By Lauren Fox and Sarah Ferris

(CNN) — Veteran Democrats privately believed Chuck Schumer’s decision on the shutdown was inevitable. Others were ready for the top Senate Democrat to lead them into their first big battle against President Donald Trump — and instead have been left fuming.

Schumer’s declaration Thursday night that he would vote for Republicans’ stopgap spending bill, backing down in the party’s first big leverage point in President Donald Trump’s second term has confirmed a dire political reality for his caucus: Democrats had no good options left to avert a government shutdown with just hours to go until the deadline.

“If we go into a shutdown, and I told my caucus this, there’s no off-ramp. The total off-ramp of a shutdown, how you stop a shutdown, is totally determined by the Republican House and Senate, and that is totally determined because they’ve shown complete blind obeisance [to] Trump, DOGE, etc. They could keep us in a shutdown for months and months and months,” Schumer told reporters Thursday night.

The Democratic leader’s decision privately disappointed many in his caucus, and stunned his House colleagues across the US Capitol — leaving the party deeply divided on the path ahead at a moment when their base is clamoring for a strong response against Trump and Elon Musk’s actions to radically reshape the federal government.

“We are in a perverse, bizarro land where we’re having to decide between letting Donald Trump wreck the government this way or wreck the government that way,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said of Democrats’ predicament.

It’s a moment that has been months in the making. Still, top Democrats in Congress struggled to find a cohesive message and strategy that would allow them room to fight without the potential risk of what it would mean if thousands of government workers were suddenly thrust into more uncertainty with a shutdown.

Perhaps the clearest sign of the dilemma: Their top two leaders took opposite paths, with Schumer deciding to vote for the GOP plan that top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries has spent a full week bashing.

“Dr. King once made the observation that, although everyone may not see it at the moment, the time is always right to do what’s right. This week, House Democrats did what was right. We stood up against Donald Trump. We stood up against Elon Musk. We stood up against the extreme MAGA Republicans,” Jeffries said to applause in Leesburg, Virginia, at a party retreat Thursday night, according to a person in the room. “We can defend that vote because we stood on the side of the American people.”

When the Senate votes Friday, many Democrats expect the vote to reflect the generational divide in the chamber. Freshmen senators, like Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Ruben Gallego of Arizona — who many believed would vote for the bill because they hold seats in states Trump won in November — instead remained firmly opposed and signaled they wanted to use the funding bill to fight the president. And the disconnect reflects a simmering tension that runs through the Democratic Party far beyond Washington.

“I’m pissed,” Rep. Jim McGovern told CNN shortly after Schumer’s floor speech. “Maybe they’ll toughen up for the fight on reconciliation, I don’t know. … This guy [Trump] is ruining the country. And you know, I just expected more fight.”

Democrats have been handwringing over how to handle the shutdown for months. The decision between voting for a shutdown and voting for a bill many believe has serious cuts in funding to programs that are important for Democrats has led to marathon party lunches, endless discussion and little clarity on what many Democrats would ultimately do.

In order to avert a shutdown, at least eight Senate Democrats need to vote to allow the bill to move forward. Four sources familiar with the discussions said Schumer spent Thursday privately asking members whether they planned to advance the House-passed spending bill that would fund the government until the end of September. And after a lengthy lunch Thursday, several senators who spoke on the condition of anonymity to privately discuss internal party deliberations, told CNN they believed the votes would be there on their side to avert a shutdown.

“I believe it is my job to make the best choice for the country to minimize the harms to the American people,” Schumer said on the floor Thursday in a highly anticipated speech that made clear Democrats would lend the votes needed by the GOP to keep the government open.

Still, several Democrats dug in against the bill as the week stretched on. Gallego announced Thursday he’d vote no, as did a half dozen others, citing concerns over cuts to programs and arguments that voting for the stopgap measure would only embolden Trump and Musk to continue reprogramming money that was already part of previous spending bills.

“Let’s not kid ourselves. This is a bad resolution that gives Elon Musk and his cronies permission to continue cutting veterans’ benefits, slashes resources for Arizona’s water needs and abandons our wildland firefighters. I can’t stand by that, and that’s why I’m voting no,” Gallego said in a statement.

Even retiring senators like Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota announced she was opposed to the bill on both a procedural vote to advance the measure and on the final vote.

Adding to the mounting frustration, Senate Democrats have complained their party leaders have not been more decisive on how to proceed. The day before Schumer told his caucus he would vote to advance the bill, the Democratic leader went to the Senate floor and said his caucus was united against a vote to advance it.

“How on earth could we find ourselves in this position? We knew this was coming. We have no plan. We are getting blamed. Progressives are really agitated,” one senior Democratic aide told CNN. “We have a case to make. We just have not had the leadership and guidance on how to prosecute that.”

Several Democratic senators who were asked to respond to questions about their party’s strategy and if it had been effective declined to comment.

“Look, my frustration right now is that this bill is not a CR. It is a brand new budget bill and it is going to cut veteran services by $1.2 billion, FEMA by $300 million, cut wildfire firefighters and water in Arizona and the fact that Trump thinks that’s a good thing for this country astounds me and I’ll think about the other question at a later time and date once we get past this,” Gallego told reporters.

Thirty miles away, as more than 100 House Democrats gathered for their policy retreat, lawmakers’ mouths were agape at reports that Schumer was planning to vote with Republicans. Privately, they fumed at his reversal — a direct contraction of their position that nearly their entire caucus took just 48 hours earlier. Some called on him to lose his position as leader.

But most declined to comment publicly, wary, they said, of deepening the ugly divide within the Democratic Party. One senior aide described the House Democrats’ reaction as “collectively ripsh*t.”

Behind the scenes, Democrats pointed to several miscalculations made by their party. For one, most Senate Democrats never thought the House could pass a stopgap funding measure with just Republican votes. Then, Speaker Mike Johnson – with major muscle from Trump – convinced more than 30 conservatives who just months ago voted against another stopgap spending bill to vote for one.

Some Senate Democrats expressed intense frustration with the attacks they faced from House colleagues, who they believe have painted them into a corner after they had the privilege of voting against a spending bill without directly risking a shutdown. The bill passed out of the House with almost every single Republican voting “yes.”

Too few Democrats voting “yes” in the Senate could trigger a shutdown. Meanwhile, some progressives like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been urging their constituents to flood the phone lines of Democratic senators to lobby them to vote against the bill.

“It’s infuriating to see these tweets,” one Democratic Senate staffer told CNN.

Another Democratic office told CNN that their phone lines had been so inundated with calls from the base that they’d received more than 4,000 phone calls in a single day.

“I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters.

“There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States who walked the plank and took innumerable risks in order to defend the American people, in order to defend Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare. Just to see Senate Democrats even consider acquiescing to Elon Musk, I think is a slap in the face.”

And House Democrats – before it was clear that Schumer intended to back down – defended their decision to amplify pressure on the Senate.

“God gave the Senate six-year terms for a reason,” centrist Rep. Scott Peters told CNN. “I’m in the fight. We’ve done what we can do. We need them to do what they can do.”

Rep. Susie Lee, a Democrat who represents a tough swing seat in Nevada, told CNN she’s personally made the pitch to her state’s two senators.

“They have the House and the Senate and the presidency. They made a choice to not negotiate with us,” Lee said. The Nevada Democrat acknowledged that Senate Democrats had a “fear” of a shutdown. But she argued that Democrats could easily explain to their voters that it was the Republicans, not their own party, that triggered the funding lapse.

“I don’t think it’s a hard task. It’s their government. They have the majority,” Lee said. “I think that they need to own it.”

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