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indivisible
'Time to Step Up or Step Down': Our Rev Finds 9 of 10 Progressives Want Schumer Out
"These survey results point to an undeniable crisis of confidence in Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership," said the head of Our Revolution.
Mar 18, 2025
Since Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer joined a handful of Democrats in voting for a GOP-backed continuing resolution that cuts nondefense spending by $13 billion and keeps the government open through September, the lawmaker from New York has taken heat from members of his own caucus and liberal groups—and survey data from the group Our Revolution shows that progressive voters are unhappy with him, too.
Our Revolution, the progressive political organizing group launched as a continuation of Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that it surveyed 9,024 of its members between March 17-18 and found that nearly 90% of respondents believe Schumer should step aside as Senate minority leader and 86% would support a primary challenger against Schumer for his Senate seat, should he refuse to step aside.
The respondents are a subset of Our Revolution's grassroots network, according to the group, and they "include rank-in-file Democratic Party activists and base voters, many of whom supported Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in the 2020 presidential primary."
When given the opportunity to submit open-ended responses, survey respondents expressed things like: "Wildly frustrated and defeated" and "We need an opposition party, the Democrats are anything but!"
"These survey results point to an undeniable crisis of confidence in Chuck Schumer and Democratic leadership at a time of unprecedented executive overreach and corporate takeover of the American federal government," said Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution.
"It is an utter disgrace that Schumer and other top Democrats cannot muster up the courage to actively resist. It's time to step up or step down," said Geevarghese.
On Thursday, Schumer announced his intention to support the bill, which was a pivot from his position earlier that week when he advocated for an extension in order to negotiated a compromise. The pivot drew sharp backlash, including from House Democrats, who had largely been united in opposing the measure when it cleared that chamber on March 11.
On Friday, the Senate voted 62-38, with 10 members of the Democratic caucus in favor, to advance the funding bill and avoid a government shutdown.
Our Revolution found that 83% of respondents would support primary challengers against those 10 senators.
In addition to steeps cuts to items such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's community development, rental assistance, and homelessness services programs, the bill also lacks the specific congressional instructions to allocate funds for programs that are generally included in spending bills, according to The New York Times. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the party's top appropriator, warned that because of this, the bill turns "turns many of our accounts into slush funds."
There were other signs that this was not a typical shutdown fight.
Everett Kelley, president of the nation's largest federal workers union—the American Federation of Government Employees—wrote in a letter to senators last week that AFGE's position "until this year has been that although continuing resolutions are far from ideal, they are better than an outright government shutdown."
"This year is different," Kelley wrote. "The Trump administration has repeatedly demonstrated over the last seven weeks that it will not spend appropriated funds as the law dictates."
After Schumer's pivot, a number of progressives loudly condemned the move. The grassroots group Indivisible released a statement calling for him to step aside as Senate minority leader and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told reporters that there is a "deep sense of outrage and betrayal" from House Democrats following Schumer's about-face.
The episode also sparked murmurs among some Democrats that Ocasio-Cortez should consider a primary bid against Schumer in 2028.
Schumer has defended his decision to stave off a government shutdown, casting it as the less bad option of the two bad options that Senate Democrats were faced with, according to The New York Times.
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Facing Calls to Resign for Caving to Trump and GOP, Schumer Postpones Book Tour
"The only way to stop an authoritarian advance is to disrupt it, to make every step costly, to slow its march through whatever means necessary," wrote one Democratic strategist. "Instead, Schumer is helping smooth the path."
Mar 17, 2025
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has opted to postpone events promoting his forthcoming book amid sustained outrage over his decision to back a Republican-authored government funding plan that bolsters President Donald Trump's lawless assault on federal agencies.
Schumer's (D-N.Y.) office attributed the decision to reschedule the book tour events—including one that was supposed to take place in Baltimore Monday night—to "security concerns."
The anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace was planning to hold a demonstration outside the Baltimore venue. Other progressive activists highlighted Schumer's upcoming tour dates after he announced he would vote with the GOP on the funding package, rebuffing calls from Democratic lawmakers, advocacy groups, and the largest union of federal workers to oppose the legislation on the grounds that it would effectively greenlight Trump's destruction of federal departments and illegal spending maneuvers.
Much of the Democratic Party erupted in fury following Schumer's decision to support the Republican bill, and he quickly faced calls to step down as Senate minority leader.
"The passage of this dangerous Republican funding bill is a travesty," Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the progressive advocacy group Indivisible, said in a statement Saturday. "The ongoing administrative coup led by Donald Trump and Elon Musk is a constitutional crisis. The authoritarians stripping away our rights and trying to loot the government to enrich the billionaires are a five-alarm fire."
"Senator Schumer should step aside as leader," Levin added. "Every Democrat in the Senate should call for him to do so, and begin making plans for new leadership immediately. Indivisible will be encouraging our groups and activists to talk to their Senators at town halls, community events, and office visits about the urgent need for a minority leader who’s up for the fight this moment demands."
Schumer has thus far brushed off calls to resign, telling The New York Times in an interview published over the weekend that while there is "spirited disagreement on which was the right vote," he and members of his caucus "have mutual respect" and "are all united, no matter how people voted on this vote, to continue fighting Trump."
But Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid argued Monday that Schumer "is stuck in 2005," believing that "if Democrats just wait long enough, if they hold the line and play nice, Republicans will suddenly come to their senses."
"Democrats like Schumer still behave as though the system will self-correct, that if they abide by procedural norms long enough and let Trump-Musk exhaust themselves, the fever will break. But the people dismantling democracy aren't waiting," Shahid wrote. "They are exploiting every available lever of power—hollowing out agencies, capturing the courts, stripping Congress of oversight—at a breakneck pace. The only way to stop an authoritarian advance is to disrupt it, to make every step costly, to slow its march through whatever means necessary. Instead, Schumer is helping smooth the path."
"Defending democracy requires more than safeguarding institutions in the abstract—it requires upholding the values those institutions were meant to serve," he added. "Right now, we are witnessing Musk's corporate coup and state capture in real-time. Politics is about knowing what time it is, and I'm not sure Chuck Schumer has the answer."
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Chuck Schumer: The Man Who Let American Fascism Rise Without a Fight
There is no more room for weak leadership, no more time for calculated political inaction. Schumer must go, and Democrats must replace him with a leader who understands the existential stakes of this moment.
Mar 17, 2025
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had one job: to stand between President Donald Trump and the complete dismantling of American democracy. Instead, he caved—again—handing Trump the power he craved without a fight, without a demand, without even a moment of real resistance. With every cowardly compromise, Schumer isn’t just failing Democrats—he’s enabling an autocrat in real time.
The question most Democrats want to ask of Leader Chuck Schumer in the Senate appears to be, “How’s that ‘keeping the government open to hold Trump accountable’ thing working out for you?”
Everything Trump does now going forward, when people or the press complain, he will say was authorized by “bipartisan legislation” with “the full support of the Senate Democrats.”
Democrats in the Senate must stop playing defense, call out the authoritarian threat by name, use government shutdowns and the debt ceiling as leverage, and put democracy at the center of very negotiation.
In fact, just hours after Schumer and a handful of timid Senate Democrats voted to pass Trump’s Enabling Acts of 2025 legislation, the president issued an executive order gifting Russian President Vladimir Putin with the gutting of the Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.
He then assaulted civil service workers by shutting down the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and attacked women and Black people by shutting down the Minority Business Development Agency, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
Meanwhile, the House and Senate are both in recess: Congress is shut down, but Trump sure isn’t. Thanks, Chuck.
And this cave-in to the Mango Mussolini has Democratic voters so furious they’re reconsidering donations and even voting in 2026.
Eight years ago, as Trump was starting his first term, NBC News reported that 59% of Democratic voters told pollsters they wanted Democrats in Congress to make compromises with Trump, and only a third (33%) said they should “stick to their positions even if that means not being able to get things done in Washington.”
But that was eight years ago (and apparently the era in which Schumer is still living). Today, Democratic voters have a completely different message for their elected representatives: Fight like hell!
Fully 65% of Democrats say even if it means shutting down the government, their representatives and senators should stick to their guns and fight on both issues and principles; only 32% still want Democrats to compromise with Republicans.
The result of Schumer’s caving in to the GOP is now a shocking 27% approval level for the Democratic Party.
Democratic voters get what Sens. Schumer, Kirsten Gilibrand (D-N.Y.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Schatz (D-Hawaii), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Angus King (I-Maine) did, and they hate it. Those senators had seen this GOP strategy coming ever since the election was called back in November, and they never bothered to inform Americans about what Republicans were up to.
As a result, Trump now has massively more power than he did last week, and Democrats won’t have another chance to force compromise or even stop him until this summer—probably late June—when the ability of the federal government to move money around collides with the debt ceiling (which we hit this past weekend).
Republicans are already planning to punk Schumer and his “peace-in-our-time” colleagues again. And it sure appears that Democrats have already ceded the rhetorical field to them by not letting Americans know—in a way as unmistakable as were the Tea Party protests against former President Barack Obama adding a Medicare buy-in to Obamacare—about what the stakes and Republican plan will be.
As a result, Indivisible, arguably the most powerful and influential Democratic group in the nation, just openly called for Chuck Schumer to step down:
“After weeks of constituents demanding that Democrats use this rare, precious point of leverage on the government funding bill, Schumer did the opposite,” co-executive director Ezra Levin wrote. “He led the charge to wave the white flag of surrender. But Indivisible has no intention of surrendering to Trump, Elon Musk, and congressional Republicans.”
Leadership of the group reached out to their 1,600 local Indivisible groups nationwide with two emergency meetings; 82% of group leaders in New York state (Schumer’s state) and 91% of Indivisible leaders nationwide voted to demand Schumer step down from his position as Senate minority leader.
“We thank him for his service,” the Indivisible press release says, “but we need new leadership in this moment and we understand to get there we need a chorus of support for change… Our democracy is in danger. The path ahead will be hard. Indivisibles are ready to do the work—it’s time for a Senate Democratic leader who is too.”
American political observers who’ve been wondering for years what Putin has on Trump are beginning to alter their perspective, based on how he’s ignoring court orders, using the Justice Department as his own instrument for revenge, and crushing any Republican who dares speak up or stand up against him.
Instead of fearing Putin, there’s a growing consensus that Trump simply sees Putin as his role model, a situation that’s actually even more dangerous.
He, too, lusts for absolute, unquestioned power in a major nation, democracy be damned. He’s already taking steps to enrich his friends and imprison his enemies, regardless of the legality of either. He’s laying the foundation to shut up or break any opposition, be it in the media, in Congress, or in the streets.
This is how democracies die, from the end of the Roman republic to Germany in the 1930s to modern-day Russia and Hungary. In every case, there were opponents of the wannabe dictator who tried to warn the people, and in each of those cases they were ignored (even though they reflected majority public opinion).
Both Russia and Hungary show how democracies don’t collapse overnight—they erode step by step. Institutions are undermined, dissent is crushed, elections are rigged, and economic power is concentrated in the hands of a corrupt elite. Once these three pillars—governance, civil liberties, and economic fairness—are dismantled, reversing the slide into tyranny becomes increasingly difficult.
Last week, Trump snatched three students from their homes and is detaining them—in defiance of our nation’s First Amendment—pending deportation simply because they said things that pissed off him and his fellow criminally corrupt autocrat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He’s been in defiance of multiple court orders to restore funding and hiring to federal agencies, and just defied a federal judge who ordered his deportation planes to turn around in midair (they didn’t).
And now his Justice Department is investigating green organizations like Habitat for Humanity (having frozen their checking account) as well as people involved in movements like Black Lives Matter. It’s just a matter of time before they go after groups like Indivisible and FiftyFifty.one, commentators on TV (he said MSNBC and CNN are “illegal” on Friday), and writers on Substack (they’ve already sued Jim Stewartson for over $1 million).
Trump is punishing prosecutors for investigating his crimes, politically destroying Republicans who dared challenge him, and trashing American media and allies who don’t suck up to him sufficiently. His cabinet meetings resemble something out of North Korea (or the old Apprentice show), with his underlings engaging in effusive, slobbering, over-the-top praise of Dear Leader’s brilliance, charisma, and manliness.
He is, in other words, following Putin’s template from the late 1990s and early 2000s as if it were a checklist. Which is, in part, why Schumer’s betrayal was so destructive, both to the Democratic Party and the country.
The U.S. still has time to rescue our democracy, but only if our elected Democrats will explicitly recognize the warning signs and act decisively.
Schumer and his colleagues could have demanded Republicans fund election security (Trump just shut down that agency), reinstate ethics laws, get big money (Elon Musk, et al) out of politics, expose disinformation in media and social media (Trump shut that agency down, too), and restore accountability for the traitors who killed three police officers and smeared literal shit all over the offices of Democrats in the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Even if he got none of it, the demands and negotiations would have gotten all of them into the media.
Instead, Schumer gave it all away. He gave Trump exactly what he wanted, without even the smallest glimmer of a fight.
This is no way to run a political party or the Democratic faction in the Senate.
It’s time for new leadership that understands how communication works in the 21st century, is committed to defeating Trump and Trumpism, and can effectively tour the media and the country to galvanize the people.
Democratic decline doesn’t spontaneously stop itself; it must be fought tooth-and-nail at every level. Every time Democrats hand Republicans a win without even exacting a symbolic concession, it strengthens the GOP’s hand both in public opinion and future negotiations.
While Democrats play by the old rules, Republicans have fully abandoned them, and, so far, they’ve suffered no consequence whatever for attacking our democracy. They won’t stop until it’s too late to prevent the authoritarian slide.
Democrats in the Senate must stop playing defense, call out the authoritarian threat by name, use government shutdowns and the debt ceiling as leverage, and put democracy at the center of very negotiation. Every budget fight, every bill, every debate must include protections for our democracy.
It’s too late to screw around any more; Vladimir Putin, fossil fuel billionaires, and their neofascist and white male supremacist buddies have declared open war on our democracy, and we need a warrior, not a backroom dealer, at the front of our movement if we are to rescue this nation.
There is no more room for weak leadership, no more time for calculated political inaction. Schumer must go, and Democrats must replace him with a leader who understands the existential stakes of this moment.
If we don’t mobilize now—if we don’t demand real resistance—we won’t just lose another election. We’ll lose our democracy.
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