About 100 protesters gathered outside Sen. Chuck Schumer’s Park Slope home on Sunday to criticize him for failing to support a GOP-backed spending bill, with one sign reading, “Lost spine, if found, please return to Chuck.”
Despite mounting pressure to step down, Schumer, the Empire State’s 74-year-old senior senator and Democratic caucus leader since 2017, has insisted on remaining in his leadership position.
The senator demonstrated a “devastating lack of leadership as he capitulated to [President] Trump, [Elon] Musk, and the GOP during negotiations over government funding,” according to a statement from Indivisible Brooklyn, the liberal group that organized the demonstration at Schumer’s Brooklyn residence.
“Since then, Senator Schumer has been pleading his case on multiple platforms, but New Yorkers aren’t buying it,” the spokesperson said. “Schumer is not meeting the dire moment: It’s time for new leadership in the Senate that will fight fascism tooth and nail.”
Some of Sunday’s picketers carried signs reading “Stand up or step down” and “Resist or resign.”
About a dozen officers stood guard outside the embattled leader’s home, which was also surrounded by metal barricades that forced protesters to cross the street.
“Your time is up, Chuck!” they chanted, as the cops watched.
One of Indivisible Brooklyn’s organizers, Jennie Spector, told The Post that Schumer “really betrayed us [and] the people who are counting on him to step up and protect us from what is clearly a fascist government in the White House.”
“We’re calling on him to step down as minority leader because he’s not the leader we need at this moment,” Spector announced.
Schumer’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday from the Post.
The Brooklyn Democrat is facing a massive backlash after voting with nine other Democrats in favor of a Republican spending bill that prevented the government from shutting down earlier this month.
Despite criticism from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Schumer has said he will not resign.
“Look, I’m not stepping down,” Schumer told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in a pre-recorded interview broadcast Sunday. “I voted because I believed in what a leader should do and what was best for America and my party. “People disagree.”
Nonetheless, some rank-and-file Democrats have been outraged by his vote, which they saw as undermining the left wing’s only chance to extract concessions from the GOP.
House Republicans passed the six-month spending bill along party lines, but the GOP’s slim Senate majority meant Democrats could have killed the proposal if they had voted unanimously against it.
That did not happen. Trump signed the bill into law on March 15.
“What we got at the end of the day is avoiding the horror of a shutdown,” Schumer said in defense of his move. “We had no leverage to ask for anything. They would just have said no.”
He also claimed that a partial shutdown would have given Trump and his administration more leeway to make drastic spending cuts to the federal budget.
He claimed that a shutdown would give them an advantage.
His constituents’ outrage prompted him to postpone his book tour last week due to security concerns.
