Based on the polls, Republicans may be sweating the midterms right about now, but Democrats are dealing with something uglier — a full-blown leadership crisis hiding in plain sight on Capitol Hill.
The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell on Friday: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing a level of internal revolt that has some members of his own caucus quietly counting heads to see if they can push him out.
Schumer’s political future has been less than certain ever since he voted to keep the government open a year ago. His poll numbers tanked, and rumors flew of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) challenging him when he’s up for reelection in 2028. There have also been reports that Democrats were looking to oust Schumer from leadership, and it looks like that hasn’t died down.
According to this latest report, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) sat down to dinner with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown last month, during which Murphy told the group that some lawmakers had already done informal vote counts to gauge whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from leadership.
Murphy added that Schumer had the votes to survive — for now.
Murphy is among a group of senators and top advisers who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with Schumer’s leadership, according to people familiar with the conversations. That group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who has been initiating conversations with other senators to gauge frustrations with Schumer, some of the people said. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota has also been active in discussions about her frustrations with Schumer, and her advisers have spoken with other Senate staff about different scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership, other people said.
In an interview, Murphy said he is frequently asked about Senate leadership, but he doesn’t have a count of who would vote to remove Schumer and doesn’t recall mentioning one. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” Murphy said. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.” He said he still supports Schumer.
Despite Murphy’s attempts to downplay the situation, more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former aides, activists, and advisers point to the same conclusion: concern about Schumer’s leadership is widespread and growing.
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Apparently, routine meetings between Democratic chiefs of staff on Senate business that keep veering off script into conversations about Schumer and what can be done to pressure him to step aside after November’s elections.
Murphy, Warren and Smith are part of a batch of senators dubbed “Fight Club” who are particularly incensed by Schumer’s approach to the midterms. This group of progressives believes that Schumer favors centrist candidates in some key races and is disregarding the enthusiasm a new crop of outsiders is stoking. The senators maintain a Fight Club chat on Signal where they have discussed how to counter Schumer’s preferred candidates, according to people familiar with the conversations. The existence of the group was reported earlier by the New York Times.
And there’s a money angle, too.
Donor frustration with Schumer has already been hurting a super PAC aligned with the Democratic leader, donors and consultants said. Senate Majority PAC was outraised by the Republican leadership-aligned super PAC last year; the Democratic super PAC started 2026 with $36 million in the bank and $12.4 million in debt, while its GOP counterpart had $100 million and no debt, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Schumer, for his part, remains defiant, but the report suggests that internal pressure is still building. The activist wing of the party is still sour over the government funding fights and apparently doesn’t think that he’s standing up to the Trump administration adequately.
The GOP certainly has its midterm headaches. But division among the Senate Democrats is something that it could exploit.
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