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    Chuck Schumer says he’ll obstruct Trump’s justice department picks over Qatar jet gift

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    The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, announced on Tuesday he would obstruct all Trump administration justice department nominations until the White House provides answers about plans to accept a luxury aircraft from Qatar for presidential use.The New York senator declared the hold amid growing controversy over the constitutional and security implications of accepting a foreign government’s offer to provide what would become the new Air Force One.“In light of the deeply troubling news of a possible Qatari-funded Air Force One, and the reports that the attorney general personally signed off on this clearly unethical deal, I am announcing a hold on all DOJ political nominees, until we get more answers,” Schumer said in a Senate floor speech.Schumer called the proposed arrangement “not just naked corruption”, likening it to something so corrupt “that even [Russian president Vladimir] Putin would give a double take”.Though the procedural maneuver cannot completely block nominees, it forces Senate Republicans to use valuable floor time to overcome Democratic opposition through individual confirmation votes.Schumer said he has several demands that must be met before he lifts the blockade, including having the attorney general, Pam Bondi, testify before Congress to explain how accepting such a gift would comply with the US constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits presidents from receiving gifts from foreign states without congressional approval.“President Trump has told the American people this is ‘a free jet’. Does that mean the Qataris are delivering a ready-on-day-one plane with all the security measures already built in? If so, who installed those security measures, and how do we know they were properly installed?” Schumer asked.The blocking tactic has also been deployed by Hawaii senator Brian Schatz, who said in February he’d also place a blanket hold on Trump’s nominees to the state department until its attempt to shut USAID was reversed. Under the Biden administration, the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville held a 10-month hold on military promotions based off the Pentagon’s abortion policy.But the opposition on accepting the plane extends beyond party lines, notably from some pro-Israel Republicans long angered by Qatar’s diplomatic role on Israel’s years-long military campaign in Gaza, and its close communication with Hamas.The Texas senator Ted Cruz, typically aligned with Trump, said on CNBC that the aircraft arrangement “poses significant espionage and surveillance problems”. The West Virginia senator Shelley Moore Capito, part of the Republican leadership, said: “I’d be checking for bugs is what I’d be checking for.”Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who ran against then campaigned for Trump, said the idea of taking gifts from other countries “is never a good practice”.“It threatens intelligence and national security. Especially when that nation supports a terrorist organization,” she wrote on X. “Regardless of how beautiful the plane may be, it opens a door and implies the President and US can be bought.”Even the Senate majority leader, John Thune, acknowledged “there are lots of issues associated with that offer, which I think need to be further talked about”, while Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican senator, suggested: “It would be better if Air Force One were a big, beautiful jet made in the United States of America.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA spokesperson for the White House accused Democratic leadership of “prioritizing politics over critical DOJ appointments” and “obstructing President Trump’s ‘Make America safe again’ agenda”.Trump previously defended accepting the aircraft before departing for a trip to the Middle East, calling it “a very nice gesture” and suggesting the plane would eventually be housed in his presidential library after its service life.“Now I could be a stupid person and say: ‘Oh no, we don’t want a free plane,’” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer.”The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, indicated on Monday that legal details were “still being worked out”, but insisted that “any donation to this government is always done in full compliance with the law”.There are three nominations to the justice department awaiting confirmation, the New York Times reports, with dozens more likely to come down the pipeline. More

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      Top Democrat calls for investigation into ‘chaotic’ Newark airport delays

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      One of America’s most important airports continued to be hit by delays and cancellations on Monday as the Senate’s top Democrat called for an investigation into the chaotic crisis.The problems at Newark, a busy airport in New Jersey that acts as one of the main hubs for New York City and the surrounding region, have persisted since last week, causing serious issues for tens of thousands of travelers.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, called for an investigation into the “chaos” that the Federal Aviation Authority says has been sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.“To say that there is just minor turbulence at Newark airport and the FAA would be the understatement of the year. We’re here because the FAA is really a mess. This mess needs a real forensic look, a deep look into it,” Schumer said. “So today I am demanding a full inspector general investigation as to what went on.”Schumer added: “The chaos at Newark very well could be a harbinger if issues like these aren’t fixed, and if the FAA can’t get real solutions off the ground.”Other politicians joined in.New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said he knows US transportation secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job”, Kirby said.Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuffy, the transportation secretary, last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades”.Meanwhile, the US army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington DC airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington national airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. More

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      Senate Democrats to mark Trump’s ‘100 days from hell’ with marathon speeches

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      Democratic senators will on Tuesday mark Donald Trump’s 100th day in office with marathon floor speeches intended to highlight his administration’s failures, seizing on his divisive tariff policy and attacks on the judiciary to argue he was not joking when he mulled governing as “a dictator”.Republicans, meanwhile, praised the president’s actions over the first 100 days, though the House speaker, Mike Johnson, acknowledged “some bumps along the road” he described as the necessary byproduct of the radical changes Trump campaigned on.The 100-day milestone has given Trump’s allies and enemies alike in Congress an opportunity to reflect on his presidency, which Democrats, confined to the minority in both the Senate and House of Representatives at least through next year, argue has accomplished little besides haphazardly dismantling important federal agencies and rendering precarious a previously robust economy.“Donald Trump’s first 100 days have been 100 days from hell,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader.“Donald Trump is not governing like a president of a democratic republic. He’s acting like a king, a despot, a wannabe dictator. Remember that during the campaign, he indicated that he’d be a dictator just on day one. But everything we’ve seen so far shows he wants to be a dictator for much, much longer.”Democrats are looking to regain their popular support after underperforming in November, when voters nationwide sent Trump back to the White House with Republicans in full control of Congress.Earlier this month, New Jersey’s Cory Booker spent 25 hours on the Senate floor condemning Trump in a record-breaking speech, while on Sunday, Booker and the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, were out for more than 12 hours on the Capitol steps, condemning the GOP’s plans for a huge bill that will extend tax cuts and pay for mass deportations, potentially by cutting social safety net programs.The tactics have been compared to those of the civil rights and other protest movements, and on Tuesday, Schumer said Democrats would hold the Senate floor “until late tonight to mark these dismal 100 days by speaking the truth”.“What is the truth? The truth is this: no president in modern history has promised more on day one and delivered less by day 100 than Donald Trump. In record time, the president has turned a golden promise into an economic ticking timebomb. It’s getting worse every day, and he calls it progress.”Republicans have taken the opposite view of Trump’s record, promoting his moves to ban diversity initiatives in the government and elsewhere, crack down on transgender rights, block immigrants from crossing the border and attempt to step up deportations as “promises made, promises kept”.“We’re just getting started, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re so excited,” Johnson told reporters.But opinion surveys have found that Trump’s approval rating has sunk into the negative at a point earlier than his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, whose presidency wound up mired in public discontent. The plunge in popularity for a president who just over five months ago became the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades is viewed as a consequence of his disruptive approach to implementing tariffs, and his administration’s attacks on a judiciary that has sought to temper some of his policies.“There’s some bumps along the road. I mean, we’re changing everything,” Johnson replied, when asked about the president’s approval ratings.“The last four years was an absolute unmitigated disaster, and we got to fix it all. So when you’re doing that, it’s disruptive in a way.” More

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      Democrats’ deference to Biden was a disaster. They still haven’t learned their lesson | Norman Solomon

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      Joe Biden’s insistence on running for re-election was certainly disastrous. It kept credible contenders out of the Democratic presidential primaries and prevented the selection of a nominee who had gained momentum in the winnowing process. Even after his stunningly feeble debate performance on 27 June last year, Biden took several weeks before finally opting out of the race. That left Kamala Harris a mere 107 days between the launch of her campaign and election day.Ample evidence shows that the Biden team was riddled with obstinate denial and misrepresentation aimed at the public. But tales of tragic egomania in high places can take us only so far. What’s essential is to scrutinize how – and why – the Democratic party, its leaders and its prominent supporters enabled Biden and his inner circle to get away with such momentous stonewalling for so long.Democrats in Congress, with few exceptions, refused to jump off the Biden 2024 bandwagon until the debate disaster. Similar enabling also came from state party chairs and Democratic governors. Likewise, a wide range of party-allied organizations toed the Biden party line. Meanwhile, many activists took on the role of spectators, if not cheerleaders for another Biden campaign, in an unfolding tragedy of vast proportions.A common denominator was fear. Fear of being accused of disloyalty to the Democratic president. Fear of being ostracized by fellow Democrats or denounced by anti-Trump commentators. Fear of being accused of weakening the party by pointing out Biden’s evident frailty. Fear of damaging personal ambitions or future access to halls of power. And on and on.The silence and compliance helped Biden to coast toward renomination. Yet by midway through his term, polling numbers and increasingly shaky public behavior were clear signals that he would be a weak candidate. Support from working-class voters, the young, and people of color drastically eroded.Notably, leading progressives in Congress assisted Biden in fending off a serious primary challenge. Representative Pramila Jayapal, then chair of the congressional Progressive caucus, made a very early endorsement. “I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out,” she said in November 2022. Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden in April 2023. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him three months later.Polls routinely showed that most Democratic voters did not want Biden to run again. But party leaders were on autopilot, choosing discretion over valor, benefitting their relations with the White House but undermining the party’s prospects of retaining it – as is now painfully and undeniably clear.A few weeks ago, speaking at a Harvard Kennedy School forum, Jayapal said: “I do think had the president just served one term, he would have gone out a hero, he would have passed the torch, he would have been celebrated for his accomplishments, we would have had a really strong Democratic primary with a lot of good candidates, and then we would have had the full election season to fight it out and to actually get somebody who could win.”Now, an open question is whether crucial lessons have been learned and will be heeded. At stake is the capacity of the Democratic party to defeat Trumpist forces in the midterm elections next year and in 2028.The outlook is not good. A grim reality is that the Democratic party and its loyalists have developed an enduring corrosive culture – which had everything to do with the insistence on continuing to fuel the faulty Biden 2024 locomotive as it dragged the party toward a calamitous defeat.I am not writing from a vantage point of hindsight alone. In November 2022, days after the midterm elections, my colleagues and I at the progressive non-profit RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign (renamed Step Aside Joe when Biden announced his candidacy the following spring). During the next 20 months, not one other sizable national organization was willing to push for Biden to forego a re-election bid.We began in New Hampshire, the longtime first-in-the-country presidential primary state. (Biden had finished fifth with only 8.4% of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary there. For 2024, he demoted New Hampshire to make South Carolina first.) On 9 November 2022, our kickoff digital ads reached Democrats across New Hampshire. Within days, upwards of 2,000 Democratic voters in the state had signed a Don’t Run Joe petition, conveying this message: “We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn’t gamble on Joe Biden’s low approval rating.”That was the gist of our messaging that continued for more than a year and a half via online advertising, email blasts, social media, news releases, media interviews, mass texting to Democratic voters, leafleting at state party conventions and TV ads in several key states and Washington DC. A mobile Don’t Run Joe billboard circled the Capitol and White House as well as the site of a Democratic National Committee meeting.Don’t Run Joe placed full-page print advertisements in the Hill, aimed at congressional Democrats. One ad included a picture of men in suits with their heads in the sand. Presented as An Open Letter to Democrats in the House and Senate, the ad declared that “evasion is no solution” and concluded: “Conformity and fear of a White House rebuke have never served Democrats or the nation well. It is time to stop muffling genuine concerns and start being honest about the pivotal downsides of a prospective Biden ’24 candidacy. The future of the Democratic Party – and the country – is at stake.”Today, conformity and fear are still contagions afflicting the Democratic party, now impairing its capacity to roll back Donald Trump’s autocratic rule and effectively fight for a progressive agenda. The rebellion against Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, while encouraging, has not shaken the party’s underlying power structure. And habitual deference to uninspiring party leadership does not bode well.The day after the president’s recent demagogic speech to Congress, the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, were the featured speakers for “a virtual National Update and Call to Action”. The next morning, I received a text from a progressive Democratic party activist, who summarized the event as “sad and weak,” adding: “Jeffries and Martin’s delivery was anemic, content essentially pablum.” The activist signed off with the words “Really frightened”.I asked if it would be OK to use the activist’s name while quoting from the text in an article. The reply was both understandable and symptomatic of how fear prevents the kind of open debate that the Democratic party desperately needs: “No, I am working inside the party … ”

      Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine More

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      For the sake of US democracy, it’s time for Chuck Schumer to step down | Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin

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      In just two months, Donald Trump has launched an assault of staggering ferocity on America’s values, laws and people. The Democratic party faces a choice: does it lead the fight against authoritarianism and billionaire capture, or does it hunker down and hope the president implodes on his own? After last week’s legislative debacle, we’ve concluded that if Democrats want to fight, they need to replace the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, with someone who understands the stakes.Since November, our grassroots movement, Indivisible – led by regular people organizing nationwide – has been fighting back. Indivisible groups have pushed members of Congress, attended town halls, protested Elon Musk, and organized locally against Trump’s agenda. Everywhere we go – red, blue or purple – people ask why Democratic leadership doesn’t share their urgency.For months, we urged Senate Democratic leadership to use every tool at their disposal to fight back and raise the alarm. We asked them to stay unified against Trump’s nominees – a cabinet of billionaires and extremists who openly flout the law. We asked them to organize against Maga bills such as the Laken Riley Act, which expands Trump’s mass deportation powers. We asked them to use every procedural tool to halt business as usual. All too often the response has been: “We’re in the minority, we don’t have the votes.”This argument collapsed with the passage of a funding bill packed with Maga priorities. The funding bill required 60 votes to pass, giving Democrats rare leverage. They could have demanded safeguards against Musk’s raid of the government or at least stopped Republicans from making things worse. This was perhaps their only real chance to take a stand this year.Under Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership, House Democrats overwhelmingly united to oppose the bill, forcing the House speaker, Mike Johnson, to pass it with Republican votes. Then it reached the US Senate, where Schumer initially vowed to block it – but reversed course within 24 hours and gave Republicans the votes they needed.This was bad policy and worse politics. History shows that the party demanding new concessions in a funding fight loses public support – and Republicans were the ones making demands. Republican leaders and Trump himself were openly thrilled with Schumer. House Democrats felt betrayed. Nancy Pelosi, a master legislative strategist, put it bluntly: “I myself don’t give away anything for nothing. I think that’s what happened.”Schumer’s defense was that avoiding a shutdown would prevent further damage and stop Trump’s rise. But those with the most at stake disagreed. Litigators fighting Trump’s legal battles said passing the continuing resolution hurt their cases more than a shutdown. The federal employees’ union acknowledged that while a shutdown would be painful, a blank check for Trump to continue his rampage was worse. Yes, a shutdown would be an opportunity for Trump to wreak havoc on federal agencies – but he is doing precisely that already while all the lights are on. From the Center for American Progress to House Democrats to Never Trumpers, a broad coalition agreed: Democrats needed to take a stand.Even if one accepted Schumer’s rationale, his lack of strategy was indefensible. He knew for months this would be the Democrats’ only leverage point. There was no excuse for entering the week without a plan or for undercutting House Democrats after they took a tough vote.The real reason for Schumer’s surrender was a mystery until this week. In an interview with Chris Hayes following the backlash, he was asked if we were facing a constitutional crisis. His response: “We’re not there yet.”It was a stunning admission. The problem isn’t just Schumer’s strategy – it’s his perception of reality. He is conducting business as usual while the country burns.After the Senate Democratic collapse, we called an emergency meeting with over 1,300 Indivisible leaders across the country. The reaction was near-universal: shock, despair and rage. Our leaders – who are holding “empty chair” town halls to pressure Republican lawmakers hiding from constituents – couldn’t understand why Schumer wouldn’t fight as hard as they are. They felt betrayed. Ultimately, 91% of local leaders across blue, red and purple states voted for Indivisible to call on Schumer to step down.We made this call in sorrow, not anger. We’ve worked closely with Schumer over the years. We appreciate his achievements. We like him personally. But the events of the last four months have made painfully clear that the Democratic party is not going to climb out of this hole by relying on the same people who led us into it. We need a leader who understands we’re in an emergency and acts like it. We need our leaders to match the fervor of the people rising up in defense of America.That leader can emerge if we create the opening. Schumer’s fate is no longer in his hands. The Democratic senators who can demand a new leadership election answer to us – their constituents. They will act if we speak up. We get the party we demand – and for the sake of our democracy, we must demand more.

      Leah Greenberg is the co-executive director of Indivisible

      Ezra Levin is the co-executive director of Indivisible More

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      ‘I’m not stepping down’: Chuck Schumer defies Democrats’ calls over funding bill

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      Chuck Schumer defied calls to give up the top Democratic position in the Senate after he voted for Republicans’ funding bill to avoid a government shutdown, saying on Sunday: “I’m not stepping down.”Schumer has faced a wave of backlash from Democrats over his decision to support the Republican-led bill, with many Democrats alleging that the party leader isn’t doing enough to stand up to Donald Trump’s agenda.Explaining his decision during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Schumer said: “I knew when I cast my vote against … the government shutdown … that there would be a lot of controversy.” He said that the funding bill “was certainly bad”, but maintained that a shutdown would have been 15 or 20 times worse.Schumer has argued that billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) would have used a shutdown to “eviscerate the federal government”, which he said would have been “devastating”.Schumer, describing his decision as a “vote of principle”, went on to say that as a leader: “You have to do things to avoid a real danger that might come down the curve. And I did it out of pure conviction as to what a leader should do and what the right thing for America and my party was. People disagree.”In response to whether he believes he is making the same mistake as Joe Biden did last year when he refused to move aside to allow for new Democratic leadership, Schumer said: “No, absolutely not,” adding, “Our caucus is united in fighting Donald Trump every step of the way. Our goal, our plan, which we’re united on, is to make Donald Trump the quickest lame duck in modern history by showing how bad his policies are.”Schumer’s latest pushback against calls for his resignation comes after Maryland representative Glenn Ivey became the first Democratic lawmaker this week to publicly call for Schumer’s resignation.Speaking to constituents at a town hall earlier this week, Ivey said: “I respect Chuck Schumer. I think he had a great career … But it may be time for Senate Democrats to get a new leader.”Meanwhile, the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized what she called an “acquiesce” by Schumer to the Republican-led bill after almost every single Democrat in the House voted against the Republican spending bill.“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people,” she said.” Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think, is a huge slap in the face.” More

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      Politics have changed but the Democrats haven’t – they are old and out of touch | Moira Donegan

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      Is this the way the Democratic party ends – not with a bang, but with a whimper? Last week, the party’s Senate caucus seemed poised to do something that they had never done before: block the Trump administration’s proposed continuing resolution, and shut down the government. It would have been a largely symbolic move, one that signaled opposition to the Trump administration’s usurpation of Congress’s spending authority and a willingness to play procedural hardball in order to slow Elon Musk’s radical anti-government agenda. It would have signaled, too, a party willing to take itself seriously as the opposition to a president with authoritarian ambitions.Government shutdowns are unpopular, but so, right now, is the Democratic party: several senators from swing states seemed ready to stick their necks out, ready to bet that it would be better to be seen doing something – anything – to oppose the Trump agenda than to roll over yet again. And for a few days, at least, it looked like Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, would back them up.Then he didn’t. Schumer abruptly reversed course on the continuing resolution, vowing to both allow the government funding bill to come to the Senate floor and to vote for it himself. The bill passed.For many, the moment was emblematic of the Democratic leadership’s singular unwillingness to oppose Donald Trump, and their bizarre belief that the Republican party – that cabal of increasingly fascist politicians that has spent the past decade calling their opposition pedophiles, attacking the rule of law and eroding democratic self-government – can be reasoned with, cajoled and brought back to their senses. Weak, ineffectual, unburdened by conscience or principle, unwilling to take their own side in an argument, and preferring to lose with dignity than to win at the risk of offending anyone: in the budget fight, Schumer embodied all of his party’s worst impulses, the ones that have allowed Donald Trump to seize control of American politics and turn our constitutional order to dust.In many ways, Schumer is reading from a 30-year-old playbook, the one that brought Bill Clinton to power in 1992. Clinton, a moderate, tracked to the right, distanced himself from his party on social issues, prized compromise, and touted himself as tough on crime. This formula worked once, and Democratic party conventional wisdom has demanded that the party return to it, over and over again, in spite of changed circumstances and diminishing returns – like the pet dog who continues to lick a greasy spot on the sofa where she once found a piece of dropped cheese. Times have changed since 1992; the people who were infants that year that Clinton’s centrism swept to power are now not only adults, but adults with back pain. There was a moment in the 2024 campaign, after the selection of Tim Walz as Kamala Harris’s running mate, when it looked like the party might finally abandon this old strategy and take on a more aggressive and affirmative tactic; instead, Walz was muffled, and the party leaders are now mistaking the result of their rightward-tacking strategy as a product of the failure to adhere to it faithfully enough. Politics have changed, but the Democrats haven’t: they are old and out of touch, not just in their gerontocratic leadership, but in their worldview. In the New York Times last month, James Carville, a veteran of the 1992 Clinton campaign, advised his party to “roll over and play dead”. But if the Democrats really were dead, would anyone be able to tell the difference?But one Democrat seems to be showing some refreshing signs of life. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young, progressive Democrat from New York, had in recent years seemed eager to show her willingness to cooperate with Democratic leadership, acting as a key vote and public messenger on crucial issues. But her patience with her party seems to have run out. In a CNN interview, she called Schumer’s capitulation to Trump a “tremendous mistake” and a “huge slap in the face” to Democratic voters – and to a major federal workers’ union, which had endorsed a shutdown. “There is a huge sense of betrayal” among voters, she told journalists, at the mainstream Democrats’ unwillingness to fight.The mainstream of the Democratic party has long accused progressives – like Ocasio-Cortez and her mentor, Bernie Sanders – of a kind of moral vanity, a willingness to sacrifice effective governance or policy gains for the sake of personal purity. The shoe is now on the other foot: it is the mainstream Democratic leadership – Schumer and his allies – who now favor decorum over the public interest, personal dignity over principle, a vain hope for a return to the politics of the past over their responsibility to engage with the realities of the present. It is the centrist Democrats, not the progressives, who are living in a delusion, and who are selling out the country in order to maintain it.Schumer may have been a better man for the job in a different era. “Schumer once had a salty, outer-borough pique that did some work to counter Trump,” the writer Sam Adler-Bell wrote in New York Magazine, “but his mien today is weary and distracted.” Now, he seems tired, his red glasses slipping down his nose, his affect exhausted. No wonder he doesn’t want to fight Donald Trump – he doesn’t have much fight left in him at all. After her public break with Schumer, some speculated that Ocasio Cortez might challenge him in a primary for his Senate seat. She should. Schumer comes up for re-election in 2028, at which point he will be nearly 78 years old; Ocasio-Cortez will be 39. Would it even be a fair fight? More

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      Jon Stewart on Democrats: ‘It’s Trump’s world and we’re just cowering in it’

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      Late-night hosts took aim at the ineffective tactics of the Democrats while also taking issue with Donald Trump’s response to the weekend’s deadly storms.Jon StewartOn The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said that “it is Trump’s world and we’re just cowering in it” in a segment devoted to calling out how poorly the Democrats have handled his second presidency.Over the weekend, Trump played golf once again, which led to a picture of him walking into an office “in his golf attire to bomb the shit out of Yemen”. In attacking the country he “continued a presidential tradition going back decades”.With the recent vote over the new Republican budget to avoid a shutdown, Democrats finally had “an opportunity to stand up” to a “wannabe tyrant”.The budget was criticised by some as a non-starter yet Chuck Schumer broke ranks and voted to move it forward. “What the fuck happened?” he asked.In an interview, Schumer said that the party would “keep at it” but Stewart joked: “Don’t you have to start it to keep at it?”In another interview, Schumer said the best time to reason with Republicans was in the gym as they are more open and less inhibited. “That’s your fucking plan?” he asked. “I’m gonna dangle my balls out of my shorts and then … at the gym?”Stewart also found footage of him saying the same thing back in 2019. “You know I’m not here to posture-shame but for a guy who seems to be spending most of his life in gym: a little less talky-talk, a little more core.”He added: “They’re only being agreeable with you because they want you to leave them alone.”Stewart also joked that “pedalling really hard and not going anywhere is a great metaphor for the Democratic party right now”.He also played a montage of Democrats comparing the state of things to a fever that will inevitably break. “These Republicans are committed to a plan born of an ideological 50- to 60-year project to remake the United States … and classifying it as a fever excuses you.”He said it “allows you to pretend that this is an issue of messaging” and that that was “no match for the game the Republicans are playing”.Jimmy KimmelOn Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host said that on St Patrick’s Day it was “nice to have an excuse to drink on a Monday” given how bad things currently are.There was “a terrible weekend of deadly storms” yet the president who chided Joe Biden for being away when Hurricane Helene raged decided to play golf once again. “If you scored hypocrisy like golf he’d be 30 strokes under par right now,” he said.Trump claimed victory again but Kimmel asked: “Who are the other players in this tournament?”He joked that it could just be “Eric with his Fisher Price clubs” and demanded “a forensic investigation” into the game.Later that day, Trump finally posted that he would be praying with Melania for those affected. “Praying together might be the only activity those two do less than sleeping together,” Kimmel joked.This weekend also saw Trump get accidentally prodded by a fuzzy microphone during an interview. “How funny would it be if that happened every time he was interviewed from here on out?” he joked. More