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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