As tensions mount, top Democrats seek to avoid another ugly clash over government funding

By Sarah Ferris, CNN

(CNN) — Top House Democrats have privately coalesced around a strategy in this month’s high stakes government funding fight: A public battle with President Donald Trump to extract health care wins, even if it means a government shutdown.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries plans to formally articulate their stance to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Wednesday evening when the two New Yorkers and their leadership teams meet to discuss the looming deadline. Jeffries sees this as a critical moment for Democrats to seize attention from Trump and demonstrate their party’s values to a frustrated American public, according to multiple people familiar with his thinking.

But it’s not yet clear if Jeffries and House Democrats’ can sell their hardline views across the Capitol, even as many in the party vividly recall how Schumer was vilified by their base this spring for helping to pass Trump’s funding bill without major concessions. A growing number of Democrats now fear the two chambers are once again headed for a messy clash over how to handle a rare chance to force Trump and the GOP to the negotiating table, according to interviews with nearly two dozen lawmakers and senior aides.

“If the Senate Democratic leadership doesn’t believe that we are in an abnormal situation with an administration that is violating the constitution and moving this country toward autocracy, then they need to wake up. Because this is the world we’re in right now. And we need to stand firm against it,” Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado told CNN, summing up a view among many House Democrats.

“This sh*t is not normal and I’m not going to act like it is and I’m sure as hell not going to be a part of it.”

So far, Jeffries and Schumer are saying little publicly about their plan and Republicans have not yet settled on their own strategy to avoid a shutdown come October 1. In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson can pass a spending bill without Democratic votes if he can keep his fractious conference together. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune will need at least a handful of Democrats to keep the government open.

Schumer on Wednesday signaled that Democrats would not accept a take-it-or-leave-it GOP funding bill and criticized both GOP leaders for refusing to meet with their Democratic counterparts to discuss keeping the government open.

“We’ve heard nothing for weeks. The Republican silence is concerning because if they think Democrats are going to show up at the last minute to bail them out with the clock approaching zero, that would be a big mistake on their part,” Schumer said.

In a nod to Jeffries’ position, the Democratic Senate leader told reporters that “Democrats have always said we need to meet the needs of the American people, particularly when it comes to costs and health care costs. Leader Thune needs to sit down with us and negotiate a bipartisan bill that meets these needs in order to get something to pass.”

Schumer said he is “on the same page” with Jeffries and that they agree a funding measure “needs to be a bipartisan bill with real Democratic input.”

Among House Democrats, tensions are rising as lawmakers grow concerned that GOP leaders and Trump will again attempt to jam them with a bill that offers no concessions for their votes, even as some in the party acknowledge they have no plan to avoid a prolonged shutdown if Trump refuses to acquiesce.

Multiple House Democrats used a private meeting this week to vent their frustration at Senate Democrats as they urged Jeffries to force their colleagues across the Capitol not to yield to Trump again, according to multiple attendees. (Schumer and others have argued that a prolonged shutdown with Trump in charge would have been a far worse outcome.)

In the meeting this week, some Democrats read aloud from a New York Times opinion piece from liberal columnist Ezra Klein that portrayed the government funding battle as essentially determining the future of the Democratic Party and said helping supply votes to the GOP is “complicity” with Trump’s regime.

The discussion also centered around exactly what to demand from Republicans. Jeffries and his team plan to focus on restoring the GOP’s cuts to Medicaid and the end-of-year deadline to extend subsidies for 22 million people getting their insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Jeffries himself stressed to members, they need to pick a battle that’s clear and winnable, telling the room: “If we’re going to lean into the fight, we need to win the fight,” according to a person in attendance, adding that Democrats are “ready to lean into a fight about health care and beyond.”

That’s a fight that key Senate Democrats are willing to dig in on, too.

“We want a budget, a bipartisan budget that restores some of these cuts made to health care across the country,” Sen. Mark Kelly told CNN when asked about Democrats’ position in the upcoming funding fight. Kelly said there are 300,000 in Arizona who could lose their health insurance because of the loss of the ACA subsidies or other policy changes.

Asked if there’s a deal to be made, Kelly said: “Our Republican colleagues know what they need to do. They need to restore this spending.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin added in a video posted to X this week that Trump needs to negotiate to secure Democrats’ votes.

“One of the things the president can do in order to make this a real conversation is walk back some of the cuts to Americans’ health care,” Slotkin said, pointing to Medicaid cuts, ACA subsidies and his cuts to government medical research funding.

In a brief interview with CNN, Slotkin declined to elaborate on her position but added it is “very important” for the Senate to avoid a repeat of March.

Six months ago during the last funding fight, 10 Democrats ultimately helped GOP leaders pass Trump’s funding bill. Some of those Democrats who opposed the bill then said their party has learned the lessons from that bitter fight — and point to Trump’s unilateral actions on spending cuts and immigration raids as further reasons to stand up against a deal this time around.

“We’re not going to retrace what happened in March. It was a different situation. I think we’ve learned from it. Since then, the president has, in effect, exercised illegal authority to stop certain funding. That’s a lesson for all of us, if we don’t insist that he follow the law, we lose our democracy,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who opposed the stopgap funding bill back in March and said he would do the same this time without major concessions from the GOP.

“I’m talking to my Democratic colleagues. I don’t think we’ve reached a consensus,” Blumenthal said.

“Nobody wants a shutdown. I don’t want a shutdown for its own sake,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “But if it happens it will be the result of Republicans, not us. But we have to be fighting.”

Asked if the party would apply any lessons from March to this funding deadline, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, told CNN it’s “something we’re talking about” but added it’s “a little bit premature” with the deadline still three weeks away.

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CNN’s Arlette Saenz, Ellis Kim and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.