into a shutdown — a Republican-caused shutdown.”

Schumer said a shutdown can be avoided if there are negotiations on a bipartisan bill.

But Thune, in turn, has warned Democrats about making what the GOP sees as unreasonable demands.

“I hope … our Democrat colleagues will resist the calls from within for a shutdown and work with us to fund the government,” Thune said.

Many Democrats criticized Schumer earlier this year, arguing that he caved to President Donald Trump and Republicans, without taking a firm stand, before Democratic lawmakers voted for a continuing resolution that avoided a shutdown.

Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Democratic leaders have been meeting regularly to make sure they are on the same page with their strategy for addressing any type of showdown.

What if a shutdown takes place?

If lawmakers are unable to beat the deadline, a partial government shutdown will begin Wednesday, Oct. 1.

A shutdown would not halt federal law enforcement operations, which have ramped up during the surge against crime in D.C.

Federal workers considered nonessential would likely be furloughed, so they would not work and not get paid.

But under legislation that was sponsored by Virginia’s U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and passed in 2019, federal workers would receive back pay for any lost wages during the shutdown.

While Kaine and Virginia U.S. Sen. Mark Warner have proposed legislation to secure pay for federal contract workers during a shutdown, that has not been passed by Congress.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits would still be processed.

Most shutdowns over the years have lasted only a few days, before Congress acted.

But during Trump’s first term, a partial government shutdown lasted for nearly 35 days, which was the longest shutdown in the country’s history.

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September 8, 2025

Will America ever have a moderate president again?

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As Zohran Mamdani greeted supporters following his upset victory over Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in June, the chants erupting around him weren’t about pragmatism or compromise—they were about housing, justice and revenge against a system he said had failed ordinary people.

“This wasn’t just a primary,” Mamdani told the crowd. “This was a referendum on a crumbling status quo.”

The 33-year-old democratic socialist’s victory wasn’t just a local surprise; it symbolizes a broader political shift. Across the nation, more voters—urban and rural, working-class and professional—are rejecting technocratic centrism in favor of leaders who promise to fight, not finesse.

For decades, “moderation” in U.S. politics was synonymous with stability. The Reagan era’s embrace of supply-side economics in the 1980s set a conservative template; the Clinton years extended it through “Third Way” centrism—balanced budgets, free trade, welfare reform. The pitch: a steady hand at the wheel.

Newsweek Illustration/Getty Images

But the underlying economy didn’t support that narrative for long. From 1980 to 2020, the top 1 percent went from controlling 25 percent of national wealth to nearly 40 percent, according to Federal Reserve data. Over the same period, wage growth for middle- and lower-income workers stagnated.

Housing costs also jumped 300 percent in urban areas, far outpacing income. By 2024, Gallup reported just 34 percent of Americans identified as moderate—down from over 40 percent in the early 1990s—while self-identified conservatives and liberals reached historic highs.

“Moderation meant compromise—not excitement. People lost faith that those deals ever made a difference at their own dining table,” Mike Madrid, a political consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, told Newsweek. “When rent and tuition cost more than your paycheck, a handshake won’t help.”

As the 2024 election made clear, politics is now filtered through the realities of inflation and affordability. Inflation peaked above 9 percent in 2022 and remains stubbornly elevated; nearly 40 percent of Americans say the cost of groceries is their biggest concern, a July AP-NORC poll found.

Mamdani’s win in New York was the clearest sign of this mood on the left: a candidate who spoke bluntly about rent, wages and fairness defeating a seasoned moderate with a long career in public service, even if it ended in disgrace. Democrats have often hesitated to fully embrace that message, but Republicans have done the opposite with Donald Trump—rallying quickly and decisively around a single figure who steadily pushed moderates out of his party.

MAGA: The First Rebellion

The first real test of this shift came from the right. Donald Trump’s rise in 2016 marked a direct challenge to Republican orthodoxy, promising to fight for those left behind by globalization while mocking the party’s traditional leadership.

By 2025, the transformation was complete. A mid-2025 Gallup survey found that 77 percent of Republicans identified as conservative, while moderates dropped to a historic low of 18 percent. And even as the president’s overall popularity has slipped in his second term, more than 85 percent of Republicans still approve of Trump’s leadership.

Mitt Romney and John McCain talk on Romney’s campaign bus on January 4, 2012.

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

“Republicans have near unanimity in supporting Donald Trump, and he is exhibiting strong leadership,” Republican strategist Matt Klink told Newsweek. “Contrast this sharply with Mitt Romney‘s loss in the 2012 presidential election and the Republican Party being rudderless.”

It was a hostile takeover of a party that once valued calm stewardship and corporate-friendly conservatism. Mitt Romney was sidelined. John McCain fought Trump until his death in 2018. George W. Bush‘s brand of “compassionate conservatism” was shelved before he even left office. Liz Cheney was cast out of House leadership and lost her Wyoming seat after defying Trump on January 6. Paul Ryan walked away from Congress as Trump’s grip tightened. Marco Rubio fell in line and now serves as his secretary of state. One by one, the party’s old guard was replaced, leaving the GOP remade in Trump’s image.

But Trump’s consolidation of the GOP is only half the story. His political rise has also reordered the map of American politics in ways that continue to haunt Democrats. According to a New York Times analysis, Trump improved Republican margins in nearly half of U.S. counties across his three presidential campaigns—1,433 in all—while Democrats gained ground in just 57.

The Democrats’ Mamdani Dilemma

Mamdani’s primary upset in New York reflects a similar shift on the left. His platform—rent freezes, city-owned grocer stores, free bus service, steep taxes on the wealthy—was more blueprint than compromise. His backers are not looking for a manager; they want a revolution.

And the numbers show their enthusiasm. In the June primary, Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo by 12 percentage points, earning 56.4 percent of the final round of ranked-choice votes to Cuomo’s 43.6 percent—a decisive victory for an underdog few expected to win.

But the Democratic establishment has kept him at arm’s length, despite polls showing Mamdani likely to win the general election in November. Weeks after his win, half of the state’s top Democrats still hadn’t endorsed him. Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have all stayed silent—often mumbling through media appearances when pressed on the subject.

At “Brooklyn Against Trump” Event, Zohran Mamdani and Brooklyn Leaders Call Out Trump and Cuomo as Architects of Housing CrisisBrooklyn Against Trump

Zohran Mamdani for NYC/YouTube

“It is pathetic,” said former Barack Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau during a recent episode of Pod Save America, the popular liberal podcast. “Donald Trump’s going to try to get Eric Adams out of the race so that he can help Andrew Cuomo. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have not yet endorsed the candidate who won the Democratic primary in New York City—the choice of Democratic voters,” he added.

For some on the left, dissatisfaction with Democratic leadership has reignited a longstanding debate about the party’s future. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has even suggested that progressives consider running as independents rather than as Democrats.

“If there’s any hope for the Democratic Party, it is that they’re going to have to reach out—open the doors and let working-class people in,” Sanders said during his “Stopping Oligarchy” tour, a five-city rally alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aimed at mobilizing resistance to Trump, Elon Musk, and what they describe as a billionaire-led assault on American government.

“If not, people will be running as independents, I think, all over this country.”

“We’re seeing Democrats in New York who want to flip the tables over, much like Republicans did in their Tea Party moment,” Madrid, the political analyst, told Newsweek. “Voters seem to be asking their politicians to take a stand and adopt clear positions, and I think one of the reasons the Democratic campaign lost last year was because the positions weren’t clear enough.”

Can the Center Hold?

Not all centrists are fading. But they no longer sell themselves. Survival now depends less on policy and more on posture. Candidates who look like fighters—even if their actual politics are relatively moderate—are the ones breaking through.

In Arizona, Senator Ruben Gallego offered a glimpse of what that looks like. Running in a state Donald Trump carried, Gallego didn’t try to tiptoe around culture wars or triangulate. He leaned into toughness, telling voters he would fight for wages, affordability, and border security while refusing to get pulled into debates over “masculinity” that have roiled both parties.

sen. ruben gallegos — Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., arrives for a vote in the Capitol on Tuesday, May 13, 2025.

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

“A lot of times we forget that we still need men to vote for us. That’s how we still win elections. But we don’t really talk about making the lives of men better, working to make sure that they have wages so they can support their families,” Gallego said in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times Magazine.

“He’s not playing both sides,” Madrid told Newsweek. “He’s saying: I’ll go fight and I’ll come home with results. People see that. They want that posture. His win showed that even in red states, a Democrat could compete if they looked like someone ready to brawl for ordinary people.”

The same instinct is showing up elsewhere. California Governor Gavin Newsom, once accused of hedging or “fence sitting,” on divisive issues, has adopted a more aggressive style in his battles with Trump, boosting his standing in Democratic primaries. Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders still draw crowds because they fight visibly.

“The lesson for Democrats is to stop talking only to their base,” Madrid said. “You can have politicians in the very center of the party like Gallego or on the far left like Mamdani, and both are succeeding right now.”

Klink, the veteran GOP strategist, also warned that moderation without fire simply doesn’t cut through anymore. “Generally, Democrats fare better when they nominate a moderate candidate,” he said. “But the base decides the pace. Moderates decide the margin. Without base energy—without fight and authenticity—you’re invisible.”

While Democrats are still grappling with whether to embrace the party’s more radical flank or hold to the center, the picture inside the GOP is far clearer. Trump has already answered the question for Republicans: the path to power runs through him. Where Democrats debate strategy and identity, Republicans measure their future in degrees of loyalty to the president.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) (L) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) (R) take an elevator just off the Senate floor after the Senate stayed in session throughout the night at the U.S. Capitol Building on July…

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

A CBS News/YouGov survey found that 65 percent of Republican voters say loyalty to Trump is important, with more than a third calling it “very important.” In practice, that has meant dissenters often retreat when it matters. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has voiced concerns about Trump’s hold on the party but still voted for his signature “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia briefly criticized the package, then fell back in line to support it.

After months of friction with the White House, Senator Thom Tillis and Representative Don Bacon announced their retirements rather than continue testing their luck in a party where deviation is punished and loyalty is prized. In today’s Trumpist party, such departures have become increasingly rare — simply because so few dissenters remain.

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September 6, 2025

Chuck Schumer faces new test amid Democratic fury

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, will be facing a political test when Congress reconvenes this fall as lawmakers will be considering a new funding bill to avoid a government shutdown.

Newsweek reached out to Schumer’s office for comment via email.

Why It Matters

Democratic voters across the country have become increasingly frustrated with what they view as a feeble response from congressional leaders to President Donald Trump‘s agenda amid his second term in office. Democrats in Congress lack a majority in the House and Senate, limiting their ability to block his agenda from passing, but voters have pushed for stronger action from elected officials.

Schumer faced a tsunami of Democratic backlash in March after he declined to block a Republican-led stopgap bill to avoid a government shutdown. Schumer and eight other Democrats voted in favor of a procedural motion to allow debate on the bill but ultimately voted against its passage. That vote, however, allowed it to pass the filibuster and become law, Democratic critics say.

What To Know

Congress has until October 1 to pass a series of bills to fund the government through fiscal year (FY) 2026. Republicans have slim majorities in both chambers—a 219-212 advantage in the House and a 53-47 advantage in the Senate—meaning any vote on the package may again prove to be a tight vote.

This presents challenges for both parties—Republican leaders will have to appease both swing-district moderates and Make America Great Again (MAGA)-aligned conservatives

However, Democrats like Schumer will also be facing a test as he seeks to appease the Democratic voter base, while also working with Republicans to get some concessions in the bills.

In March, Democrats from across the spectrum expressed frustration with Schumer and other Democrats advancing the spending bill despite a lack of concessions made by Republicans to earn his support on the bill, which critics argued cut critical programs. Democrats called for Schumer to face a future primary or step down as party leader, which he has declined to do.

Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Associated Press/Canva/Getty

Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, sent a leader to GOP leadership urging a meeting to “discuss the need to avert a painful, unnecessary lapse in government funding and to address the healthcare crisis Republicans have triggered in America.”

“The government funding issue must be resolved in a bipartisan way,” they wrote. “That is the only viable path forward.”

In the past, Democrats largely compromised “out of a calculation that the blame for a government shutdown could land more on them than on the Republicans,” Grant Davis Reeher, professor of political science at Syracuse University, told Newsweek.

“They run the same risk if they try to turn this new set of negotiations into a bigger fight over the Constitution and basic principles. That will appeal to the core base of their party, which wants to see more backbone, but it’s not clear how it play with the entire country,” he added.

Reeher said that the Senate, where legislation generally needs to pass the 60-vote filibuster to end debate on a bill, presents Democrats a stronger chance of mitigating some of Republicans’ desires to cut spending.

Democrats’ strategy on the legislation will largely depend on whether their goal is to mitigate future spending cuts or to walk back cuts already made to programs like Medicaid or public broadcasting, Reeher added, noting they would need to be more aggressive in the second strategy.

Anne Danehy, senior associate dean and associate professor of the practice at Boston University’s College of Communications, told Newsweek that Schumer may be “stuck in a tough position,” and that how he communicates about his decision-making process and vote is critical.

Democrats have two opposing philosophies on how to approach this sort of legislation, she said.

One side of the party believes Democrats should not “give Republicans anything” to show they disapprove of the “dismantling of the federal government, Danehy said.

“You have others like Schumer who are saying, ‘We don’t have a lot of choice here. We need to gain something or we lose everything, so we need to compromise or the American people could really suffer,’” she added.

Danehy warned that more Democratic outrage on the matter would further break down the party’s influence, which should be a concern for leadership as negotiations on the spending bills begin.

Reeher and Danehy questioned whether a more progressive Democrat could successfully primary Schumer in 2028 if he chooses to run again, even if he again faces outrage from parts of the base.

“There’s been a lot of talk about a credible primary challenge, but I don’t see that happening or at least being successful. Senator Schumer is not Joseph Crowley; he remains very attentive to New York State issues and to local communities,” Reeher said. “He won’t look past a potential threat. And a credible challenger would be risking a lot in taking him on.”

Others, however, have floated potential candidates like Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez of New York who represents parts of the Queens and the Bronx in Congress, as a potential alternative candidate to Schumer in 2028—if she doesn’t run for president, that is.

Some polls have suggested Ocasio-Cortez could have an early advantage over Schumer. A Data for Progress poll, which surveyed 767 likely New York voters from March 26 to March 31, showed Ocasio-Cortez leading Schumer 54 to 36 percent.

But the primary is still years away, and the political landscape may change after the 2026 midterms when Democrats are hoping to reclaim control of the House and Senate. So, it’s quite unclear what issues may be at the forefront of Democrats’ minds come 2028.

What People Are Saying

Grant Davis Reeher, professor of political science at Syracuse University, also told Newsweek: “We’ve seen from polling that a lot of the Republican and Trump initiatives so far are not terribly popular, and that the public has some real concerns about some of the spending cuts, and the war on the federal workforce. Democrats should keep the focus on those things going into the midterms and not let the question of who is to blame for stalled negotiations on keeping the government running interfere with that focus. In that sense, I tend to agree with Senator Schumer.”

Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told NBC News host Kristen Welker on a Meet the Press interview in March: “I knew when I cast my vote against the government shutdown that there would be a lot of controversy. And there was. But let me tell you and your audience why I did it, why I felt it was so important. The CR [continuing resolution] was certainly bad…But a shutdown would be 15 or 20 times worse. Under a shutdown, the Executive Branch has sole power to determine what is, quote, ‘essential.’ And they can determine without any court supervision.”

What Happens Next?

Negotiations may begin over the coming weeks, and Congress has until October 1 to pass some sort of spending bill to keep the government open. Whether they will have to continue relying on temporary stopgap measures or can successfully pass the appropriations bills is yet to be seen.

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August 31, 2025

House Republicans move to avoid government shutdown amid intraparty opposition

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Washington — House Republicans will fast-track a short-term spending bill after sidestepping the lower chamber’s Rules Committee as the bipartisan measure to keep the government open faced opposition from the panel’s conservative members.

House Republicans are expected to bring up the three-month funding bill for a floor vote under a procedure known as suspension of the rules, meaning it will need a two-thirds majority for passage. It puts House Speaker Mike Johnson in a position of, once again, needing to rely on Democrats to pass legislation.

The plan is to bring up the bill for a vote on Wednesday, according to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican.

The House Rules Committee was set to vote on approving the measure for a floor vote on Monday night, but nixed the rule vote after Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said they would not support it. Had the measure come up for a floor vote under a rule, it would have needed a simple majority to pass.

“Republicans need Democrats in order to keep the government open,” said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the committee’s top Democrat.

House conservatives have for months pushed the lower chamber to pass the dozen individual appropriations bills that fund the government. The short-term bill, they argue, sets up Congress to pass a massive spending bill, called an “omnibus,” at the end of the year as lawmakers are eager to ditch Washington for the holidays.

“I would encourage people not to vote for this,” Massie said. “Why do we want to set up a shutdown crisis the week before Christmas? Why would we even want to set up a shutdown crisis next spring? We shouldn’t. We should fund the whole thing for a year.”

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, unveiled the latest plan Sunday after the House last week rejected his initial plan that paired a six-month funding bill with a measure requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

The new plan would fund the government at current levels through Dec. 20, punting the fight over spending to after the November election. But it also risks spoiling lawmakers’ December holidays if they can’t reach another agreement to extend funding into next year.

In a letter to his colleagues, Johnson said Sunday the three-month measure is “the only option that remains.”

“Our legislation will be a very narrow, bare-bones [continuing resolution] including only the extensions that are absolutely necessary,” he wrote, adding that it prevents “the Senate from jamming us with a bill loaded with billions in new spending and unrelated provisions.”

While continuing resolutions usually don’t alter funding levels, the three-month bill includes about $230 million in additional funding for the Secret Service, which comes after a second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. The voting measure that was part of the six-month funding legislation, which Democrats opposed, is no longer attached.

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”

Trump had called for a government shutdown if lawmakers could not get the voting measure, known as the SAVE Act, passed, despite it already being illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Johnson signaled Friday that Trump could soften his calls for a shutdown, saying the former president “understands the situation that we’re in.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both from New York, praised the bipartisan negotiations that resulted in the funding agreement. Schumer said in a statement Sunday that he was hopeful that Congress could pass the legislation this week.

“This agreement could have very easily been reached weeks ago, but speaker Johnson and House Republicans chose to listen to Donald Trump’s partisan demands, instead of working with us from the start,” Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor.

Nikole Killion and

Ellis Kim

contributed to this report.

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September 23, 2024