Apart from Donald Trump, no one is more unpopular among Democrats right now than the Senate’s Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The longtime leader infuriated his party Friday, surrendering on the government shutdown and handing Republicans a victory that can only be described as miraculous. Not only was his decision to cave after days of tough talk a shock, it’s also making Schumer the target of “volcanic anger” in his own party. As one Democratic aide put it after the vote, “I’ve never seen anything like it in the time I’ve been in the Senate ...” And as far as conservatives are concerned, Schumer had it coming.

This is exactly what the minority leader did to Republicans when the shoe was on the other foot, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins reminded people after the vote. For once, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the rest of his party gave Senate Democrats a “dose and a half of their own medicine,” he tweeted, referring to all the times Schumer jammed conservatives with legislation they didn’t want. “Congressional Republicans are now doing what conservatives have wanted to see — going toe to toe with the Left and winning.”

To be fair, Schumer’s hype about shutting down the government was just that: hype. After the House passed a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the lights on and got out of dodge, the Senate minority leader’s fate was sealed. His options, Perkins pointed out, were to either shut down the government and let President Trump decide what parts of the government got funded (think DOGE on steroids) or support a continuing resolution that cut billions of discretionary spending. From the Left’s perspective, it was a lose-lose proposition.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t calls for Schumer’s head. On CNN, shortly after the minority leader folded, host Erin Burnett asked former Obama advisor Van Jones, “How angry are Democrats at Leader Schumer?” He replied bluntly, “I’ve never seen this level of volcanic anger at a Democrat, ever.” “Ever,” she said in astonishment. “Wow.”

Making matters worse for the longtime Democrat, President Trump went on Truth Social to poke the bear. “Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing — Took ‘guts’ and courage!” Trump wrote, trolling the opposition. An angry Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) could only shake his head. “When Donald Trump wakes up in the morning and says, ‘You’re doing the right thing, Senate Democrats,’ we don’t feel that is the right place to be.”

Ultimately, 10 Democrats voted to move forward with the bill to keep the government open through September of this year — cementing a political masterstroke by Speaker Johnson at exactly the right time. “I knew when I made this decision, I’d get a lot of criticism from a lot of quarters,” Schumer insisted to reporters. “We had hoped that maybe Johnson couldn’t get the votes,” Schumer said. “But when he did … it put us in a very, very tough place.”

The speaker celebrated the hard-fought win on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “I’ll tell you what,” he reflected with Perkins, “it’s been a lot of hard work. We kept the team together. The House Republicans are building muscle memory now for winning,” he declared. “We have a string of wins under our belt, and it’s good to be underestimated. You know,” he smiled, “the Hill press corps and the Democratic Party and the mainstream media every day write my eulogy, write our eulogy. They say we’re going to go to loggerheads against one another. And the Republicans can’t stand together. But we have, and we will continue to do that, because we are going to deliver the America First agenda for the American people.”

Asked how he pulled off such a coup and kept the members together, the Louisianan admitted that it took “a lot of time [and] a lot of patience.” It required a painstaking string of meetings, sorting through people’s priorities. And at the end of the day, he concluded, “We all have the same priorities. We want to make the federal government smaller, more efficient, and more effective for the people.” Of course, he pointed out, a lot of conservatives are impatient. “Some of my colleagues want to do everything all at once. They want to cut $8 trillion in federal spending. It’s just not possible to do that.”

Johnson says he likes to use the metaphor of an aircraft carrier. “It took us many decades to get into the financial situation that we’re in,” he remarked. “You don’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes miles of open ocean, but you have to begin to turn it. And that’s what we’re doing. This CR is a step in that direction. It freezes funding.” He paused, “Think of this,” he said. “We’re actually going to spend less money year over year for the first time maybe in history. … At least in many decades. That’s an important course correction. And then, for the FY 26 budgeting, we’re going to make a much larger part of that turn. So it’s going to be a gradual, gradual, incremental thing to fix the mess we’re in. But we’re on that trajectory now.”

That’s music to conservatives’ ears after decades of rolling over and accepting runaway spending. “The passage of this continuing resolution is a major win for President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson,” FRC’s Quena Gonzalez told The Washington Stand, “and all the more so because it is improbable. Just a few weeks ago, it was accepted wisdom in Washington that Speaker Johnson would probably fail to shepherd it through the narrowest possible partisan margin in the House — never mind what its fate might be in a Senate where many Republicans favored a different, two-pronged approach and Democrats were united in opposing anything endorsed by President Donald Trump.” Just a day earlier, Gonzalez pointed out, “Leader Schumer was bragging that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass the CR and vowed to tank it on the Senate floor.”

What’s even more amazing, he reiterated, is that “a continuing resolution is often a sign of failed governance and kicking the fiscal can down the road.” Not so in this case. “Most conservative leaders in Washington have believed President Trump and Speaker Johnson, who said that this CR is a step toward, not away from, fiscal sanity.” This CR should give the Trump administration time “to staff up and continue cutting government” and, Gonzalez said, “give the House and Senate time to pass a budget and make appropriations.” In other words, he underscored, “Congress has acted to make space for fiscal sanity and good governance to be restored. The proof will be in the pudding.”

For now, Johnson, who’s never had the luxury of operating with any margin for error, thinks that governing with a small majority has helped to bring “a lot of clarity” to his party. “And that clarity is helpful and important to us. And we’re going to continue to do the right thing. So just buckle up and watch,” he urged. “It’s going to be a rocky road, but we’re going to achieve these objectives in the end.”