A progressive House member from Chicago is calling on Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step down from his leadership position, joining a growing list of fellow Democrats to air that view after he allowed a vote on a Republican spending plan to avoid a government shutdown.
Rep. Delia Ramirez said Wednesday that Schumer should have used the leverage of a potential shutdown to push back against President Donald Trump and a spending plan that would make additional cuts to programs and a government workforce already reeling from the work of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
“This is a moment for Democrats to do more than just talk about fighting or obstructing Donald Trump’s agenda of destroying Social Security and Medicaid, but actually using every legislative authority to do that,” Ramirez said in an interview.
The lawmaker is one of an increasing number of House members to criticize Schumer or say he should step down, a list that may grow as they hold town halls during the recess. So far, none of the minority leader’s Senate colleagues have publicly echoed that view.
A person at a town hall broached the subject Tuesday with Ramirez, asking whether she believed that Schumer should lose his minority leader position. The representative, first elected in 2018, smiled, nodded and answered “yes” before handing off the microphone.
“I said yes, because what I wholeheartedly believe is that, in this precise moment, our constituents are asking us to be the kind of leaders that are going to truly hear our constituents and to make the hard decisions of stepping in and having the courage to do everything we can to hold the line,” Ramirez told POLITICO.
Nearly every Democratic member voted against the Republican plan in the House in a display of unity under House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Schumer has said the spending resolution was a “terrible” bill but that a shutdown would have only empowered Trump and Musk to accelerate the firing of federal workers and slashing of public agencies.
The veteran New York senator has said he has no plans to step down even as the criticism mounts.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Schumer ally, said Tuesday she still supports him but faulted him in unusually blunt terms for what she viewed as giving up leverage in a fight with Republicans. The same day, Democratic Rep. Glenn Iveytold a town hall in Suitland, Maryland, a Washington suburb that is home to many government workers, that Schumer should consider stepping down from his post.
Ramirez, whose view on the minority leader was first reported by Axios, said her criticism is rooted in what she has heard from constituents.
“What I heard from every person that came through that line, in addition to the people that I talked to after, was we are not happy where the Democratic leadership is,” she said. “We believe that you all should do more.”
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