Shutdown fight presents critical test for Democratic leaders: From the Politics Desk
- - Shutdown fight presents critical test for Democratic leaders: From the Politics Desk
The Politics DeskSeptember 26, 2025 at 5:53 AM
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Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, we explore how angst from the Democratic base is putting pressure on party leaders as they navigate the government shutdown battle and key primaries in next year’s midterms.
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— Adam Wollner
Democrats leaders face pressure to not cave in shutdown fightBy Jonathan Allen, Natasha Korecki and Sahil Kapur
With a looming government funding deadline, the biggest sin in the eyes of the Democratic Party’s base, according to party officials and activists, would not be losing to President Donald Trump in a shutdown battle. It would be refusing to fight.
“They’re desperate to see from Democrats some sign that they understand how serious, how damaging, how dangerous things are and have gotten, and they’re prepared to use the tools and the leverage they’ve got to fight back,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots group that has thousands of chapters nationwide.
In March, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., declined to use that leverage — the Democratic minority’s ability to block legislation with a filibuster — and allowed a Republican-written government funding measure to become law.
Now, Schumer has promised this time will be different.
And with federal agencies set to run out of money at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, the Democratic base is putting more pressure on him to either win concessions from Trump — at a minimum, an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that limit the costs of health insurance for millions of Americans — or let a shutdown happen.
Trump has refused to negotiate with Democratic leaders, and his budget director, Russ Vought, threatened this week to fire thousands of federal workers if Democrats don’t accept a GOP-written bill that would fund the government into November.
The move raised the stakes of a shutdown for Democratic lawmakers, many of whom are advocates for the federal workforce. Trump is already pointing his finger at Democrats, who would need to provide a handful of votes in the Senate for any funding bill to make it to his desk.
For Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the shutdown standoff marks their biggest test yet in the second Trump administration: Can they use the limited power they have to force the Republican trifecta to address some of their policy goals? Polls show that a growing number of Democratic voters are disenchanted with their party and want them to show a more confrontational — and less compromising — posture toward Trump.
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Democratic anger at their own party fuels 2026 primariesBy Sahil Kapur and Bridget Bowman
When Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow decided in February that she wanted to run for an open U.S. Senate seat, she conveyed her intentions to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. But the committee asked her to hold off, according to three sources familiar with the conversations.
In that call and subsequent ones, some of which took place at the staff level, DSCC officials didn’t explicitly ask her not to run, but “they were slow-walking,” said one source who discussed the private conversations on condition of anonymity. “It was, ‘Can you wait a little longer, can you wait?’”
In early April, McMorrow defied their wishes and launched her campaign, inveighing against “the same old crap in Washington” and highlighting polls that showed the Democratic Party’s approval rating at an all-time low.
“We need new leaders,” she said in her launch video. “Because the same people in D.C. who got us into this mess are not going to be the ones to get us out of it.”
Whether she intended it or not, the 39-year-old McMorrow started a trend of Democratic outsiders end-running party leaders to launch their campaigns, sometimes in explicit opposition to them. The movement is fueled by a crisis of confidence among Democratic voters in their own party, which is giving encouragement to the types of nontraditional candidates who have been walloped by leadership-aligned rivals in the past.
Altogether, ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the moves have created a number of crowded and competitive-looking Democratic Senate primaries — contests that have often seen party leaders leap in to anoint favorites in recent years. Democratic angst following the loss to President Donald Trump last year has contributed to the trend in at least five races that could determine the majority, from core battlegrounds like Michigan and Maine to long-shot targets like Iowa and Texas.
The DSCC has not endorsed in any competitive Senate primaries so far, though Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who chairs the committee, has not ruled out doing so.
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🗞️ Today's other top stories -
➡️ Dallas shooting update: The 29-year-old Texas man who authorities say opened fire on an ICE facility, killing at least one detainee, might have been planning the attack for weeks in an effort to create “real terror,” the FBI said. Read more →
⏰ TikTok on the clock: Trump signed an executive order paving the way for a TikTok deal that could transfer majority ownership of the app to Americans. Read more →
🪖All hands: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned as many as hundreds of senior military officers to Washington next week for an extremely rare meeting whose purpose has yet to be disclosed. Read more →
📝 Peace plan: Trump told a room of Arab leaders that he won’t let Israel annex the occupied West Bank as he outlined his 21-point plan for peace in the Middle East. Read more →
💊 Mixed messaging: Vice President JD Vance said that pregnant women should “follow your doctor” when deciding whether to take Tylenol, striking a different tone after Trump strongly discouraged its use. Read more →
📃 Homan probe: Senate Democrats urged the Justice Department to release documents related to its bribery investigation into White House border czar Tom Homan. Read more →
⚖️ In the courts: A group of the country’s top economic leaders, including every living former Federal Reserve chair, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of Fed governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump is seeking to remove. Read more →
🏫 New gig: Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, who ordered the state’s schools to teach the Bible, is resigning to lead a conservative group, vowing to “destroy” teachers unions. Read more →
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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Owen Auston-Babcock.
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Source: “AOL General News”
