Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer is not going anywhere.
Responding to calls for him to leave his leadership post, the long-time New York senator and Democratic Party leader said, “I’m not stepping down.”
Several House Democrats publicly suggested it may be time for Mr. Schumer to step down.
Mr. Schumer told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday that he understands the frustration among fellow Democrats with his vote this month to advance a Republican-crafted spending bill.
But allowing the federal government to shut down was not the hill Democrats should want to die on, he said.
He warned that a shutdown would open the door for President Trump and adviser Elon Musk to “eviscerate the federal government.”
“It would be devastating,” Mr. Schumer said. “What we got, at the end of the day, is avoiding the horror of a shutdown,” he said.
Mr. Schumer said the Democratic caucus is united against Mr. Trump and will make him “the quickest lame duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are.”
“I believe by 2026 the Republicans in the House and Senate will feel like they are rats on a sinking ship because we have so gone after Trump and all the horrible things he is doing,” he said.
Mr. Schumer has faced intense blowback over his support for the Republican funding bill.
Some Democrat lawmakers and activists saw it as a rare opportunity to thwart the fast-moving Trump administration after being relegated to the minority in the House and Senate.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, suggested Mr. Schumer dropped the ball, saying she doesn’t “give away anything for nothing.”
Sen. Michael Bennet, Colorado Democrat, likened Mr. Schumer’s sticking around to the end of former President Biden’s presidential campaign.
“It’s important for people to know when it’s time to go, and I think in the case of Joe Biden, and we’re going to have conversations I’m sure in the foreseeable future, about all the Democratic leadership,” Mr. Bennet said at a town hall last week.
However, Mr. Schumer said the fight over the GOP funding was a battle Democrats could not win.
“There was no leverage point that we could’ve asked for things — they just would’ve said no,” he said.
Mr. Schumer also threw cold water on President Trump’s calls to impeach a federal judge who has challenged the administration’s deportation authority.
Mr. Schumer said Mr. Trump had sparked a constitutional crisis jeopardizing the nation’s democracy.
“Donald Trump is a lawless, angry man,” Mr. Schumer said on “Meet the Press.” “He thinks he should be king. He thinks he should do whatever he wants regardless of the law and he thinks judges should just listen to him.
“Let me tell Donald Trump and the American people, Democrats in the Senate will not impeach judges — full-stop,” he said.
