AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

Senator Chuck Schumer is facing mounting calls to step down as the Democrats’ Senate leader after he voted in favor of a Republican spending package Friday which has been described as a “blank check” for the White House to keep defunding and dismantling government agencies and services. Groups including Indivisible and Pass the Torch have since called for Schumer to step aside. On Friday, 11 young activists with Sunrise Movement were arrested at Schumer’s D.C. office as they urged him not to, quote, “compromise on our lives and futures” ahead of the vote. The other Democratic senators who voted with Schumer to avert a government shutdown were Catherine Cortez Masto, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Kirsten Gillibrand, Maggie Hassan, Gary Peters, Brian Schatz, Jeanne Shaheen and independent Senator Angus King.

This is Senator Schumer.

MINORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: Mr. President, I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country to minimize the harms to the American people. Therefore, I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by Waleed Shahid. He is a Democratic strategist whose new piece on Substack is headlined “Schumer Says Trump Is An Existential Threat — Then Surrenders Anyway.” Waleed was previously the spokesperson for Justice Democrats and former senior adviser for the campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. Why don’t you respond to what Schumer did?

WALEED SHAHID: I think I’ve been involved in politics for about a decade, and this was one of the most utterly embarrassing strategic blunders on behalf of the Democrats that I’ve seen. Chuck Schumer — it would be one thing if House Democrats weren’t going to fight, but they had House Democrats in vulnerable swing districts who took hard votes that they’re going to have to answer for their constituents on, and then Schumer led them — led them in a direction as if he was going to hold up the vote on this, and then surrendered at the last minute.

And I think that, you know, they’ve spent — the Democrats and Chuck Schumer have spent a year warning the American people about Project 2025, warning people that democracy would be under existential threat under Donald Trump. And now with Elon Musk controlling DOGE, what they’re doing is Project 2025 on steroids. So, you don’t say there’s a fire, and then you give the arsonist a match and gasoline. And that’s effectively what Chuck Schumer did. It’s like if Democrats were rowing a boat, and they had one person rowing on the left side, and then the person on the right side just stopped rowing, and then they wonder why they’re not moving or they’re staying still. This is —

AMY GOODMAN: Or they’re going in circles.

WALEED SHAHID: Or they’re going in circles. And this is just one of the things that, you know, people are really angry. And I think, more than ever, we need ordinary citizens, ordinary Americans, involved in our politics, involved — engaged in politics, because the Democratic leadership, it is clear, they are not going to stand up and fight against Trump and Musk in the way that grassroots Democrats want them to. I think what Chuck Schumer did, I have few words for it.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, if he had signaled he was going to do that all along, that would be different. You would just differ with him supporting it, right?

WALEED SHAHID: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: But it was that he suggested he was going to vote against this. What did he say in a New York Times op-ed? He called Republicans “a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground,” and accused Trump of wanting “full control over government spending.” Yet, by supporting the Republican bill, wasn’t he giving that power to Trump and Musk now?

WALEED SHAHID: Yeah, it makes no sense. They had a chance — Democrats had a chance to tell the nation that the Republicans and Donald Trump were shutting down the government in order to protect Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest men in the world. That could have been the message over the next few weeks. And instead, they folded and let the flooding the zone and the chaos continue.

Schumer went in the Times and gave what I thought was a totally nonsensical interview, where he said our goal is to make the Republicans unpopular so that the fever breaks, that if we can get Republican — if we can get Trump’s approval down under 40%, then soon Republicans will come to the table and negotiate with Democrats. And Schumer cited 2005 and 2017 as examples of that. We are not in 2005 or 2017. We are in the era of Project 2025, run by Elon Musk. And I don’t think Schumer — politics is about knowing what time it is, and I, frankly, don’t think that Schumer knows what time it is.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about calls mounting for New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to challenge Schumer in his next primary election. She spoke on CNN about why she opposed the spending bill.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: This turns the federal government into a slush fund for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It sacrifices congressional authority, and it is deeply partisan. And so, to me, it is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free, when we’ve been sent here to protect Social Security, protect Medicaid and protect Medicare.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Congressmember AOC should challenge Schumer?

WALEED SHAHID: I think someone should. You know, that’s her decision to make. But he’s not up for primary until 2028, so we have a lot of work to do between now and 2028 to make that happen. My thing is, the main thing we need is constituents in states like New York, constituents in all the places where the senators voted with Republicans on this continuing resolution —

AMY GOODMAN: Both New York senators did, Gillibrand and Schumer.

WALEED SHAHID: Gillibrand also. We need people to stand up, go to their offices, make calls. You can join a group like Indivisible, MoveOn, Working Families Party, the DSA. There are many groups getting involved. And I think that Democratic leaders need to hear way more from their constituents. They snatched the ball from grassroots Democrats on this. Grassroots Democrats were ready to make a play here, ready to march in one direction. And Hakeem Jeffries had the House unified around something, and then Chuck Schumer divided Democrats, and now we’re spending today, all over the news, talking about Chuck Schumer’s surrender, his blunder, instead of talking about what Elon Musk is doing to the government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, in this last minute, what can ordinary people do who aren’t congressmembers, who aren’t senators? What difference does it make what actions people take?

WALEED SHAHID: I think senators and members of Congress need to hear way more from their constituents about the dangers of what it means for Senate Democrats to give up on this. People should be calling their senators, their members of Congress. People should be showing up to their office. They can go to websites like Indivisible.org. They can join their local Working Families Party or DSA chapter. They can nominate a candidate through Justice Democrats.

But the number one thing that I think people need to do is call their member of Congress and tell them that they don’t think Chuck Schumer is up to the job, and they’re angry at what his decision was to sell out grassroots Democrats in order to fund and support the Trump government, which they’ve warned us is an existential crisis to our country.

AMY GOODMAN: And Schumer’s fear that it would be called the Schumer shutdown and that a shutdown could even give more power to the executive?

WALEED SHAHID: I was so — I was so surprised that the federal union representing federal workers said that they were against Schumer’s decision on this. These unions don’t take these decisions lightly. And so, when the union representing federal workers are saying, “You need — we are already experiencing a government shutdown, and we need you to fight.”

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Waleed Shahid, for joining us. We’ll link your new article, “Schumer Says Trump Is An Existential Threat — Then Surrenders Anyway.” That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.