‘Full of despair’: Senate Dems look to regroup after losing shutdown fight
Democrats are openly questioning whether they lost their last point of leverage by ceding to Republicans in the latest skirmish over funding the government.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) gives an interview at the U.S. Capitol on March 14, 2025. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
By Jordain Carney
03/17/2025 04:45 AM EDT
Senate Democrats are bracing for a painful post-mortem as they try to avoid a September rerun of their latest government funding defeat.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and nine of his members helped get a House GOP-authored government funding bill to the finish line, saying a vote to advance legislation they loathed was the least bad option. The alternative, they argued, was allowing a shutdown that could empower President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to accelerate their slashing of the federal bureaucracy.