Congress

Chuck Schumer just won a huge majority. He’s already thinking about making it bigger.

Published

1 day ago

November 5, 2026

Democrats could pick up a once-unthinkable nine Senate seats by the time votes are fully counted from Tuesday’s midterms. Chuck Schumer says he’s just getting started.

The triumphant Senate Democratic leader sat in his Capitol office Thursday and described a “long-term effort” to build on his party’s gains and create a “durable” majority — largely by proving to voters “that we really can get things done.”

“We’re going to keep building. We’re going to build over the next two years first by passing things, or at least fighting hard for things that people want, and we know they want,” he said, adding, “If we do that, we can expand the map.”

It’s a pledge that gained immense new credibility Tuesday when Democrats defied warnings about the unfavorable 2026 Senate map and picked up seats in several states President Donald Trump won two years earlier. Democratic candidates are also ahead in the two uncalled races, in Alaska and Mississippi.

Now Schumer is on track to keep his leadership post and plot his party’s effort to exploit an even more advantageous lineup of races in 2028.

Democrats will need to hold on to their newly-won seat in Ohio, and they also have to defend seats in traditional swing states like Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and Nevada. But Republicans have several vulnerabilities of their own — including seats in Wisconsin, which just elected an all-Democratic state government; North Carolina, which just saw its GOP-majority congressional delegation decimated; and in other states Democrats just won including Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina.

But to make good on his dreams of expansion, Schumer must unite and effectively manage the various factions within his caucus over the next two years. Complicating that job will be the looming free-for-all presidential primary that could involve several of his members — not to mention Schumer’s own 2028 reelection decision.

Had Democrats had a bad night Tuesday, Schumer could have faced an early test in securing another term as leader — with some progressives groups eager to force a conversation about new blood in the top ranks.

Some incoming Democratic freshmen have vowed not to back Schumer as leader, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who is eyeing a 2028 White House bid, wants to have conversations about the majority’s legislative agenda before Democrats hold a leadership election, which is expected in early December.

“The Democratic caucus needs to have a discussion about what we should do with this new responsibility that has been entrusted with us, and we should have a full and honest discussion in our caucus about what the plan is, what direction we want to go in,” Van Hollen said in an interview.

But the electoral romp has extinguished any serious discussion of making a change at the top, with many Democrats saying Schumer richly earned another two years in charge.

“Trust me, had the results turned out differently, we would be saying it was a result of disastrous leadership,” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) said in an interview. “So if it works to our favor, then I think we have a right to say that it was a result of some things that went well.”

For his part, Schumer has moved to downplay any suggestion of tension within his suddenly much more ideologically and geographically diverse caucus. In the interview, he noted his friendly relations with both hard-left firebrand Abdul El-Sayed — one of the freshmen who say they want a new leader — and moderate Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton in Kansas.

“The media wants to make it, ‘This is going to be a fight,’” Schumer said. “It’s not. I speak to all these candidates. I speak to Abdul all the time. I speak to Hamilton all the time. We’re on the same page.”

While red-state Democrats had become all but extinct in the Senate over the past decade, Schumer is not a stranger to managing ideological tensions in his ranks. During his first stint as majority leader under then-President Joe Biden, he presided over a threadbare 50-seat majority where maverick Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona frequently frustrated the remainder of the caucus.

Schumer said he views his incoming red-state Democrats differently than those predecessors, saying they ran on the same platform as his members in deep-blue coastal states.

“When they ran, they each ran individually, on their own,” he said, referring to the likes of Manchin and Sinema. “We have from one end of the country to the other the message of cost, chaos, and corruption.”

Schumer pointed to the host of policy proposals that Democrats have rolled out over the past two years as a roadmap for the Senate’s upcoming legislative agenda, broadly addressing topics including housing, health care and energy. Still — even if Democrats run the table in the remaining races — they will be short of the 60-vote filibuster threshold necessary for advancing most bills.

While he said Democrats are “going to do everything we can to pass legislation,” Schumer would not directly address how to get bills to Trump’s desk. He batted down questions over whether Democrats should pursue the party-line reconciliation process or carve up the chamber’s legislative filibuster even if the bills they pass have no chance of getting signed into law.

He did issue a warning to Republicans about any potential obstruction — and took a shot at Trump, whom he has yet to speak to following the election.

“We’re not going to wait for Trump,” Schumer said. “Who knows what the hell he’ll do? But we’re going to put solutions on the table.”

And if Republican senators “stand in the way,” he added, “I think the election of 2028 will make 2026 look tame because they’re so out of touch with the American people.”

The ultimate goal, he said, is to take action on critical matters and show voters what a red-state Democrat might look like versus what “they’re told about what Democrats are [on] Fox News.”

After successfully wooing candidates like former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown into winning 2026 races, Schumer said he hasn’t started recruiting for 2028, but that he believes Democrats now have footholds that will make winning in red states easier.

“I’ve spent decades working to change the Senate map,” he said. “This is a real, unique opportunity, planned out, and now we’ve got to make sure it lasts.”

Calen Razor and Lauren Fedor contributed to this report.

Congress

Johnson’s meeting request

Published

3 hours ago

November 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Ron Johnson is sending a letter Monday requesting a conference meeting to discuss the midterm results and a delay in the leadership election.

Johnson has gathered enough signatures to force the meeting under the Senate GOP’s rules and is proposing the gathering for 9 a.m. Tuesday.

“Tuesday’s result was a stunning defeat,” Johnson and his backers write in the letter to Conference Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO. “Holding leadership elections without engaging in a robust discussion and evaluation of how those running for leadership intend to lead would be political malpractice”

Republicans still expect their leadership election to be held Tuesday, where Majority Leader John Thune is so far unopposed to lead the party next year in the minority.

Congress

Chris Murphy released from hospital after stroke

Published

6 hours ago

November 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Chris Murphy announced Friday that he has been released from the hospital after suffering a stroke last week, but will miss “several weeks” of Senate votes while he continues to recover.

“The doctors are very encouraged by the progress I’ve made so far,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “In order to take my recovery seriously and get back to work on the quickest timeline possible, I will be spending several weeks at a rehabilitation center after being discharged from the hospital today.”

He added that he remains in touch remotely with his staff and colleagues.

Murphy, who was hospitalized last weekend, said Friday that he was “diagnosed with a small bleed in the thalamus region of my brain.” Jose Suarez, the Chief of Neurosciences Critical Care at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, said in a separate statement released by Murphy’s office that the senator “experienced a small hemorrhagic stroke.”

“He has shown tremendous progress, and at the current rate of improvement, we expect that he will make a full recovery following rehabilitation,” Suarez added.

Murphy is the latest senator to suffer a stroke in recent years. Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.) were both hospitalized for strokes in 2022. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), at that time a Senate candidate, also had a stroke in 2022 that he later described as near fatal.

Congress

Congressional Progressive Caucus chair lays out strategy to ‘wield our power’

Published

6 hours ago

November 6, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus said his group will still be power brokers in a massive Democratic majority in a strategy memo previewing plans for next term.

“While some in the press have speculated that a majority of this size undermines our influence within the caucus, they have it exactly backwards,” Rep. Greg Casar of Texas said in the Friday memo obtained by Blue Light News. “Big majorities are good for getting big things done. Our goal is not to win a battle against other Democratic caucuses. It is to pass longstanding progressive priorities that bring down costs, root out corruption, and boost wages.”

The CPC will have at least 105 members next term, according to the memo. If Democrats had a narrow majority, progressives — and any other faction in the caucus — could have used their votes as leverage. Now that presumptive speaker Hakeem Jeffries will have as many 30 votes to spare, Democrats broadly are recalibrating their approach next term.

Casar laid out a “three-pronged” strategy for the CPC to “wield our power” in the three-page memo — tackling legislation, oversight and “holding Donald Trump to his word on populist economic policies.”

“Small majorities give corporate special interest groups the ability to block popular populist policies by recruiting a small number of opponents; a big majority gives us the advantage,” he said.

Casar previewed how the CPC can engage with Trump, noting that “one of the few bright spots for bipartisan lawmaking” was a housing bill that banned private equity firms from buying homes. He noted the caucus should push Trump to cap credit card interest rates, lower credit card fees for small businesses and lower prescription drug costs.

“While we oppose [Trump] strongly on the vast majority of fronts, we should send bills to his desk that would lower prices and raise paychecks. If he signs them, good. If he vetoes those bills, that will propel us to a continued Democratic majority and a trifecta where a Democratic president can sign these proposals into law,” he said.

Casar also outlined oversight targets beyond the administration, urging Democrats to specifically investigate corporations that use customer data for “surveillance pricing,” health care companies that are “taking advantage of seniors” through the Medicare Advantage program and artificial intelligence labs who are “putting jobs and lives at risk.”

“By focusing not just on the Trump administration but also on big corporations and billionaires, we will show the American people we are not just anti-Trump but also pro-worker and pro-consumer,” he said.