Replace Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader
The Issue
To the Senate Democratic Caucus:
Voters just handed Democrats a Senate majority. Democrats flipped GOP-held seats in states including Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. That majority belongs to the voters and the organizers who earned it. Now it needs a leader who will use it, and Chuck Schumer has shown again and again that he is not that leader.
He folds when it matters. In March 2025, Schumer supported a Republican spending bill when Democrats had leverage. The backlash was immediate: 82 percent of Indivisible’s leaders in New York, his own state, and 91 percent nationwide called for him to step aside as leader. Eight months later it happened again. Eight members of his caucus defied him to join Republicans in ending the longest government shutdown in history. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal put it, either he approved the deal or he can’t control his caucus. Neither answer is good enough for a majority leader.
He answers to big donors. For decades, Schumer’s top funders have been Wall Street. His top three contributors from 1989 through 2014 were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, and the securities and investment industry gave him more than $10.4 million in that period. In 2007 he played a key role in defeating a tax increase on hedge fund and private equity managers. More recently, Coinbase gave $1.5 million to super PACs tied to Schumer, McConnell, and Jeffries.
He is the Senate’s top recipient of pro-Israel lobby money, and his record follows it. According to OpenSecrets, Schumer has received at least $1.7 million from pro-Israel donors, more than anyone else in the Senate. He was the first Senate Democrat to publicly oppose the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, and NORPAC, a PAC AIPAC’s leadership has been known to route money through, then gave his campaign $90,000. Progressives who want the U.S. to put human rights and international law at the center of policy toward Israel and Gaza cannot count on a leader funded this way.
The new senators already see it. Senators-elect Adam Hamilton (Kansas), Troy Jackson (Maine), Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan), Juliana Stratton (Illinois) and Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota) have all said they won’t support him as leader. They ran and won on new leadership. We stand with them.
Our ask: Senate Democrats will choose their leader by secret ballot as early as this month. We urge every Democratic senator to choose a leader who will fight for real progressive values. This majority wasn’t handed down from leadership. Grassroots organizers built it, door by door and call by call, in places no one thought we could win. We earned a say in where this party goes next. That vote should be a real choice, not a coronation
32,394
The Issue
To the Senate Democratic Caucus:
Voters just handed Democrats a Senate majority. Democrats flipped GOP-held seats in states including Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. That majority belongs to the voters and the organizers who earned it. Now it needs a leader who will use it, and Chuck Schumer has shown again and again that he is not that leader.
He folds when it matters. In March 2025, Schumer supported a Republican spending bill when Democrats had leverage. The backlash was immediate: 82 percent of Indivisible’s leaders in New York, his own state, and 91 percent nationwide called for him to step aside as leader. Eight months later it happened again. Eight members of his caucus defied him to join Republicans in ending the longest government shutdown in history. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal put it, either he approved the deal or he can’t control his caucus. Neither answer is good enough for a majority leader.
He answers to big donors. For decades, Schumer’s top funders have been Wall Street. His top three contributors from 1989 through 2014 were Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, and the securities and investment industry gave him more than $10.4 million in that period. In 2007 he played a key role in defeating a tax increase on hedge fund and private equity managers. More recently, Coinbase gave $1.5 million to super PACs tied to Schumer, McConnell, and Jeffries.
He is the Senate’s top recipient of pro-Israel lobby money, and his record follows it. According to OpenSecrets, Schumer has received at least $1.7 million from pro-Israel donors, more than anyone else in the Senate. He was the first Senate Democrat to publicly oppose the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, and NORPAC, a PAC AIPAC’s leadership has been known to route money through, then gave his campaign $90,000. Progressives who want the U.S. to put human rights and international law at the center of policy toward Israel and Gaza cannot count on a leader funded this way.
The new senators already see it. Senators-elect Adam Hamilton (Kansas), Troy Jackson (Maine), Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan), Juliana Stratton (Illinois) and Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota) have all said they won’t support him as leader. They ran and won on new leadership. We stand with them.
Our ask: Senate Democrats will choose their leader by secret ballot as early as this month. We urge every Democratic senator to choose a leader who will fight for real progressive values. This majority wasn’t handed down from leadership. Grassroots organizers built it, door by door and call by call, in places no one thought we could win. We earned a say in where this party goes next. That vote should be a real choice, not a coronation
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Petition created on November 4, 2026