Donald Trump was in trouble. Millions of Americans watched the torture and murder of Alex Pretti, and they didn’t like what they saw: Instead of the promised campaign against the “worst of the worst,” Trump’s federal goons had been caught on camera unloading their clips into a defenseless U.S. citizen observer whom they had already disarmed. Support for abolishing ICE grew while the president’s already-dismal approval ratings sank.

The NRA turned on Trump. Fox News’ Laura Ingraham came out for abolishing the entire Department of Homeland Security. A leading Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota—who just days earlier had been legally advising the ICE agent who murdered Renee Good—dropped out of the race, and seemingly Trump’s party. Most damagingly for the president, crucial votes for a stopgap funding bill, needed to avoid yet another politically disastrous (for him) government shutdown, evaporated thanks to moderate opposition to funding DHS.

So Trump called the only person who could help him: Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

We know about that call because Schumer bragged about it to the New York Times:

Moments like this haven’t come along often in the Trump years: a doddering, embattled Don, reaching out to the leader of the minority party, hat in hand, all but begging him to get him off the hook. Indeed, moments like this are rare in history—a clear-cut authoritarian in the critical stage of consolidating his regime signaling to a weaker rival that, in fact, some cards remained in his hands.

So what did Schumer do with this unearned leverage? What was the move of this 75-year-old Senate veteran, this alleged master of procedure, the de facto leader of the party in opposition? He caved. The Democrats would override even Republican defections to push through a $1.2 trillion package that would fund nearly the entire federal government—including $839 billion for a U.S. military that has repeatedly violated international law, lied to Congress, recently kidnapped a foreign president, and is being used to threaten allies. In “exchange,” Schumer and his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, would also secure the votes needed to provide two weeks of extra funding for DHS.

“Two weeks of extra funding!” doesn’t quite have the base-rallying power of “Abolish ICE!” But Schumer and Jeffries told us not to worry: they would use those two weeks to insist on “commonsense reform”:

Because that’s what you do when you see roving gangs of masked secret police terrorizing your nation’s cities, specifically and loudly gunning for your party’s constituents. You ask for some minor reforms.¹

When I brought up the scale of the leader’s failure on Bluesky, I was accused of exhibiting “Schumer Derangement Syndrome" — of “theatrically overreacting to a deal that was good, actually,” and harboring a child’s wish list for unattainable progressive goals. I was assured that Schumer was thinking several moves ahead; he was engaged in “harm reduction”; that getting rid of masks and insisting they follow some rules was the best option available.

But, surprise, surprise, even this was too much to hope for. Yesterday, Schumer and Jeffries backed off their demand for a totally unmasked secret police, saying that sometimes masks can be fine, you know, if the secret police promise that they really need them:

So what exactly did Schumer’s “deal” achieve? He bought Trump and the Republicans two weeks to spin news cycles and outlast the storm of outrage. He took the pressure off the Republicans while ensuring DHS remains fully funded as it contemplates its next potential pogrom—likely against Haitians and Haitian-Americans in Springfield, Ohio. And all for what? To insist on some toothless reforms, many of which are already laws that ICE and CBP agents are ignoring? Reforms that the Democrats are all already talking themselves out of?

It is absolutely true that Democrats and liberals in general don’t have much power in Washington at the moment. The areas they do hold power—to oversee federal elections in Democratic-controlled states and cities, for instance—are under threat. They have essentially one card left: the power to freeze spending and grind the government to a halt. They could play it for the people of Minneapolis, who have braved bullets, tear gas, and freezing temperatures to stand up against tyranny. They could play it, in the tradition of Senate Leaders past (thinking of you, Lyndon Johnson)², for themselves. They just decided not to use it at all.

I don’t really care why Schumer or Jeffries are the way they are—whether it’s because they personally approve of slightly gentler crimes against humanity, which mass deportation definitionally is, or because they think that demoralizing their base and responding to every single insult to democracy with irritating text demands for campaign donations will somehow ensure a Democratic majority in the 120th Congress. With these losers in charge, I don’t even know what the point of such a majority would be.

We have people in the street, putting their bodies on the line to protect their neighbors. We have journalists who, despite the predations of immoral billionaires like Jeff Bezos (solidarity with the hundreds laid off from the late, great Washington Post this week), are sounding the alarms and reporting the facts. We need them all. But without a way to translate those energies into political power, the game is lost.

Fire Schumer. Primary Jeffries. Get rid of the rot. Replace it with a party that will fight.