UPDATE: It’s official — Schumer has thrown in the towel:
Schumer: “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down”
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) March 13, 2025
John may have more later from Schumer’s speech on the Senate floor. Original post follows…
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Let’s face it — we knew it all along. Because what choice does Chuck Schumer have?
NEWS — Schumer told Dems during closed-door lunch that he would vote for cloture tomorrow morning.
Schumer is speaking on the floor shortly.
Confirming @nytimes reporting
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) March 13, 2025
The only real surprise is how quickly Schumer changed his position. I expected reality to hit tomorrow rather than today. But now that Schumer has bowed to reality, at least a few of his colleagues will do the same:
Multiple Democratic senators & aides say there will be enough Democratic votes for cloture on House-passed CR in Friday morning vote https://t.co/OXoTY0BKUl
— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) March 13, 2025
Both Politico and ABC News hear the same thing, although apparently they also heard a lot of shouting along with it:
Several Democrats have privately admitted they likely don’t have the votes to block a Republican proposal to keep the government funded through September, multiple sources told ABC News.
Tensions were on full display at the private meeting. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was yelling so loudly about the impact of a shutdown that reporters could hear her through the walls.
One Democrat who spoke on the condition of anonymity told ABC News, “We lost this two weeks ago … we should’ve been beating this drum for a month.”
That’s a lot more realistic than Senate Dems sounded earlier in the day. Cory Booker told CNN’s Manu Raju that a shutdown would be a capitulation of its own to the authority of Donald Trump. HOWEVER! Voting for the House’s CR is also capitulation, according to Booker. That made this sound just as coherent as Democrat leadership has been for the last two freak-out years.
Anyway, have fun storming the castle:
Several Senate Democrats privately signal after lengthy closed-door lunch they expect that enough of their colleagues will vote to break a Democratic filibuster and let the House GOP stop-gap plan become law.
Everything is very fluid, so it’s still unclear how this plays out… pic.twitter.com/o4JiyUSNK0
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 13, 2025
Booker: “This is saying, let’s just give up even more of our Constitutional authority, because, hey, he can do a lot worse later on. And so to me, that’s capitulating to someone who’s already showing that he’s reckless and willing to do a lot of destruction… We are in a perverse bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way.”
It’s not just CNN reporting on the wind direction within Chuck Schumer’s caucus. CBS News is also reporting the painfully obvious this afternoon, although this came out of yesterday’s meetings:
Senate Democrats are considering a plan that would pave the way for a GOP bill to keep the government funded for six months in exchange for a doomed-to-fail vote on their own 30-day alternative, facing an uncomfortable choice between allowing the Republican measure to pass or letting the government shut down. …
A possible solution began to emerge after Senate Democrats met on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The plan would call for Democrats to provide the votes needed to advance the GOP bill in exchange for a vote on an amendment with their own one-month stopgap measure, which would almost certainly fail. Democrats who oppose the GOP version could then vote against its final passage. Some members see it as a way to save face while also avoiding a shutdown.
The Intercept takes a more bitter look at the coming capitulation:
Despite promising a fight, Senate Democrats are reportedly considering a vote swap. In exchange for providing enough votes to end debate on the GOP spending bill, Senate Republicans would allow a Democratic amendment to continue to fund the government at current levels for the next month to come to the floor, known as a continuing resolution, or CR. The Democratic amendment is almost certain to fail.
Democrats opposed to the GOP bill would then be allowed to vote “no” on the broader spending bill, allowing them to seem like they’re voting against the GOP measure despite providing the needed support to bring it to the floor.
One Democrat strategist tells The Intercept that this faithlessness is why Democrats are losing credibility with voters:
Nina Smith, a Democratic strategist, said this kind of wheeling and dealing is exactly why Americans have lost faith in the party.
“What has been so detrimental to the Democratic Party brand is exactly the sort of threading the needle that we’re seeing here,” said Smith. “We really have to focus that energy and use it in a way that’s very strategic so that we rebuild the trust of the American people because they don’t trust us, and it’s [because of] this sort of doublespeak, backroom deals.”
Smith misses the problem entirely. Voters don’t trust Schumer et al because they are utterly incompetent as well as entirely unprincipled. On the latter point, Democrats who spent years screeching about the evils of shutdowns are suddenly cheering them as a legit tactic when they can’t get their way. Why would anyone trust them now after contradicting their own talking points?
But it’s the first point that matters more. In 2024, Schumer had control of the Senate and someone in the White House had his/her hand up Joe Biden’s back in the White House. As John Thune argued earlier today, Schumer could have passed a budget that included Democrat priorities last year at practically any time. Instead, Schumer inexplicably sat on the budget, demanded clean CRs to extend existing budget authorities, and then did it again even after knowing Republicans would soon control both chambers of Congress and the White House.
Schumer’s strategic idiocy is what marched the party into this political box canyon. The only option now is capitulation through the House CR or capitulation via a shutdown … which would inevitably be followed by capitulation through the House CR. That reality seems to be seeping into the consciousness of Senate Dems, who might want to think about finding leadership that doesn’t walk them into traps that they themselves set.
