‘We learned some lessons’: How Chuck Schumer and Democrats are gearing up for the next funding fight with Trump

Democrats will soon face a significant test of their willingness to take on President Donald Trump with a fall funding deadline fast-approaching. And this time, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t want to become his party’s bogeyman.

Democrats will soon face a significant test of their willingness to take on President Donald Trump with a fall funding deadline fast-approaching. And this time, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t want to become his party’s bogeyman. Months after a contentious fight that put him at the center of anti-Trump Democratic outrage, Schumer is already taking steps to avoid, once again, being put in an impossible position between Democratic voters gunning for an ugly shutdown fight with Trump and his party’s long-time stance that Democrats should fund the government. This time, they don’t want to find themselves with little leverage to get out of a government shutdown with a Republican president. Members say Schumer’s strategy is to start laying the groundwork early for what will be a contentious and unpredictable post-August recess with the hope of avoiding the “Democrats in disarray” narrative that plagued the party in the spring. “We learned some lessons on what to do and not to do,” one Democratic senator said of the difference between now and the March funding fight. “Schumer’s working on trying to find a path that unifies us.” On Tuesday, Democrats held a lengthy caucus-wide meeting on the path ahead and the Senate minority leader met with his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, later in the day. Members and aides caution there is no formal plan yet for how to tackle Democrats’ next showdown with Trump, but it’s clear Schumer wants to shield his party from the intense backlash it faced from their voters in March – and avoid his own black eye in the process.