Column | Divided Democrats on defensive as other important battles fast approach

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

47% : A few weeks ago, they wanted some formal agreement that Musk would stand down and allow congressionally approved funding to remain intact; a week or so ago, they started demanding a four-week extension of current government funding for more time to draft the full-year budgets for agencies.
36% : At the same time, Elon Musk and his team started massive federal job cuts that have sparked protests across the country and galvanized what had been a much more reserved liberal reaction to Trump compared with the self-proclaimed resistance movement of early 2017.
31% : Aguilar even said that House Democrats, going forward, are the only possible check on Trump.
29% : "It's going to continue to be on us over these next 20 months to truly stand for the American people and to win in 2026 and to provide a check to Donald Trump," he said.
27% : Republicans must now turn to the much more difficult task of crafting a massive bill that Trump wants to include border security, massive tax cuts and deep spending reductions that would probably touch popular entitlement programs like Medicaid despite denials by GOP lawmakers.
24% : Once Schumer made the decision to tactically retreat, however, he had lost track of just how angry liberal voters have been over what Trump and Musk are doing.
22% : But Trump cracked the whip so hard on House conservatives that just one Republican opposed it, sending the bill to the Senate, where, Schumer said, Democrats would get blamed for the shutdown if they filibustered.
17% : During his Friday news conference at the Capitol, Jeffries predicted that Democrats would have won a shutdown fight just as they did against Republicans during the mid-1990s over GOP attempts to cut Medicare; in 2013 over saving the Affordable Care Act; and in 2019 over preventing Trump from diverting funds to build a border wall.
7% : Once Johnson began moving the very conservative budget outline, the Jeffries leadership team focused like a laser on the undefined $880 billion in cuts recommended from the committee overseeing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

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