Senate Democrats Are Quietly Plotting To Oust Chuck Schumer

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has had a fractured relationship with the Democratic Party base ever since he voted to fund the government last March. Unfortunately for him, time hasn’t healed that wound, and there’s a growing resistance to Schumer that hopes to oust him from his leadership position after the midterms.

The Wall Street Journal, drawing on more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former congressional aides, activists, and advisers, found widespread unease about the New York senator’s grip on the party’s direction. The report makes it clear that Schumer’s own colleagues increasingly see him as an anchor, slowing their response to President Trump, steering primaries toward centrists they don’t want, and draining the fundraising pipeline that Democrats desperately need heading into the midterm elections.

According to the report, last month, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut met with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown. The conversation turned to what to do about Schumer. According to people familiar with the dinner, Murphy disclosed that some lawmakers had already been running informal vote counts to see whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from his leadership post. Murphy added that Schumer had enough backing to survive. But the fact that anyone was counting at all said something.

Murphy has since walked it back, carefully. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” he told reporters. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.” 

But Murphy’s backpedaling doesn’t change the reality. Murphy is reportedly part of a group of senators who have been actively canvassing colleagues about their frustrations with Schumer. This group, nicknamed “Fight Club,” (hey…) is a Signal chat group where progressives coordinate strategy around opposing Schumer’s preferred candidates in key 2026 races. The Fight Club’s grievance, at its core, is that Schumer is tilting the playing field toward centrists while an insurgent energy on the left goes untapped. The group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and it appears that Warren has been initiating those conversations directly. Smith’s advisers have gone further, holding discussions with other Senate staff about concrete scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership. 

The concern isn’t purely ideological. It’s financial, and that’s where things get uncomfortable. Schumer’s aligned super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, got outpaced by its Republican counterpart last year. Entering 2026, the Democratic super PAC had $36 million in cash on hand and $12.4 million in debt. The GOP’s equivalent had $100 million on hand and zero debt. 

In the money primary – the one that quietly decides Senate races before a single vote is cast – Schumer’s side is getting lapped.

Making matters worse for Schumer, meetings among Democratic Senate chiefs of staff, which should be routine operational sessions, have reportedly become forums for airing discontent with Schumer’s stewardship. The pressure building in those rooms is aimed at a specific outcome: Schumer commits to retiring from the Senate when his seat is up for re-election in 2028, clearing a path for whoever comes next.

That next person may already have a name attached. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii has been identified as Schumer’s own preferred successor. Apparently, Schumer has thought this through enough to have a pick. But Schatz isn’t moving until Schumer moves first. His posture, per senators and aides familiar with the discussions, is to wait it out.

Schumer may have the votes to survive a mutiny for now. But his colleagues are doing the math, his fundraising is underperforming, his preferred candidates are generating internal blowback, and the party seems anxious to see him go. The caucus isn’t in open revolt yet, but it’s not looking good for Chuck Schumer.