Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries met over the weekend to start to mend a deep rift in the Democratic Party after the Senate leader allowed passage of a Republican stopgap spending bill.
The two Brooklyn Democratic congressional leaders sat down face-to-face in their home borough after a grueling week in which Schumer broke with fellow Democrats and voted to pass a bill that kept the government open past a Friday evening deadline.
With Congress on a break, Schumer Monday canceled a series of events this week to promote his book about fighting antisemitism. Democratic protesters had threatened to use the appearances to attack him and organizers blamed the cancellations on security concerns.
A planned conversation with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) at a Manhattan synagogue was also scrapped.
Spokespeople for Schumer and Jeffries did not respond to requests for comment Monday about their meeting a day earlier.
The cancellations of events in Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and other cities came amid widespread criticism from the party’s liberal base over Schumer’s vote to move forward with Republican spending legislation last week.
The rift deepened after House Republicans narrowly passed the spending bill that mostly extended spending at current levels until September.
Details of such bills are typically negotiated between the two parties, particularly because votes in the Senate require 60 votes to pass, effectively requiring acquiescence of the minority party. If the bill had not passed, the government would have shut down indefinitely.
Schumer said he agreed with fellow Democrats that the GOP-written spending bill was “terrible.”
But he asserted a shutdown would have been far worse, and difficult to end. A shutdown would have given Trump even more power to make cuts, Schumer said, effectively supercharging his effort to slash government spending and even ax whole agencies.
House Democrats traditionally work closely with their colleagues in the Senate, so it was highly unusual for them to publicly slam Schumer.
Jeffries, who has maintained very friendly ties to Schumer for years, even took the unusual step of refusing to say if he still had confidence in Schumer’s leadership.
Schumer insists he still has the support of fellow Senate Democrats. And some insiders note there were likely many Democrats who voted against the spending bill while privately urging their leader to fall on his sword to avoid a cataclysmic shutdown.
The rift reflects intense difficulties faced by Democrats as they seek to respond to Trump’s election victory and his wide-ranging political onslaught in the first months of his second term in the White House.
Many Democratic base voters are angrily urging leaders to take stronger stances against Trump’s actions. But others advise laying lower for a while, anticipating Trump’s unpopular actions will backfire on Republicans and the political winds will shift in their favor.
