As Congress returns to Washington, risk of a federal shutdown puts Sen. Chuck Schumer in a tough spot

WASHINGTON — A federal government shutdown hangs on the next five weeks. And the stakes are high for New York Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Though his Senate seat is not up until 2028, the Senate Democratic leader from Brooklyn has no easy moves and faces plenty of risk in navigating the impending battle to keep most federal agencies funded beyond Sept. 30.

The question is whether Schumer, 74, can unite a divided, restive party at war with itself on how to stand up to President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress. Or will he spark another fierce backlash from fellow Democrats who are still peeved that he helped pave the way for a GOP spending bill in March without securing any major party policy wins?

The Senate and House return Tuesday from their August breaks, and the partisan funding battle will shift into higher gear.

Progressives and others in the Democratic Party’s liberal base are already warning that they don't want to see a repeat of March, when Schumer decided against jamming a GOP-written stopgap spending bill with a Democratic filibuster. Schumer has said he feared that Trump would seize on the alternative — a government shutdown — to unilaterally cut services and jobs, and weaponize it in other ways.

"It is very tricky — because there are these different groups within the party that, you know, pull and tug in different directions," said New York State’s Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs, a Schumer ally who also is Nassau County chairman.

"I think he just has to navigate the party through very difficult waters," Jacobs said, offering that he believes Schumer "is doing the best that he can under difficult circumstances."

Schumer was not made available for comment. But Friday, he issued a statement blasting Trump and congressional Republicans as "hell-bent on rejecting bipartisanship" as the country moves toward the funding deadline.

"It doesn't have to be this way," he said. "But if Republicans are insistent on going it alone, Democrats won’t be party to their destruction."

New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, and eight other lawmakers joined Schumer in providing Republicans with enough added votes to keep the March bill alive. But most other Senate Democrats did not follow, some calling it a blunder to allow the bill to advance to passage in a later up-and-down vote, largely along party lines.

Now, as a deadline approaches to keep government funded beyond Sept. 30, Schumer is depicting the party as more unified and in sync. But he again confronts limited choices that are not "in the good category," said G. William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank.

"From the shutdowns I have been through, nobody comes out smelling like roses," Hoagland said.

Protecting Democrats' priorities

One out could be for Congress to pass another stopgap bill that would keep spending at current levels. That would buy time for more intense talks later on a broader fiscal 2026 spending package. Some GOP fiscal hawks favor such bills because they mostly freeze spending or limit increases, but they may push for a yearlong stopgap that Democrats are unlikely to accept.

Ultimately, the heat will be on Schumer to win some Democratic priorities, ranging from language to avert cuts to Affordable Care Act subsidies set to take effect Jan. 1, to obtaining guarantees that Trump will not unilaterally make later cuts to congressionally approved spending.

Waging this battle amid a fracturing of his party "makes it more difficult for Schumer to chart a clear strategy," Joshua Huder, a congressional expert at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute in Washington, explained.

At a deeper level, Schumer presides over a caucus grappling with fundamental questions, Huder said. The party's image is in shambles, he said. The base is turning on its leaders. The direction and future of the party is in question. And if the biggest portion of the Democratic caucus once again refuses to go along with Schumer’s strategy, he risks looking ineffectual as a leader or out of step.

"When congressional leaders lead a divided caucus, they sit in a losing position," Huder said. "It's just a matter of how he loses."

Falling poll numbers

Schumer’s own favorability ratings already have declined to the lowest point in his home state in the past 20 years, according to a Siena Research Institute poll of registered voters released on Aug. 12. That survey showed only 39% of voters viewing him positively statewide — and his favorability is slightly lower on Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley suburbs of New York City.

Among Democrats, that same poll shows just 49% of those surveyed had a favorable rating of Schumer.

Still, Siena pollster Steven Greenberg says it’s too early to make any suppositions about Schumer’s political prospects as far away as 2028, when his seat comes up for reelection, despite early talk of potential Democratic primary challenges.

That includes speculation about progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Bronx-Queens), who went very public with her anger at Schumer for not blocking the GOP bill in March. Some saw that as an intended opening jab in a potential challenge to Schumer in three years.

Ocasio-Cortez, 35, has dodged questions and kept people guessing about any Senate seat bid. But even if Ocasio-Cortez’s intent was to soften up Schumer with an eye to a 2028 Democratic primary, such a clash would only occur if Schumer chose to run again.

Three years is a long time, Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran New York-based political consultant, said. But he said Schumer made himself an available target, and that, "Political careers are built on the carcasses of opportunistically available targets."

Reelection plans

Trump, who at 79 is older than Schumer, appeared eager this week to sow more Democratic doubt about the senator, quipping during a Cabinet meeting: "Poor stupid Chuck Schumer — he looks like he’s aged 100 years — and I don’t like getting into looks ... you know looks don’t mean anything, right?"

Jacobs said Schumer has not talked with him about his reelection plans or prospects.

Pollster Greenberg said socialist Zohran Mamdani’s possible election to New York City mayor, and Democrats' performance in 2026 midterm congressional elections, could impact what he decides.

Schumer faces a Senate Democratic leadership vote following next year’s elections, which would determine whether he will continue to be the party leader in the chamber.

"It’s going to be an important time for Schumer," Greenberg said of the next month’s government spending battles in Washington.

The funding fight will be important, as well, for House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, also of Brooklyn, who led that chamber’s nearly unanimous Democratic opposition to the Republican funding bill that Schumer did not block.

Calls for toughness

But it is in the Senate where Trump and Senate Republicans, who hold the majority with 53 seats, will again likely need some Democratic support to gain at least the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster and pass the funding measure by September 30.

While Schumer says he has worked since March to achieve more party unity, the demands for him to take harder positions have continued in recent weeks from segments of his fractured party.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D-Mass.), spelled out such sentiment on the chamber’s floor July 30, when she warned colleagues about the dangers of going along with GOP government funding bills, only to see the Trump administration claw back or cancel agreed-upon spending.

"Why should Democrats come to the table in good faith and throw our support behind a quote-unquote bipartisan bill, only for Republicans to turn around after the deal is done and, somewhere down the line, delete any of the parts Trump doesn’t like?," Warren said. 

'Trump is weaker'

In recent interviews, Schumer has stuck to his argument that the decision not to block the GOP bill in March was the right move — because, he said, a shutdown would otherwise have given Trump an opening to permanently cut thousands of more federal jobs as nonessential, including on Long Island.

"If we would have shut down the government, we have handed (Elon) Musk, DOGE, the keys to the kingdom. Half of the federal government would have been gone," Schumer said in an interview that premiered Aug. 14 with commentator Jack Schlossberg. That also would have undermined court challenges mounted against Trump’s unilateral spending cuts, he said.

What’s changed since March, Schumer told Schlossberg, is that, "The world is changing. Trump is weaker now than he was then."

Schumer aides on Thursday publicly released a letter from Schumer and cosigned by Jeffries in which they seek a meeting with Republican congressional leaders on averting a shutdown.
"The government funding issue must be resolved in a bipartisan way," Schumer and Jeffries write. "That is the only viable path forward." 

Political consultant Sheinkopf said one overarching aspect of the attacks on Schumer and speculation on his future is that they come amid the strong undercurrent of dissatisfied "younger voters and the long-term AOC-Mamdani effect," focused largely on age and succession issues.

"They want the present government gone and replaced," Sheinkopf said. "And that does not mean only Trump."