Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Democratic officeholders and voters alike have been divided over whether their leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, is up to the task of taking the president on.That debate intensified on Thursday, when the Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen announced he will challenge Schumer for the post of Democratic Senate leader, which will become one of the most powerful jobs in Washington when the party takes control of Congress’s upper chamber next year.The contest between Schumer and Van Hollen is the party’s first major test of unity after its triumph in last week’s midterm elections, in which voters gave Democrats their biggest majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives in years. Now the party will be forced to confront the two veteran lawmakers’ differing visions on how to use their newly expanded power to confront Trump, advance the party’s agenda and address divisive issues such as the question of aid to Israel.“Trump’s policies have been fired, but we are still in the position where we need to take advantage of this opportunity.
So that does mean closing the trust deficit? … And I don’t think you can close the trust deficit by simply returning to the status quo,” Van Hollen said in a speech on Friday.Progressive groups have cheered the 67-year-old Van Hollen’s candidacy, and he’s picked up a handful of endorsements in the hours since he made his bid official. But his prospects are unclear: the senator said he is an “underdog” in the contest, which is set to be decided at a behind-closed-doors caucus meeting set for 1 December.Schumer, meanwhile, has expressed confidence he’ll win the Democratic caucus’s nod again, and has already been endorsed by senators from across the party’s ideological spectrum.“I welcome any discussion about the future of our caucus and the important work ahead,” Schumer, 75, wrote on X after Van Hollen announced his bid. “I have the votes to continue serving as Democratic Leader.”A New York City native, Schumer won election to the House in 1980, then the Senate in 1998.
He became the top Senate Democrat in 2017, when the party was in the minority at the beginning of Trump’s first term. Four years later, Schumer became majority leader under Joe Biden, and managed to win passage of parts of his legislative agenda even though the Democratic caucus was so small it could not lose a single vote on party-line bills.Trump returned to power in 2025, and it was not long after that Schumer’s leadership came into question.
In March of that year, Congress faced a deadline to approve new government funding or cause a shutdown. Though many Democrats believed they had leverage over Trump to win concessions, perhaps over the gutting of the federal government by the “department of government efficiency”, Schumer opted to advance a GOP-backed spending measure, arguing that it was a bad time to shut down the government.The compromise triggered an explosion of anger at Schumer both from Democrats in the House of Representatives who had rejected the funding compromise, and activist groups who saw it as a sign that Schumer was no longer fit to be leader.“Senator Schumer has contributed to and led many important accomplishments that Indivisible is grateful for.
But with our democracy on the line, he let us, the country and the Democratic party down,” said Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the network of progressive groups.“Senator Schumer should step aside as leader. Every Democrat in the Senate should call for him to do so, and begin making plans for new leadership immediately.”The relationship between Schumer and the party base – including some Democratic lawmakers – has yet to recover.
Another wave of calls for Schumer to step down arrived later that year, when dissident Senate Democrats decided to end a record-long government shutdown without Republicans meeting any of their demands on healthcare.Schumer did not publicly endorse their deal, but it was widely believed to have his backing. By the time campaigning for the 2026 midterms began, several candidates were making their opposition to him prominent in their platforms.In some ways, the tension is a unique consequence of the differences in power between the minority party in the House and Senate.
In the former, the party out of power has little recourse to block legislation, but in the latter, the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold makes Schumer a major figure in deciding whether his party plays along with the 53 Republicans in the majority, or obstructs them.At the same time that Schumer’s standing among Democrats was growing rocky, Van Hollen’s star was ascending. Elected to the Senate from the House in 2016, Van Hollen made national news when he traveled to El Salvador to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, a Salvadorian who had been wrongfully deported from Maryland in the early days of Trump’s mass deportation campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has joined in criticizing Israel, amid a wider backlash among Democratic voters towards the US ally fueled by accusations it committed a genocide in Gaza.
Van Hollen voted against providing bulldozers and bombs to Israel, and after a visit to the Gaza-Egypt border in 2025, co-released a report accusing Israel of planning to ethnically cleanse the territory. In September, the senator led an unsuccessful resolution to force the state department to issue a report on violence in the West Bank.Schumer’s criticism of Israel has been comparatively muted – he did not vote for the efforts to cute off arm sales, but did support Van Hollen’s resolution on the state department report.
When he was majority leader in 2024, and thereby the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US government, Schumer called on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to step aside.Last week’s sweep of the midterm elections seems to vindicate his leadership of Senate Democrats – after all, the party won just about every state it was contesting, and some where it had invested few resources. Yet Van Hollen said Schumer could have done better, noting that several candidates he had backed in the primaries wound up being rejected by voters.There had been talk of Van Hollen running for president in 2028, and he had initially said he would not challenge Schumer to lead the Senate Democrats.
Activists groups reacted to his reversal with another wave of calls for the party to find a new Senate leader to take them into the majority next year.“Our members are tired of politicians content with incrementalism – they want bold, creative leadership that will help Democrats usher in affordability and accountability without delay or compromise in the next Congress,” said Joel Payne, the executive director of liberal group MoveOn.“We welcome and will support any potential Senate leader willing to meet the moment.”A small number of Democratic senators have publicly backed Van Hollen since he announced his leadership bid, including Bernie Sanders, the independent progressive who caucuses with the party, and incoming senators Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and Peggy Flanagan of Minnesota. Others, such as Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, incoming senator Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Juliana Stratton of Illinois, said the party should choose a new leader, but have not said who that should be.Schumer, meanwhile, retains considerable sway in the party, and has been endorsed by progressive and moderate senators alike.
Those who have backed him argue he’s been effective, and point to last week’s results as proof.“Why would you fire the manager when you just won the World Series?” asked Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, and endorsed Schumer.