WASHINGTON: Anger was rising in the Democratic ranks on Saturday after the party’s top US senator led a band of lawmakers in reluctant support of a Republican measure that prevented a government shutdown.

Congressional passage of the controversial spending bill was being seen as a setback for Democratic backbenchers — and the latest illustration of party leaders’ political impotence in their opposition to President Donald Trump as he takes a wrecking ball to the US federal bureaucracy.

In New York, more than a thousand people protested against Trump’s layoffs, and their anger was no longer directed only at Trump and his chief waste hunter, Elon Musk. Michelle Vaughan, a 53-year-old artist, carried a sign that read “Elon out! — You too, Chuck!” referring to House Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who supported the bill along with several colleagues.

“The budget was our only leverage,” Vaughan said at the protest in Manhattan. “It was a way to show the base of Democrats and the world that there’s a resistance to this authoritarian takeover.” The measure slashes billions of dollars from public spending at a time government agencies are already reeling from the dismissal of thousands of civil servants by Trump and Musk.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2025