The Maryland Democrat has been critical of Schumer, who has led the caucus for nearly a decade.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen announced Thursday that he would challenge Chuck Schumer for the top Democratic leadership role in the Senate, arguing the party needs to take a more populist direction.
“In this election, the American people called for change. They called for a change from Donald Trump’s disastrous policies — but even bigger than that, a change from the status quo that isn’t working for working people,” Van Hollen, who represents Maryland, said in a statement obtained by The Washington Sun.
Yaaaaaaaaay. I know my email didn’t do shit but I did email him my senator about not supporting Schumer
Hell yeah. I’m calling my senators today to encourage them to support Van Hollen.
Very important he wins. Single most important issue is government shutdown power (dec 11th deadline) where Van Hollen is dedicated to force defunding of Iran war through it. Schumer is for Iran war, and has not committed to weaponizing budget. You can’t get to “affordability mandate” without it.
Didn’t Schumer hold a parade and have a speech with one of the Israeli cabinet members who is unambiguously calling for genocide? It’s one thing to be supportive of Israel as a state, it’s another thing to openly call for genocide or publicly support someone who does. Seems like he should be disqualified from public office simply on human rights grounds.
Hell yeah!
Why would that dinosaur be better than the other dinosaurs. Really, this guy is a nobody and this post could be nothing more than an ad or push by a hostile government. Seriously, who had ever heard of this guy before today.
Why would that dinosaur be better than the other dinosaurs
For one thing, 67 ≠ 75.
The latter, Chuck Schumer’s age, is at or past the cutoff where cognitive decline becomes the norm rather than the exception for men. 67 is not.
With regards to the economy, Van Hollen supports an increase in the minimum wage, paid sick leave, an expansion of the earned income tax credit, equal pay for women, an increase in the child care tax credit, and a financial transaction tax.[70]. All of these are extremely popular positions and all but at most one or two are opposed by Schumer.
With regard to the West’s favorite fascist apartheid state: Chuck Schumer will always support using tax money to support the many atrocities of Israel.He’s described his job as “making sure the American Left is pro Israel”
Van Hollen was one of only 11 senators to vote for Bernie Sander’s resolution that the Foreign Assistance Act’s human rights provision should apply to Israel, one of 15 to vote for Bernie’s resolution to cancel $8.8b in bomb and ammunition sales to them by the Trump kakistocracy.
In July 2025, Van Hollen called for an end to funding the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for its role in mass killings in the Gaza Strip and a restoration of funding for UNRWA.[79] In September 2026, he introduced Senate Resolution 852, which would require the State Department to report on Israel’s human rights practices and violence in the West Bank, citing the killings of nine Americans by Israelis in the West Bank.[80]
He’s in favor of Medicare for All, which Schumer has fought tooth and nail at every opportunity.
In October 2024, Van Hollen voted against the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 as amended,[99] which restricted gender-affirming care in the military. The bill was later signed regardless by Joe Biden.[100] and Schumer of course voted for it.
If you can’t tell the difference between Schumer and Van Hollen, that’s a YOU problem.
Really, this guy is a nobody
Nope. This guy is a progressive Senator, something that there should be many more of.
this post could be nothing more than an ad or push by a hostile government.
Wtf kind of party loyalist crack are you smoking?! 🤦🏻
Seriously, who had ever heard of this guy before today.
Dozens of millions of people.
To those not from Maryland and not very steeped in politics, he’s mostly known as the senator who visited his constituent Kilmar Abrego Garcia in the El Salvador torture factory the Trump kakistocracy had sent him to.
I watched his Psaki interview, and he also very strongly rejected funding from AIPAC, even saying that if he was Leader, the DSCC would NOT accept money from AIPAC. Rejecting Israel is a massive difference between him and Schmuck, who can’t resist being obsequious to Israel.
Excuse me for not trusting a random old white man that’s been leading us into the absolute bullshit of a world we live in now.
He can get fucked like the rest of them.
Excuse me for not trusting a random old white man that’s been leading us into the absolute bullshit of a world we live in now.
That would be the Senate (Minority, former majority) LEADER, which Schumer has been since 2015, the year when the bullshit REALLY started going from “awful” to “bizarre, nonsensical, and frightening”.
Van Hollen is OPPOSING the shit you’re accusing him of being responsible for.
Harry Reid was in then. Then Pelosi was speaker of the house and schumer was her bff minority/majority leader from 2017 on for a while.
He sure wasn’t being out spoken about their bullshit then or ever. No one even knows his name. He certainly is not some sort of opposition to the status quo, and never has been.
I’m not falling for it, he’s another old ass white rich man. He can get fucked like the other POS manipulative fucks. They wouldn’t even be considering him if he wasn’t “willing to play ball,” with trumps BS far right government.
Is Bernie also in that group? If Marx were alive today would he just be another old white guy who was out of touch?
There are people everywhere who are not so different from you. But the powers that be are working hard to make sure we don’t recognize that.
Implying it’s just racism/sexism against white men without saying it directly? Lol. OK, I’ll block you.
Good enough for Bernie, good enough for me!
Van Hollen really laid it out for the party with this announcement:
“Now people will have to make a decision, one way or the other, and they have to decide whether they want to vote for change or whether they want to vote for the status quo.”
I don’t even consider it personal. We should just have a standing rule that any time the Republicans win a trifecta, that the upper leadership positions all get purged. I think the three senior Democratic members of the House, Senate, and DNC should be permanently barred from serving such a role if they fail so hard that Republicans gain the House, Senate, and presidency. If there’s one thing these leaders should be working to prevent, it’s complete control by the opposition party.
It shouldn’t even be personal; it should be universal and automatic. Any time the party loses that badly, it’s time for new blood going forward.
Isn’t it possible that congressional leadership is good, but the presidential election is botched so badly that the turnout is bad and therefore congress flips?
In this case, the congressional leadership is not good. Biden also botched the election by not holding a primary and deciding to seek a second term. We know that depressed turnout for the presidential ticket affects the congressional results.
There could certainly be cases where both are not true.
Interesting idea though GOP may well get a trifecta in 2028 by rebranding as an anti-war party. You read it here.
Also, when a party has the WH, then the president is also the de facto party leader, at least til there’s a new presidential nominee from that party. Biden, H. Clinton, Obama, and B. Clinton, I’m looking at all of you. Also Gore, since I’m old enough to remember him. Harris is slightly off the hook since she was a last minute substitute. And last week’s midterm flip belongs to Trump more than anyone else.
Rebranding? That’s the platform they ran on in 2024. They claimed “no new wars” and then started a war.
That’s a really short window for that big of a unified pivot by a major party, but I appreciate the interesting take.
I think the momentum is too much against the GOP for that to happen. They will need time to scrub away the stink of Trump and make MTG-style isolationist fascism look better than whatever centrist bullshit the Dems would have to be following.
Just sent Van Hollen an email of support. Good to see someone take Schumer on.
For folks that are crying about Jeffries, someone needs to run against him. It’s useless to hate on him if no one is going to run against him. If someone runs against him, things change. But for now, he’s likely the guy. Let him know what you want from him.
Ayanna Pressley is running against him, I thought
There’s talk, but I haven’t heard her speak up like Van Hollen did on Jen Psaki’s show, and expressly state that she’s going after Jeffries’ job.
There is a movement to recruit her. As far as I know, she has not taken it up.
Oh shit! Has she put her name up? A welcome development if so.
Amazing if true! She’d be a great Speaker!
I just got done listening to Bernie Sanders interview with Jon Stewart where and he mentioned his support for Van Hollen.
Let’s fucking go!
I’m writing an email to James Talarico right fucking now.
Hot Damn!
Okay Libs. No excuse now. It’s been a week of “well nobody is running against him” but that’s done. Time to put up or shut up. Who you gonna stand with? The new blood or the ancient blood? The man whose leadership has given us Trump? Or literally anything else?
Cuz I’ll tell you this, the more and more you think about it the more it feels like a Chuck Schumer led Democratic Party will not only end up in massive Republican victory in 2028, it might be the end of our democracy. I don’t know if democracy in the United States would survive the wave of apathy and surrender that would come from seeing this momentous Blue Wave betrayed by the Democratic corporate Old Guard. I think there’s an extremely valid risk that you would kill momentum for generations of voters.
(Imma write a letter to my senator elect right this second. Do the same.)
I don’t know if democracy in the United States would survive the wave of apathy and surrender that would come from seeing this momentous Blue Wave betrayed by the Democratic corporate Old Guard.
It’s not about the apathy and surrender per se—if that was the case 2008 would’ve been fatal—but rather the fact that giving the Republicans another trifecta or something close to it in the next decade or so would likely not be survivable.
I think it’s even more than that though. As misguided and idiotic as it is a lot of people I think voted for Trump because they wanted change and thought he would bring change. Clearly not. But that same sentiment I think in a lot of ways spurred the Blue Wave. You can hear it in multiple interviews they’ve had with voters over the last few weeks. People want change, you hear it over and over and over again. More than any single issue.
So if once again change doesn’t come even with that massive voting surge I think there’s a real chance the American people, or at least the vast majority of them more than we’ve ever seen, just check out. So what happens when the majority of the voting populace no longer believes in democracies capacity to actually govern? What happens when we combine that with the Republican clap back? I think they lay down and take the end of democracy. I think Republicans finally finished dismantling the thing and we no longer have one.
Anyone who wants an easy way to directly tell their Dem senators to support Van Hollen can do so by signing this letter (or copy/pasting it into your senator’s contact form if you’ve already signed this specific letter):
Get fucked, Schumer!
Oust Schmuck!
I don’t think he’d announce if he didn’t think he had enough votes, or close enough to just need to sway a few more.
I’m sure he hit minimum viability, but I’d actually prefer he didn’t wait for all the votes to act. Schumer and Jeffries don’t lift a finger unless they have every step planned out to within an inch of their and their donors’ lives, and it’s exactly why nothing gets done (they also negotiate against themselves and then fail to even accomplish most plans they make, but I bitterly digress).
He’s not pro Israel so there’s that. But I don’t love
born January 10, 1959
Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Yeah, but what is team Move The Goalposts gonna bitch about if we start settling for Good Enough instead of sitting on our hands waiting for Perfect to fall into our laps?
Oh, they’ll still bitch about the potential for voting enfranchisement of ancient fossilized bacteria found on Mars if they have to, don’t worry about their whataboutism, it’s not going anywhere, there is no limit to the sorts of distractions they can cook up.
If he can beat Schumer and let the new wave of democrats do what they were elected to do without obstruction, he could be 100 for all I care.
I’m totally fine with a 67 year old. That’s the age of a normal elder statesman. This will change over 4-6 years, but right now Van Hollen is totally with it and I love his ideas.
Just a kid
