• While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may have kept the U.S. government from shutting down last week, his decision to help Republicans pass a spending plan has kicked off a civil war within the Democratic Party. Many on the left are desperate for a fight with President Donald Trump and seething mad at their own party, which they view as, at best, too complacent in the face of Trump’s attacks. And Schumer is now the face of that white-hot rage, with questions swirling about his future as the party’s Senate leader. But Josh Barro, who writes the Substack newsletter ‘Very Serious,’ says Schumer did the right thing.
• And in headlines: The White House said it deported hundreds of migrants under the Alien Enemies Act despite a judge’s order, the U.S. launched a wave of airstrikes on Yemen targeting Houthi rebels, and those American astronauts who’ve been stranded up in space for months could return to earth this week.

• Check out Josh’s newsletter ‘Very Serious’ – https://tinyurl.com/42x363hr
• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
• Support victims of the fire – votesaveamerica.com/relief
• What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast

Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/

TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Monday, March 17th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that is wondering if President Donald Trump knows what sarcasm is. Here he is speaking with host Sharyl Attkisson on her show, Full Measure. 

[clip of Sharyl Attkisson] I’m not understating the complexity of all this, but as a candidate, you said you would have this war settled in 24 hours. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that. 

Jane Coaston: That’s not what sarcasm is. [music break] On today’s show, the Trump administration seems to have ignored a federal court order, and those American astronauts who’ve been stranded up in space forever could return to Mother Earth this week. But let’s start with Democrats, who averted a government shutdown only to kick off an intra-party civil war. On Friday, Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, agreed to a continuing resolution to keep the government open. Democrats who supported the bill argued that permitting the government to shut down would give President Donald Trump and co-president and noted weirdo Elon Musk more power to make life worse for everyday Americans It’s a stance Schumer reiterated in a Saturday interview with the New York Times. He said there was no telling how far Musk and Trump would have taken a shutdown 

[clip of Chuck Schumer] It can last forever. There is no off-ramp. One of the Republican senators told us, we go to a shutdown, it’s going to be there for six months, nine months a year. And by then their goal of destroying the federal government, would be gone. 

Jane Coaston: But Schumer also said he knew his decision would make him persona non grata in the Democratic Party. 

[clip of Chuck Schumer] I knew this would be an unpopular decision, I knew that, I know politics, but I felt so strongly as a leader that I couldn’t let this happen because weeks and months from now things would be far worse than they even are today that I had to do what I had to do. 

Jane Coaston: It wasn’t just Schumer who voted for the bill. Nine other Democratic senators helped Republicans move it past a filibuster. And that has pissed off a lot of other Democrats, like really piss them off. Schumer even acknowledged in that New York Times interview that he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries haven’t spoken since the vote. Because let’s be real here. The continuing resolution sucks. It cuts a ton of valuable services and, for reasons that escape me, also cuts more than a billion dollars from Washington D.C., including nearly 70 million dollars from D.C.’s police department. There’s a bill in the works to stop those cuts from happening, so put a pin in that. And there’s the bigger picture. A ton of Democrats think the time has come to stop giving in to Republicans at every turn, even when, yes, the actual available options for Democrats in Congress right now are pretty limited. Democrats are mad. Sure, they’re mad at Trump and they’re mad at Musk, but right now, they’re absolutely furious at their own party, which they view as, at absolute best, complacent. Here’s New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking to Jake Tapper on Friday. 

[clip of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] It is almost unthinkable why Senate Democrats would vote to to hand the few pieces of leverage that we have away for free when we’ve been sent here to protect Social Security, protect Medicaid, and protect Medicare. 

Jane Coaston: There’s even talk of Senate Democrats needing new leadership. Some want Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to primary Schumer. And while Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy didn’t say it was time for Schumer to go, he wasn’t exactly effusive in his support for the New York Senator. 

[clip of Senator Chris Murphy] He can lead this caucus, but we need to have a conversation inside the caucus about whether we are willing to stand up to Republicans. Listen, we have options. We could decide to not proceed to legislation as an ordinary course of business. There are big fights ahead of us, like the debt ceiling, like another potential government shutdown in six months. So we have opportunities as a caucus to stand up and meet this moment. And I think the American people are demanding that we do that. 

[clip of unnamed journalist] Just yes or no before we move on, do you have confidence in Leader Schumer? 

[clip of Senator Chris Murphy] I still support Senator Schumer as leader, but I think the only way that we are going to be effective as a caucus is if we change our tactics and we have to have a conversation inside our caucus to make sure that we are going to do that. 

Jane Coaston: Journalist Josh Barro took the opposite take from pretty much every Democrat I know on his sub-stack, Very Serious. He argued Schumer did the right thing. So I had to talk to him about the continuing resolution, what this intrademocratic fight is really about, and where we go from here. Josh, welcome to What a Day. 

Josh Barro: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: So you wrote a column about how Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did the right thing by not letting the government shut down. 

Josh Barro: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: The floor is yours. Why was that the right move? 

Josh Barro: Well, because what were the other options? I mean, people, you know, they they want Democrats to fight and a shutdown would have been an opportunity for a fight. But I didn’t see any of Schumer’s opponents actually walking through what would happen next and providing a convincing story of why that fight would produce a better policy outcome for Democrats. I think, in fact, Schumer has a strong argument that it would have produced a worse outcome, which is to say, if you shut down the government, you hand the president a lot more authority to decide what operations of the government to keep open and which ones to close, because much of the government is supposed to close when the government is shut down. Things that are essential keep operating, and there’s supposed to be some sort of objective standard for that, but in practice, the president can basically say, this is essential, this is not essential. All the stuff that DOGE has been trying to close and he’s getting tied up with in the courts, he could just close those things and furlough the people and try to build exactly the government he wants with only the things he cares about continuing to operate. And because he’d have that power, he also has no particular incentive to want the government to reopen once it is closed. I mean, people forget Donald Trump did the longest government shutdown in history, 35 days, 2018 into 2019, basically just for funsies. And that was even before he had Elon Musk there and was really actually trying to dismantle the government. So if you if you want the government to shut down, which has been their effort since day one of his administration, being handed a government shutdown is actually helpful for that. Meanwhile, Democrats, if the government is shut down, muddy the water about whose fault everything is. I mean, you know, you have the president seemingly trying to induce a recession in the United States, pursuing this unpopular trade war. You’re seeing the stock market tank, and you’re seeing a growing realization that this stuff is his fault. And so then if you have this shut down, then it makes it easier for Republicans to raise questions about, you know, whose fault is all of this dysfunction in Washington? You don’t want to get in the way of your opponent when he’s making a mistake. And forcing a shutdown here would have done that. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I think what we heard from some House Democrats was that passing this funding bill would give Trump and Elon Musk carte blanche to keep dismantling the government because the measure contained no protections for existing spending. But as you were saying from Schumer and others in the Senate, we heard that shutting down the government would help Trump and Musk keep doing what they’re doing. So House Democrats are pissed, in lack of a better term. Why do you think that they are wrong? Like what what is going wrong in their logic about this? 

Josh Barro: Well, so I think there’s a couple of things going on here. You know, the flexibility that the president has because we’ll be operating under this continuing resolution is the same flexibility that presidents have from other continuing resolutions. It would be good to have a full year proper appropriations bill that would set more restrictions, but we didn’t have those in place a week ago. I think there’s also something that’s a little bit cheap politically, where house Democrats are able to vote no on this and say they did their part to block it and then blame the Senate. And so you know the when people in the Democratic base are angry, and they are very angry, getting them also joining in the course, people were mad at Chuck Schumer, insulates them from from political attack over this. I thought it was very interesting, the other nine Democrats who joined Chuck Schumer in voting for cloture, because it was not a very ideologically cohesive group of people. You had some moderates, but you also had, for example, Brian Schatz, the the Senator from Hawaii, who’s pretty progressive. He’s widely rumored to want to be majority leader in the future. And I think that was him showing, you know, I’m ready to take tough votes that are unpopular, but in the interest of the party in the long run. And then the third reason I think they’re angry is that I think, you know, while I think Chuck Schumer did the right thing in the end, he didn’t telegraph it very clearly. Uh.

Jane Coaston: No, he did not. 

Josh Barro: No and–

Jane Coaston: He basically uh. 

Josh Barro: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: On Wednesday, he came out and said Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass the spending plan. And then on Thursday, he says he’s going to vote for it. And I think, honestly, I think that that’s part of why Democrats are so mad. I mean, there are lots of reasons why and we’re going to get to that. 

Josh Barro: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: There was a lot of mixed messaging. Do you think that was a failure on Schumer’s part? 

Josh Barro: Well, I think on Wednesday there was a failure. I think, you know, up until Tuesday, when this passed the House, Democrats’ strategy was Republicans are incompetent. They cannot line up their very narrow majority together to agree on shared priorities. And Republicans would have to come crawling to Democrats to say, we have to do a bipartisan bill because we’re too incompetent to do our own party-line bill. And in fairness to them, this has happened a lot over the last few years. Republicans have had terrible problems with cohesion. The problem is once the thing passed the house on Tuesday, Democrats were just screwed. They had no, you know, and this is what happens when you lose elections or it’s ordinarily what happens when you lose elections. I think people have sort of forgotten because the Republican party has been so dysfunctional for so many years. They’ve forgotten that normally when you lose the election and the other party is in power, they pass their agenda and that’s a problem for you. And it sucks. Like I get why Democrats are mad. It sucks to lose elections. Um. It especially sucks to lose elections and then have the party that won get its shit together and figure out how to actually do things. That especially sucks. So like I get that it’s an unfortunate situation, but the only thing to do about that, I mean there’s two, one thing is that you know some of the things the administration is doing are illegal and that’s a matter for the courts, but ultimately the political win where you become able to block stuff through Congress, you have to win the majority back in the midterms next year. And Democrats, I think, will work very hard to do that. But the problem is that those elections aren’t until next year, and Republicans run things for the next 22 months. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I think that there are two separate issues here. 

Josh Barro: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: There’s the micro issue of this CR. 

Josh Barro: Right. 

Jane Coaston: Which sucks, but there weren’t that many options. 

Josh Barro: Right. 

Jane Coaston: And then there’s kind of the macro issue of people are furious and they’re furious at congressional Democrats and congressional Democrats are desperate for a way to push back against Trump or at least be seen as pushing back against Trump and that’s what you see from the house. And I think that for many people. I mean, you’re hearing from people are talking tea party in a way that I haven’t seen Democrats talk in a really long time. And the government funding plan, I think for some people was like the first real tangible piece of leverage that they had. So, if not this, then what? 

Josh Barro: I think it’s really funny when I see people talking about, you know, Democrats need our own Tea Party. I think they should look a little bit about how the Tea Party worked and what it did to the Republican Party, you know, from start in 2009, 2010 when that movement starts. The Tea Party has, over many election cycles, saddled the Republican Party with unelectable candidates. You have these revolts in Republican primaries insisting that you have to nominate these quote-unquote ideologically pure fighter people. and then they lose general elections to Democrats, even in places like Missouri and Indiana, because they, you know, they force the party into nominating unappealing candidates and then they lose. The Tea Party also created this dynamic in the Republican conference, and the House especially, and to a lesser extent in the Senate, where you have these people who define themselves by I fight, I fight, I am obstinate, I do not cooperate. And that led to this dynamic that that persisted basically up until this month. where Republicans could not get their ducks in a row, could not agree on a partisan agenda and actually pass it through the House where they nominally had majority. And that empowered Democrats. So if you want to rebuild that on the Democratic side, if you want to go lose general elections, if you want to nominate presidential candidates and saddle them with platforms that will cause them to lose a presidential election, if you want to not be able to have an effective congressional majority, then go ahead. 

Jane Coaston: So do we need to do what James Carville kind of recommended and just kind of lie down and take it until realistically January, 2027 when a theoretical democratic majority would take power in the house or Senate? 

Josh Barro: I wouldn’t describe it in the terms that James Carville described it, but I but I think he was basically right that the way you win the next election is by the Republicans being bad rather than you know whatever you do yourself. Again, I realize it’s very unsatisfying, but that’s what it is to be in opposition. I mean you can you can lay out what your plans are and what you would do differently, but the thing is when you’re in the opposition, you don’t run the government. And so Democrats should go out there and talk about how terrible everything that the Trump administration is that they’re doing and talk about what they would do differently if they won. But that’s the thing, you have to win in order to do those things. 

Jane Coaston: Bigger picture. 

Josh Barro: Yep. 

Jane Coaston: What does the mess over the shutdown strategy say about the state of the party right now and what should the party take away from this moment? 

Josh Barro: I mean, look, I don’t think that a change in leadership in the medium term is a bad thing. I mean you know the I don’t like this being a catalyst for it because I think Schumer had this specific question right. But I think it’s true that you know the Democratic Party does not have very dynamic national leaders in the Congress. And so, I mean, Chuck Schumer is, what, 80 years old? 

Jane Coaston: So Schumer should step aside? 

Josh Barro: Well, I don’t think he should step aside right now, but I think, you know, in the, I don’t think–

Jane Coaston: Because people people are ready for him to go like immediately, like today. They will–

Josh Barro: Well. 

Jane Coaston: They will take him to the airport if they need to. 

Josh Barro: Sure, but I mean, keep in mind, aside from Democrats, is there any Republican that Republicans have complained about more in the last 20 years than Mitch McConnell? And so I think, you know, sometimes to be an effective legislative leader, you have to deliver messages to your party that they’re not happy to hear about. You can’t make them happy all the time. So I don’t know that, you know the, we need a presidential candidate in 2028 who is beloved. I don’t think we need a Senate minority leader necessarily who is beloved by the base of the party. In fact, that might lead you astray in certain ways. But I do think, you know, I think it’s broadly a problem, the geriatric nature of much of the face of the Democratic Party right now. I think that’s true. 

Jane Coaston: Josh, thank you so much for joining me. 

Josh Barro: Thank you, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Josh Barro. He’s a journalist who writes the substack, Very Serious. We’ll link to his piece in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of Senator Mark [?] of Indiana] I’m happy to see that the president is following up with his promises that he’s going to keep Americans safe and that means getting these criminal drug or gang members, clearly criminal in nature, out of the United States. 

Jane Coaston: The Trump administration said Sunday it deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants over the weekend under the Alien Enemies Act. President Trump issued a proclamation Saturday, announcing that he invoked an 18th century law that allows the government to deport non-citizens without due process. The deportations earned praise from Republican lawmakers like Senator Mark [?] of Indiana. The Alien Enemies Act was last used during World War II to justify the internment of Japanese, German, and Italian people living in the U.S. According to Saturday’s proclamation, the administration is using the Alien Enemies Act to target Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. Officials allege that its members have illegally infiltrated the U.S. The ACLU preemptively sued the White House Friday night, and a federal judge ruled Saturday that the government cannot deport people under the act until further arguments are heard in the case. The judge also ordered that any migrant flights that have departed must return to U.S. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the U.S. just did it anyway. He said hundreds of Venezuelan gang members have already been deported to El Salvador. Here he is on CBS’s Face the Nation. 

[clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio] We don’t want terrorists in America. I don’t know how hard that is to understand. 

Jane Coaston: Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. made a deal with El Salvador to jail the deportees for one year in exchange for $6 million. A federal appeals court gave the Trump administration the okay to move ahead with some executive orders cracking down on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the federal government. The appeals court Friday paused a lower court ruling in Maryland that had blocked some of President Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders from being implemented. The ruling by a three-judge panel is not a final decision, but means the directives can be enforced while a lawsuit challenging them continues to play out. A win for the Trump administration. The EOs direct agencies to take steps to cut DEI programs within the federal government and cut equity-related grants or contracts. Judge Pamela Harris wrote, quote, “My vote should not be understood as agreement with the order’s attack on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The judge’s decision suggests that the Trump administration should be allowed to prove it can enforce the orders while following anti-discrimination laws. Sure, work to eliminate DEI efforts across the federal government without breaking anti-discrimination laws. Totally doable. 

[clip of Mike Waltz] This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out. 

Jane Coaston: President Trump announced Saturday that the U.S. launched a wave of airstrikes on Yemen targeting the Houthi rebels. According to officials for the Iranian-backed Islamist militant group, the attack killed at least 31 people and injured dozens more. The Houthis have targeted Israeli cargo ships, U.S. warships, and other commerce vessels in the Red Sea since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. The rebels have aligned themselves with Hamas and said that their actions are in solidarity with Palestinians in the besieged strip. In an interview with ABC Sunday, U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Walz said the attacks were a message to Iran, demanding that the country pull support from the Houthis. Officials for the group said last week that they would resume those attacks if Israel continued to block humanitarian aid to Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on CBS Sunday that the U.S. strikes on Yemen and will continue if the Houthis don’t back off. 

[clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio] We’re doing the world a favor. 

[clip of unknown CBS Sunday host] Yeah. 

[clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio] We’re doing the entire world a favor by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping. That’s the mission here. 

Jane Coaston: Iranian officials condemned the airstrike Sunday, threatening to retaliate against the U.S. 

[clip of unknown speaker] Onishi the first crew 10 astronaut through the hatch followed by Peskov. 

Jane Coaston: The two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, stuck in space for nine months, could come back to Earth soon. Key word, could. A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft made it to the International Space Station Sunday, if days are even real in space, with four astronauts from the US, Russia, and Japan aboard. They were welcomed with excited hugs and handshakes. The Crew-10 mission astronauts are set to relieve Wilmore and Williams of their duties. Williams told Mission Control, quote, “It was a wonderful day, great to see our friends arrive.” Williams and Wilmore arrived at the space station last June on a trip that was only supposed to last about a week. But after numerous problems with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, NASA decided to bring it back to Earth without the astronauts in it. Now with their replacements at the space station, Williams and Wilmore could, or should I say, are scheduled to head back to Earth sometime this week. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. I have some good news for you, my fellow Americans. Right now, everybody else kind of fucking hates us. And that’s a good thing. Really. Case in point. This is Raphaël Glucksmann. He’s a French politician who’s a member of the European Parliament and the leader of the Place Publique political party, which allied with the Socialist Party in the 2024 European elections and finished third nationally. And his big message right now, everything America is doing, France should, um, not. [clip of Raphaël Glucksmann speaking in French]

Jane Coaston: There he’s saying in reference to populism and right-wing extremism, quote, “no, we do not want that for France. So let us never let the Trump-Musk fan club pass into our country.” This intrigues me. See, the populist right talks a lot about nationalism and national identity, but it’s a global movement. Since the mid 2010s, countries around the world from Hungary to Brazil, to Italy, to the UK, remember Brexit, have had to contend with the rise of populist figures and parties. And many of those figures, like Britain’s Nigel Farage, one of the biggest advocates for Brexit, are super best friends with Donald Trump. Here’s Trump giving him a shout out at a Pennsylvania rally on election eve in November. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] You have a man from Europe, I don’t know if he’s here, I saw him backstage. Uh. What he did was, what he is doing is sort of what we did a few years ago. He’s doing a great job, he’s a fantastic, he’s always been my friend for some reason. He liked me, I liked him. And he’s shaking it up pretty good over there. He had he was the big winner of the last election in the UK and he’s a very spectacular man, very highly respected, Nigel Farage. 

Jane Coaston: But these populist politicians currently have a bit of a problem with their efforts to get close to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is really unpopular with the voters these populist figures are trying to attract. In the UK, 58% of voters don’t like Trump, and voters across Europe particularly don’t like his efforts to abandon Ukraine, something right-wing figures like Marine Le Pen of France and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have had to contend with. As Helen Lewis of The Atlantic detailed in a piece published on Sunday, Donald Trump’s actions haven’t just slowed down the rise of the populist right, it’s helped liberal and center-left parties claw back ground. Back in January, only 16% of voters said they wanted Canada’s Liberal Party, now led by former banker Mark Carney, to handle the economy, with 42% preferring Pierre Poilievre’s conservatives. But throw in a few months of Donald Trump’s screaming about Canada becoming the 51st state and wielding tariffs as a cudgel, in a new survey released Saturday, found that the Liberals have almost closed the gap on the question of who is best for the economy. And Carney leads Poilievre when it comes to who can best stand up for Canadian interests. In February, the Conservatives had a massive polling lead over the Liberal Party among voters. On March 11th, that lead had been cut to one point. Yes, politics is complex. And I am pretty sure that the success of the far right in the UK, France, and Canada does not entirely hinge on whether or not our president is an asshole. But I do find comfort in knowing that apparently, our president being an asshole doesn’t seem to help. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review. Remember that early voting in Wisconsin Supreme Court election starts tomorrow and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how Elon Musk is heaving endless cash into Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election in support of Brad Schimel, who supports an abortion law from the 1840s, because of course he does, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and if you want to stand up to Elon Musk, you can start in Wisconsin. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. 

[AD BREAK]