Democrats split after short-term funding bill passes.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Quick hits.

1. The Trump administration deported over 250 alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, citing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which empowers the president to deport citizens of countries considered an enemy of the United States during a war or invasion. The administration carried out the deportations despite a ruling by a federal judge that temporarily blocked them from using the law to deport noncitizens in U.S. custody. (The deportations)
2. The United States carried out a series of aerial and naval strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, targeting air defenses, drone systems, and missile stockpiles. At least 53 people have reportedly been killed in the strikes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the strikes were in response to Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, adding that the strikes would continue until the group stops. (The strikes) Separately, U.S. Central Command forces announced that they had conducted an airstrike in Iraq that killed a top ISIS leader and another operative. (The strike)
3. At least 40 people were killed by severe storms in the Midwest and South. Over 100,000 people remain without power as the storm systems shift east. (The storms)
4. The Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested a second student involved in the protests at Columbia University last year, alleging that she had overstayed her visa and broken the law while participating in the protests. Additionally, the agency said another student involved in the protests self-deported. (The latest)
5. President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the elimination of seven federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. (The order)

Today's topic.

The government funding bill. On Saturday, President Donald Trump signed a stopgap bill to fund the government through September and avert a government shutdown. The bill — called a continuing resolution (CR) — was sent to Trump’s desk after the Senate voted 54–46 on Friday to pass it, with two Democrats voting in favor and one Republican voting against. Prior to the final vote, the Senate invoked cloture 62–38. 

Refresher: The Senate’s cloture rule outlines the procedure of ending debate on proposed legislation and forcing a floor vote. The rule requires a three-fifths majority, normally 60 senators, to bypass a filibuster, which would extend debate indefinitely. Once brought to a floor vote, bills require a simple majority to pass. 

You can read our previous coverage of the funding bill, which passed the House 217–213 on Thursday, here.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) initially signaled that Democrats would block the CR, but he later changed course and led nine other members of the Democratic caucus to vote in favor of cloture. Schumer said that while he opposed the CR, a government shutdown would have been a worse outcome. 

Schumer and other Democrats expressed concerns that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) could significantly reduce the size of the federal government during a shutdown, as funding lapses give the president wide latitude to decide which agencies to keep open and which workers to furlough. For instance, the White House could have designated DOGE’s activity as essential while temporarily closing other departments, allowing DOGE to operate more freely within those departments’ systems.  

However, Schumer’s decision to help advance the bill drew widespread criticism from House Democrats, who voted against the CR for its funding priorities that supported President Trump’s agenda. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) said, “This false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable,” while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) said the bill would lead to “the evisceration of the federal government.” Furthermore, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY) declined to answer a reporter’s question about his support for Schumer.

Today, we’ll explore reactions from the right and left about the CR’s passage and the response from both parties. Then, my take. 

What the right is saying.

• The right lauds President Trump and Republican leaders for passing the bill. 
• Some say Democrats underestimated Speaker Johnson and paid the price. 
• Others say the Democratic base’s demands are increasingly unreasonable. 

In Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) praised “the Trump-Johnson-Thune budget victory.”

“After the 2024 election, many supposed experts said that President Donald Trump would have a hard time getting legislation through the extraordinarily narrow House Republican majority – or past the Senate’s 60-vote threshold,” Gingrich wrote. “If you had told any so-called expert on Jan. 20 that Republicans could get a seven-month continuing resolution to keep the government open for the rest of the fiscal year through the House with only Republican votes, he or she probably would not have believed you. If you had then told them the bill would be difficult for Senate Democrats to undermine, they would have thought you were dreaming.”

“When the Democrats failed to stop Speaker Johnson, they had only two choices. Both were painful. They could all vote no. If the Senate Democrats did this, the Republicans would not be able to get past the filibuster, and so the government would shut down… Then the Democrats realized President Trump could cut more programs and reshape the bureaucracy even more under a shutdown scenario than he could if they passed the bill,” Gingrich said. “President Trump, Speaker Johnson, and Majority Leader Thune played this round brilliantly and won a huge victory. They also proved that they could pass tax cuts, deregulation, and the other priorities on which President Trump and the Republicans campaigned on in 2024.”

In MSNBC, Susan Del Percio wrote “Chuck Schumer underestimated Mike Johnson.”

“Last December's funding bill was always a temporary stopgap measure that would only fund the federal government through March 13, 2025. More surprising was that Johnson was able to get the House to pass its budget outline last month, with only losing a single vote. This should have served as a canary in the coal mine moment for Democrats,” Del Percio said. “The real blunder Schumer made was miscalculating just how good Johnson has become at playing political hardball. The thought of Johnson passing a six-month continuing resolution with just Republican votes seemed highly unlikely last year, and that was what both Jeffries and Schumer were counting on.”

“Johnson defied the odds and passed the CR, losing just one Republican vote, and picking up an extra yes vote from Maine Democrat Jared Golden. That left Schumer floundering, and with only one option to keep the government open,” Del Percio wrote. “There is a lesson to be learned here, and now would be a good time for Democratic leadership — as well as Senate Majority Leader John Thune — to recognize Johnson’s skills. They don’t have to like him or agree with him, but going forward they should respect him, and maybe even fear him.”

In National Review, Noah Rothman said “activists demand that Democrats set themselves on fire.”

“Democrats spent the past 24 hours arguing with themselves about how much voters would reward their party for shutting down the government. But Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, after what seems to have been a contentious and anxiety-fueled meeting with his fellow Senate Democrats, put the kibosh on the activists’ shutdown gambit. As a result, Schumer has become an object of contempt within the activist class — a cohort that includes more than a few congressional Democrats,” Rothman wrote. “Theater — not strategy — is what Democratic partisans now demand of their elected officials, and they’re not getting nearly enough of it.”

“For weeks, the minority party’s leadership has pleaded with their voters to take stock of how little leverage Democrats have following their mediocre performance at the polls in 2024. They have tried to placate the restive Left with interpretive dances, uninspired 1960s-style protest songs and chants, and the unbecoming deployment of a lot of four-letter words,” Rothman said. “Democratic elected officials are only responding to their voters’ demand for enthusiasm. It is now abundantly clear, though, that the current cast of Democrats cannot give their base what it wants. That tension seems set to come to a head far sooner than Democrats had probably anticipated.”

What the left is saying.

• The left criticizes Schumer for his ineffective approach to the budget fight. 
• Schumer himself defends the outcome as taking the better of two bad options.
• Others say this episode will incentivize Trump to continue bullying Democrats.

In Bloomberg, Nia-Malika Henderson argued “Schumer had no plan for this budget fight.”

“Nothing sums up the fecklessness of the Democratic Party more than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to back the House Republicans’ plan to fund the government. In many ways, Schumer had only bad options and no real choice. But, Schumer, 74, also had no real plan. It was as if he was caught by surprise by the possibility of a government shutdown,” Henderson wrote. “Initially, he suggested that Democrats would block the six-month spending bill hatched by House Republicans and rejected by all but one House Democrat. The next day, he backed down, delivering a floor speech laying out why he would support the measure. This is no way to lead a party.”

“Progressive groups have been galvanizing angry voters, who have flooded town halls to express their discontent with the current course. And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been packing arenas in Republican districts as part of his ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour,” Henderson said. “But Democrats got nothing in this fight, picking the ‘better poison,’ yet hardly advancing their messaging and rebranding agenda. That’s a missed opportunity at a time Democrats have a huge amount of work to do… The midterms offer little hope; not only are they months away, but once again the Senate map looks daunting for Democrats, particularly as incumbents retire.”

In The New York Times, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote about his decision to avert a shutdown.

“Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist. President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground,” Schumer said. “There are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat.”

“For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address this country’s needs. But even if the White House says differently, Mr. Trump and Elon Musk want a shutdown. We should not give them one. The risk of allowing the president to take even more power via a government shutdown is a much worse path,” Schumer wrote. “Right now, Mr. Trump owns the chaos in the government. He owns the chaos in the stock market. He owns the damage happening to our economy. The stock market is falling, and consumer confidence is plummeting. In a shutdown, we would be busy fighting with Republicans over which agencies to reopen and which to keep closed instead of debating the damage Mr. Trump’s agenda is causing.”

In New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore said “Schumer brings a white flag to a gun fight.”

“Democrats have so little actual power and Republicans have so little interest in following laws and the Constitution, much less precedents for fair play and bipartisanship. So it really makes no sense to accuse the powerless minority party of ‘allowing’ the assault on the federal government and the separation of powers being undertaken by the president, his OMB director, and his tech-bro sidekick,” Kilgore wrote. “Having said all that, Senate Democrats did have a strategic choice to make this week, and based on Chuck Schumer’s op-ed in the New York Times explaining his decision to get out of the way and let the House-passed spending bill come to the floor, he made it some time ago.”

“This doesn’t just look bad and feel bad for Democrats demanding that their leaders do something to stop the Trump locomotive: It also gives the supreme bully in the White House incentive to keep bullying them,” Kilgore said. “The reality is that this spending measure was the only leverage point congressional Democrats had this year (unless Republicans are stupid enough not to wrap the debt-limit increase the government must soon have in a budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered)... If a government shutdown was intolerable, then Democrats should have taken it off the table long before the House voted on a CR.”

My take.

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• Republicans outmaneuvered Democrats here.
• I wrote last week that Democrats should have opposed this bill, but now I’m not so sure.
• Democrats now have to deal with fractures in their party that are more obvious now than they’ve been in a long time.

In our modern political duopoly, one party rarely gets put between such a rock and a hard place — but the Trump-led Republican party just pulled off one of the more cunning legislative maneuvers that I’ve seen in recent memory. Simply put: Democrats got outplayed.

By Friday afternoon, Republicans had given Democrats a choice between two very bad options. The first was to reject the continuing resolution and incite a government shutdown. This carried both political and real-world risk. Politically, Republicans in the House and Senate could say Democrats blocked a funding bill that they were ready to pass, which would have not only been true but also novel: Democrats have only forced a government shutdown once since 1990. The real-world risk was even more stark. If the government were to shut down, the Trump administration would have had carte blanche to decide what government employees to furlough, what programs to continue funding, and what arms of the government to shut down. For Democrats worried about DOGE, a shutdown could have led to permanent cuts with no legal recourse.

The second option — the one Democrats took — was to swallow the Republican-crafted CR and keep the government open. This carries political and real-world risk, too. Politically, Democrats would be immediately caving on their promise to stand up to the Trump administration when their base was eager for a fight. Many writers, including me, have been criticizing the Democrats as feckless, helpless messengers — and this path is another retreat. More importantly, though, this route has real-world risk for Democrats, too. The CR gives Trump more spending power to wrest away from Congress and leaves Democrats few legislative options for future obstruction. Voting no on this CR was a chance, perhaps one of their last, to stand up. In a few months, Republicans will have an opportunity to pass a much larger, farther-reaching omnibus bill that will require zero Democratic votes in the Senate.

I saw option two as bad enough that last week, I suggested in our newsletter and on our Sunday podcast that Democrats should reject the bill and risk a shutdown. But today I’m much less sure. The best case for rejecting the short-term funding bill looks a little different than it usually does for a forced shutdown. Since President Trump could have benefitted from a shutdown, Democrats couldn’t use it as leverage to force Republicans back to the table on the bill. On the other hand, a shutdown would have driven the media into a tizzy, and Democrats could have taken their PR war against Musk and DOGE more directly to the public. 

In some ways the case for rejecting the bill seems easy: Republicans get elected, and in two months we get a stock market sell-off, a government shutdown, and disruptive layoffs across the federal government. Democrats could have made the case that this CR was effectively creating a slush fund for Trump and Musk, while also hammering Republicans for passing another CR after promising over and over not to. You could even argue — as I have — that this was one of their last chances to put the legislative brakes on this administration. Plus, the party’s base has been demanding Democrats do something meaningful, and voting no would have met that demand.

But if you’re a Democrat, Schumer’s argument feels more compelling than my initial instincts — and it’s a longer, more mature look at the situation. Maybe a shutdown gets you a week or two of plaudits for “fighting,” but then… the government is still shut down, services start to decay, Republicans rightly blame you for not passing their bill, and Trump and Musk can genuinely ramp up their cuts to the federal programs you claim to be trying to defend. 

That’s a bigger loser politically and in real results. Under a shutdown, the best-case scenario for Democrats is winning a messaging war over whether Republicans are right to do whatever they want to the federal workforce — but it wouldn’t stop them. By avoiding a shutdown, Democrats can say they dodged more pain for the American people while hammering Republicans and Trump over their budget, tariffs, DOGE, and any of his failed promises. Better yet, they put the ball back in Republicans’ court for this September, forcing them to find a compromise in a few months that may not exist. 

Of course, the whole situation is still emblematic of the kind of Democratic fecklessness that I’ve been criticizing. As it turns out, they didn’t have a plan. They just thought Trump and Speaker Johnson were not capable of getting Republicans, with their slim majority, on the same side to pass this short-term funding bill. Well, it turns out they were very, very wrong. Once the bill passed the House, Republican alignment was a foregone conclusion in the Senate, and Democrats could only throw the hail mary of Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) trying to negotiate a different bill with Senate Republicans, which went absolutely nowhere. Then it was time to shut the government down, or fold. 

Meanwhile, the fractures this debate has drawn out within the Democratic Party might be more important than Schumer’s decision to support the CR. Democrats have largely been ignoring their very real ideological divisions for two decades, falling in line behind leaders like Nancy Pelosi while Republicans have been fighting, clawing, and sorting themselves out. The Tea Party uprising, the formation of the House Freedom Caucus, the battle between Trump and establishment Republicans — all of it led us to today, where the party has suddenly unified behind their leader enough to get bills like this across the finish line. 

Now consider the distance between some of the most well known Democrats in the party right now: From Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) to Sens. Chuck Schumer (NY) and Patty Murray (WA). From Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to Elissa Slotkin (MI). From Rashida Tlaib (MI) to Jared Golden (ME). From Elizabeth Warren (MA) to John Fetterman (PA). The list goes on and on and on. And that’s just Congress. 

The party reminds me of some kind of dysfunctional family that swallows all their real feelings and can’t ever say what’s actually on their minds for fear of confrontation and reprisals, and it simply can’t go on like this forever. 

At long last, Democrats might have some fighting to do. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refusing to back Schumer, even for a day, is a sign things might be moving in a more confrontational direction. I wouldn’t downplay the significance of that moment — especially not with rumors already swirling about Ocasio-Cortez throwing her hat in the ring for a New York Senate seat.  

Can Democrats reunify under the pressures of Trump’s onslaught of action? Or are these early fractures, paired with historically low approval for the party, the beginning of a major fight and tidal shift? I genuinely don’t know. But I’d bet we’re closer to the latter. 

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Your questions, answered.

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Is the Tangle audience more left skewed?

— Rick from Homosassa, FL

Tangle: You’re right that our recent surveys have shown strong disapproval of the Trump administration. It’s also true that we received an influx of new readers from a November episode of This American Life that featured Tangle, and many of those readers likely hold left-of-center views. It stands to reason, then, that Tangle’s audience has begun to skew left. 

A couple of important caveats, though. First, our readership growth has also coincided with a new Republican president — a particularly polarizing one at that — so readers on the left are naturally going to feel more animated about the issues we cover and are therefore more likely to use our surveys to voice their displeasure (we saw the opposite of this during the Biden administration, though not to the same degree). Second, our reader survey is not a scientifically representative sample of our audience. We offer it as a way to engage with the arguments shared in the daily newsletter (and solicit feedback), but it should not be confused with a professional poll. Third, I suspect many of our self-identifying conservative or Republican readers are moderates who often find themselves misaligned with this administration. 

That said, Tangle’s mission is to be a big-tent news organization that’s trusted by people of all political persuasions, and if our audience starts to drift too far in either direction, it’s a sign that we need to do a better job reaching the other side. Critically, this does not mean changing our philosophy or “currying favor” with conservative readers by disingenuously taking right-leaning editorial stances. Instead, we’re advertising on right-leaning platforms, seeking to share our work as widely as possible, and doubling down on editorial practices that ensure we consider a full range of views on every issue we cover. Reader survey responses are just one way to gauge the balance of our audience over time, but we don’t think they’re an effective tool to evaluate the bias of our work itself. 

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Under the radar.

All 40 of the unauthorized migrants who were being held at the Guantánamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba have been transferred back to the United States and are now being detained in Louisiana. In January, President Trump directed the Pentagon to prepare 30,000 beds to house detained migrants at the base, saying it would hold those who posed the greatest public safety threat. However, the operation to expand the facility’s capacity was paused a few weeks after it started and the government has not provided further clarity about its decision to transfer the migrants back to the U.S. Fox News has the story.

Numbers.

• 10. The number of Democrats (and Sen. Angus King (ME), an independent who caucuses with Democrats) who voted to invoke cloture on the continuing resolution. 
• 8. Of those 10, the number who voted against the CR in the final vote. 
• 32%. The percentage of Democratic voters who say they want Democrats in Congress to make compromises with President Trump to gain consensus on legislation, according to a March 2025 NBC News poll. 
• 65%. The percentage of Democratic voters who say they want Democrats in Congress to stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington. 
• 59%. The percentage of Democratic voters who said they wanted Democrats in Congress to make compromises with President Trump in April 2017. 
• 33%. The percentage of Democratic voters who said they wanted Democrats in Congress to stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington in April 2017.
• 29%. The percentage of Americans with a favorable view of the Democratic Party, according to a March 2025 CNN/SSRS poll, the party’s lowest favorability rating in CNN polling history.
• –18.9%. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s net favorability rating as of March 17, according to RealClearPolitics polling average. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just written about how we’d cover the 2024 election.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was every state’s most searched travel destination.
• Nothing to do with politics: In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, watch the Chicago River turn green in 60 seconds.
• Thursday’s survey: 3,440 readers answered our survey on the House’s spending bill with 84% opposing the bill and saying the Senate should block it. “This is the Democrats' only leverage point. If they are going to forgo it, why should voters ever believe that the party will fight for them,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

The prevalence of high interest rates in the debt industry often lock borrowers into spirals of debt. Welsh actor Michael Sheen decided to step in to help strangers caught in this system. Using £100,000 of his money, Sheen bought one million pounds of strangers’ debt — 10x the value of what he’d paid for it. The story has been released as a documentary on BBC’s Channel 4 titled Michael Sheen's Secret Million Pound Giveaway. The Guardian has the story.

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