When the Trump White House came into power with a barrage of executive actions, Democratic activists told their party’s Senate leaders that they wanted them to push back forcefully against the administration’s cuts to federal agencies. At an early February rally protesting DOGE’s cuts to government functions, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer led Democratic lawmakers in chanting, “We will win,” activists in the crowd responded with a clear demand—“Shut down the Senate.” The following month, in a cable news interview, Schumer said that a Trump-triggered crisis of democracy had not yet arrived, and laid out a strategy of legal challenges rather than full-fledged Senate delay tactics.
A new filing shows that over the first six months of this year, Senate Democrats received more than $1.7 million in bundled donations from federal lobbyists at more than a dozen firms, many that have been racking up legislative wins under the Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress. Lobbyists and firm executives who bundled donations for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) included some of the largest K Street influence shops, representing clients such as surging defense contractor Palantir, cryptocurrency investors Andreessen Horowitz, Nippon Steel, and hundreds more companies. The total also includes money raised by lobbying firms as well as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
As of mid-July, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 52% of Democrats disapprove of the way their party’s congressional members are handling their job, and that congressional Democrats have sunk to a record-low approval rating of just 19% overall.
