Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, faced blaring and profound political blowback on Friday for his decision to join with Republicans in pushing through a stopgap spending bill to stave off a government shutdown.
House Democrats, including some of the party’s most senior members, and progressive activists said Mr. Schumer’s stance was a shameful capitulation to President Trump and the G.O.P.
The grass roots Democratic group Pass the Torch, which agitated for former President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to end his campaign last summer, on Friday morning called on the Senate minority leader to step aside.
“Chuck Schumer is unwilling and unable to meet the moment,” the group said in a statement. “His sole job is to fight MAGA’s fascist takeover of our democracy — instead, he’s directly enabling it.”
The call came the day after Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, declined to rule out mounting a primary challenge against Mr. Schumer, telling CNN there was “a deep sense of outrage and betrayal” about his decision on the pending bill.
And Mr. Trump weighed in with a political kiss of death for Mr. Schumer, congratulating him for “doing the right thing.”
“A non pass would be a Country destroyer, approval will lead us to new heights,” he wrote on social media. “Again, really good and smart move by Senator Schumer.”
Many of his colleagues conceded privately on Friday that Mr. Schumer was doing the job of a leader: protecting his members from damaging votes and shouldering the blame for difficult decisions.
But at a moment when liberal activists and Democrats are desperate for party leaders to stand in opposition to Mr. Trump, the backlash was intense.
Even former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Schumer’s onetime partner in leadership, suggested that he had made the wrong call. She issued a scalding statement on Friday that did not name Mr. Schumer but said that Mr. Trump and Elon Musk had set up a “false choice” between a government shutdown or a blank check to make devastating cuts across the board — and lamented that some Democrats had fallen into their trap.
“This false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable,” she said. “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”
House Democratic leaders have been on a victory tour since Monday, when they succeeded in keeping their members almost completely united in opposing the funding bill. In doing so, they have amped up the pressure on Senate Democrats to do the same.
“I don’t know why anyone would support that bill,” said Representative Pete Aguilar of California, the No. 3 House Democrat. “Elon Musk and Donald Trump are systematically already shutting down the federal government. Why we would want any part of that, I have no idea.”
Representative Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who has carved out a lane for himself as a pragmatic progressive, said he worried that Mr. Schumer had made a strategic miscalculation that the party writ large would live to regret. The funding bill, he said, “represents the best (and possibly only) leverage that we as Democrats will have to prevent Donald Trump’s systematic decimation of the social safety net.”
But their vote in the House was an easy one: With Republicans united by Mr. Trump to back the bill, Democrats did not have the votes to stop it in the chamber. In the Senate, where at least eight Democrats would have to vote with all Republicans to clear a filibuster, the picture was more complicated.
And within the Senate Democratic Caucus, members recognized that and were unwilling to criticize Mr. Schumer. Some even privately praised him for allowing members to vote “no” while privately hoping that the bill would pass.
Some of them agreed with Mr. Schumer’s argument that a shutdown would give the Trump administration more authority to deem entire agencies and programs “nonessential,” and never bring them back or rehire staff after a furlough. And some expressed confusion about why a government shutdown in March, just weeks into the new administration, had suddenly become some sort of defining Neville Chamberlain moment for the leader of the Senate Democrats.
“Did we have leverage?” said Senator John Hickenlooper, Democrat of Colorado, who said he planned to oppose a bill that he described as a blatant power grab by the G.O.P. “We had two horrendous choices.”
“Chuck Schumer is in a very, very difficult spot,” Mr. Hickenlooper added. “He made a real, hard decision. His supporters in New York are a big part of the base, as well. He knew how he was going to get attacked and he still made the decision. He deserves my respect.”
Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, said he was a “no” but that he understood Mr. Schumer’s predicament. “It was not an easy one for him,” he said.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, savaged the bill on Friday morning, noting that it would take away support for seniors in nursing homes and would cut back on health care for people with disabilities and children who need it most. On top of that, she said, it would allow Republicans to “grease the skids” for a tax cut for billionaires. But she would not criticize Mr. Schumer’s decision to support it. “I can only speak for my vote,” she said.
Mr. Schumer, for his part, defended his decision as a pragmatic one, which would allow Democrats to focus on the real fight in front of them: protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid from Republicans who want to slash those programs.
The most important fight, he said in a speech on the Senate floor, was “fighting Republicans who are eviscerating Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That is the fight American people must known about. A shutdown will be a costly distraction from this all-important fight.”
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