Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat and his party’s top leader on the Judiciary Committee, announced Wednesday that he won’t seek a sixth term in 2026.

“I know in my heart it’s time to pass the torch,” the veteran senator said in a social media post Wednesday.

Durbin, who is 80, confirmed what many Democrats have expected for months — that the veteran senator would step aside after three decades in office.

The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia has become a political flashpoint that Democrats are struggling to navigate, with the party split over how loudly to protest his detention in a Salvadoran megaprison.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) became the first Democratic senator to travel to El Salvador this week to visit Abrego Garcia, who lived in Maryland. Other Democrats are planning trips as they accuse the administration of violating Abrego Garcia’s due process rights.

Chuck Schumer is bruised but not beaten — at least not yet.

Two weeks after the Senate minority leader joined with Republicans to prevent a government shutdown, Democrats are still fuming over how he handled the standoff. But many in the party are conceding that they’re stuck with him for the time being.

Senate Democrats are bracing for a painful post-mortem as they try to avoid a September rerun of their latest government funding defeat.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and nine of his members helped get a House GOP-authored government funding bill to the finish line, saying a vote to advance legislation they loathed was the least bad option. The alternative, they argued, was allowing a shutdown that could empower President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to accelerate their slashing of the federal bureaucracy.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) surprised Washington Thursday by announcing on the Senate floor that he would vote to advance a House Republican-drafted six-month government funding bill, splitting with fellow Senate Democrats who are loudly calling for the bill’s defeat.  

Schumer’s announcement provides crucial political cover to Senate Democratic centrists who are thinking about voting for the House-passed bill to keep the government from shutting down, even though they have serious concerns about the House bill.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Wednesday that Republicans do not have enough Democratic votes in the upper chamber to advance the House-passed GOP government funding bill to President Donald Trump’s desk, complicating GOP congressional leaders’ path to averting a shutdown ahead of the March 14 funding deadline.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has signaled his party is prepared to let the government shut down.

Why it matters: Even if it's a bargaining tactic, Schumer and Democrats have put Congress closer to an outcome he's repeatedly warned against.

By Thursday evening, Schumer and Senate GOP leader John Thune (R-S.D.) could have a handshake deal to allow amendment votes and speed up the process.

Senate Democrats say privately that they will not allow the government to shut down on Saturday, despite growing pressure from activists and liberal lawmakers who want them to kill a GOP-crafted six-month stopgap spending bill.

Senate Democratic sources say Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) is giving plenty of room to centrists in his caucus to vote for the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) if doing so is the only way to avoid a government shutdown at week’s end.

Senate Democrats are leery of blocking a House Republican-drafted six-month government funding bill, fearing that a government shutdown may backfire on them politically by giving Elon Musk and the Trump administration more leverage to force federal workers into retirement.

Democratic senators panned the House GOP proposal unveiled over the weekend, arguing it would erode Congress’s power of the purse and give President Trump and Musk a blank check to redirect government funding and eliminate long-standing programs.

When President Donald Trump announced last week he wanted Congress to “pass a clean, temporary government funding Bill,” that should have dropped the chances of a federal shutdown to near zero.

After all, shutdown threats tend to get driven by conservative hard-liners intent on cutting spending — and who better than Trump to pull them in line and keep the government open?