US Democrats rage as some in their party succumb to Trump on the funding deal.

Anger was mounting in the Democratic Party on Saturday as the party’s top US senator led a group of members in hesitant backing of a Republican bill that avoided a government shutdown.

Congressional ratification of the contentious budget package was viewed as a loss for Democratic backbenchers, as well as the latest example of party leaders’ political inability to oppose President Donald Trump as he demolished the US government bureaucracy.

“Democrats must fight back, not roll over,” Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez proclaimed Friday, urging her fellow Democrats in the Senate to reject the spending package, which grassroots members of the party worry is rife with detrimental cuts.

The plan cuts billions of dollars in public spending at a time when federal agencies are already dealing with the firing of thousands of civil servants by Trump and his leading waste hunter, Elon Musk.

Velazquez’s and others’ appeals, including prominent House progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were in futile, as the resolution cleared the Senate late Friday with the backing of ten Democrats, including New York Minority Leader Charles Schumer.

The 74-year-old Democratic leader first claimed this week that his party was unified in opposition to the Trump-backed Republican measure. But on Thursday, he caved and said that he would vote in favor to keep the government’s lights on.

Disunity

Schumer defended his position as the least bad option and “the best way to minimize the harm that the Trump administration will do to the American people.”

His close Senate partner, Dick Durbin, concurred.

“With Trump and Musk taking a chainsaw to the federal government’s workforce and illegally freezing federal funding, the last thing we need to do is plunge our country into further chaos and turmoil by shutting down the government,” according to Durbin.

However, inside their camp, it has been a tough pill to take.

“Today was a bad day for the country, and I won’t sugarcoat it, today was also a bad day for the Democratic Party,” California Senator Adam Schiff said in a video uploaded on X after the vote.

With no authority over the White House, either chamber of Congress, or the US Supreme Court, “the only hope that we have of standing up to this president, of pushing back against the destructive actions that he’s taking, is if we stay together,” Schiff said, bemoaning Democratic division in the Senate.

However, in a furious post on the Bluesky platform, New York progressive Ocasio-Cortez said Senate Democrats had “destroyed” their chances of future collaboration with their House counterparts by their “fear-based, inexplicable abdication.”

She went on to say, “They own what happens next.”

However, senior House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries attempted to downplay the disagreements.

“Our party is not a cult, we are a coalition,” he declared in a statement following the Senate decision. “On occasion, we may strongly disagree about a particular course of action.”

‘No more cowardice!’

Earlier this week, progressive Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal told CNN that Democratic senators who support the GOP proposal will suffer a “huge backlash.”

Schumer has already feeling the heat, with over 100 people protesting outside his New York home on Friday.

Members of the Sunrise Movement, a group of young environmentalists, gathered outside the senator’s Washington office “demanding that he fight for our generation and block Trump’s disastrous budget.”

“No more cowardice,” the group said on X. “Step up or step aside.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, expressed similar feelings, saying that Democrats who voted yes “just handed Musk and Trump free rein to destroy our environmental agencies and gut the civil service.”

Meanwhile, Republicans headed by Trump are celebrating the opposition’s confusion.

“Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing,” the president said from his Truth Social account Friday, adding that it takes “‘guts’ and courage.”