Anger was rising in the Democratic ranks yesterday after the party’s top US senator led a band of lawmakers in reluctant support of a Republican measure that prevented a government shutdown.The Senate voted 54-46 to pass the bill and send it to Trump for signing into law, after fending off four amendments.The Republican-controlled House of Representatives earlier this week passed the measure, which largely leaves spending steady at about $6.75tn in the fiscal year that ends September 30.Democrats had expressed anger over the bill, which will cut spending by about $7bn and which they said does nothing to stop Trump’s campaign to halt congressionally mandated spending and slash tens of thousands of jobs.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 told AFP 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.Despite stark warnings from Democrats, including popular House progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the resolution passed the Senate late on Friday with the support of 10 Democrats, including Schumer.The 74-year-old top Democrat from the state of New York had claimed earlier this week that his camp was united in opposition to the Trump-backed Republican proposal.However, on Thursday he relented and declared he would vote to keep the government’s lights on.“When the Senate Minority Leader sells you out, the only option is to take back the party and country with grassroots activists in blue and red districts to stand up for the Constitution and our democracy,” Democratic Representative Ro Khanna said in a social media post.House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar told reporters that Schumer’s move had caught him by surprise.More than 60 members signed a letter to Schumer on Friday urging him to reject the measure.Lawmakers including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and New Yorker Representative Ocasio-Cortez heaped public criticism on Schumer on Friday, even without naming him directly.Trump signed the bill into law yesterday afternoon.Schumer justified his position as the least-worst path, and “the best way to minimise the harm that the Trump administration will do to the American people”.His close Senate ally Dick Durbin agreed.“With Donald Trump and Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to the federal government’s workforce and illegally freezing federal funding, the last thing we need to do is plunge our country into further chaos and turmoil by shutting down the government,” Durbin said.However, within their camp, it was a bitter pill to swallow.Aimee Reeves, who was laid off from her private non-profit following cuts to the federal humanitarian agency Usaid, said tens of thousands of people have already found themselves without a job.“The government is not functioning as it should, and the fact that they put forth a narrative that we needed to vote for this bill to continue the government to function is normalising something that’s entirely not normal,” she told AFP at the New York rally.In an angry post on the Bluesky platform shortly after the bill was passed, New York progressive Ocasio-Cortez voiced a similar view, saying that Senate Democrats had “destroyed” their chances of future cooperation with their House counterparts through their “fear-based, inexplicable abdication”.She added: “They own what happens next.”Still, top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries sought to play down the divisions.“Our party is not a cult, we are a coalition,” he said in a statement after the Senate vote. “On occasion, we may strongly disagree about a particular course of action.”Earlier this week progressive congresswoman Pramila Jayapal warned on CNN that Democratic senators who vote for the GOP plan would face a “huge backlash”.Schumer has already felt the heat, with some 100 demonstrators protesting outside his New York home on Friday.Members of the Sunrise Movement, an association of young environmentalists, also gathered outside the senator’s Washington office “demanding he fight for our generation and block Trump’s disastrous budget”.“No more cowardice,” the organisation vented on X. “Step up or step aside.”The Centre for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, voiced similar sentiments, warning that Democrats who voted yes “just handed Musk and Trump free rein to destroy our environmental agencies and gut the civil service”.Meanwhile, Republicans led by Trump are rejoicing at the opposition’s disarray.“Congratulations to Chuck Schumer for doing the right thing,” the president trumpeted from his Truth Social account on Friday, saying that it took “’guts’ and courage”.