Chuck Schumer should quit – but would his imaginary friends agree? | Arwa Mahdawi

Time’s up, Chuck

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has a pair of very sweet imaginary friends. They’re a middle-class couple called Joe and Eileen Bailey and they live on Long Island. At one point the imaginary couple, who feature in Schumer’s 2007 book, Positively American, were called the O’Reillys. According to the Hill, one Schumer aide said the name then was changed because the publisher thought O’Reilly was “too ethnic” for mass consumption. Another aide said that claim was false, and Schumer just wanted a name that “sounded more national”. Naming strategy aside, the key point here is that Schumer has said he runs all his policy decisions by this completely fictional couple. He’s referred to them hundreds of times throughout his political career.

With that in mind, you can probably thank the Baileys for the latest Democratic disaster. The US government has just emerged from the longest shutdown in history. About 700,000 federal employees worked without pay, desperately needed food benefits were disrupted, court cases were delayed, national parks closed and flights got cancelled.

All this pain was supposed to be in service of a very specific gain. Senate Democrats triggered the shutdown because they wanted to take a stand on healthcare. The 24 million people who get their health coverage through Affordable Care Act marketplaces (commonly known as Obamacare) are going to see their premiums more than double after an enhanced tax credit expires at the end of the year. The Democrats want to extend the credits; the Republicans have refused to commit to a vote on the issue.

You can certainly argue that shutting down the government to force a vote on Obamacare subsidies was the right thing to do. But it is very hard to find any strategic sense in putting Americans through a world of pain for 43 days only to shrug your shoulders and give up. Particularly as Schumer himself said the subsidies were a “life or death” issue and there was “no fucking way” the Democrats would cave on it.

But cave they did – and just as it looked like their strategy was paying off. An NBC poll released on 2 November found that voters said Trump and Republicans in Congress were more to blame for the ongoing government shutdown than the Democrats. You could argue that people were starting to turn on Republicans and their hand would be forced. But the Democrats once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Seven Senate Democrats and one Democratic-aligned independent broke with the party last weekend to vote for a bill that would reopen the government. Those expiring tax credits that Schumer said were a “life or death” issue were left unresolved.

Schumer, to be clear, voted no on the bill. But he’s the Democratic leader, he’s supposed to keep his party in line; the buck stops with Chuck. Now at least nine furious Democrats are calling for 74-year-old Schumer, who is clearly not being advised well by his imaginary friends, to step aside. Axios notes that “this represents Democrats’ largest groundswell against one of their leaders since last year’s effort to push then President Biden off the presidential ticket”.

Among the lawmakers demanding Schumer step aside is Ro Khanna, a California representative who has been outspoken about how the Democratic party has forgotten how to fight and needs “a total makeover”. Khanna, who co-chaired the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign and is expected to be a 2028 presidential candidate, has noted that Schumer has lost touch with the zeitgeist on multiple levels. Schumer refused to endorse Zohran Mamdani, for example. And the top Senate Democrat, who told the New York Times in March that his “job is to keep the left pro-Israel”, does not seem to understand why so many young Democrats are aghast at Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

“Senator Schumer caved on protecting people from losing their health insurance,” Khanna told me in a statement. “There are 20 million people in this country who are about to see huge premium hikes and we got no concession. We need Medicare for All and we need a politics of morality and truth-telling. That includes a moral voice on Gaza and stopping bombs to Netanyahu. His time is up.”

Unfortunately, US politicians are not very good at voluntarily ceding power with dignity. Eight Democratic members of Congress have died in office since November 2022. And last month Eleanor Holmes Norton, an 88-year-old Democratic congresswoman representing Washington DC, was described in a police report as experiencing “early stages of dementia” after being scammed in her home (her office told NBC Washington “the medical diagnosis included in the police report was based on an assumption the reporting officer was unqualified to make”). Nevertheless, the calls for Schumer to step aside are getting louder, and harder to ignore. The 74-year-old can gracefully step aside now or he can wait be humiliated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who many believe will challenge Schumer for his Senate seat in 2028.

Whatever Schumer does, I suggest he stop his conversations with the Baileys stat. We don’t need you talking to your imaginary friends, Chuck. We need you listening to the concerns of real people.

Record numbers of young women want to leave the US

Forty per cent of women aged 15 to 44 say they would move abroad forever if they could, according to a survey from Gallup. That’s four times higher than the 10% who wanted to leave in 2014 and more than double the number of young men (19%) who want to leave the US right now. It’s almost as if young women aren’t keen on being treated like walking wombs.

Megyn Kelly says Jeffrey Epstein might not have been ‘an actual pedophile’

The podcaster and former Fox and NBC News host said on her show on Wednesday that she had heard Epstein “was into the barely legal type… like he liked 15-year-old girls … There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a five-year-old”.

“I realize this is disgusting, I’m not making an excuse for this,” she said, noting that “every time we talk about Epstein, it makes your skin crawl” – but it’s a bold move to publicly split hairs about preying on vulnerable teenage girls.

Kim Kardashian lashes out at psychics after failing the bar exam

First Kardashian blamed ChatGPT for causing her to fail her legal exams; now she’s attacking psychics. “They all collectively, maybe four of them, have told me I was gonna pass the bar, so they’re [the psychics] all full pathological liars,” Kardashian said in a TikTok video. Who could have seen this coming, eh? Not the psychics, that’s for sure. Forget the spiritual advisers, Kim. I refer you back to your viral statement from 2022: “I have the best advice for women and business. Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”

80-year-old becomes oldest woman to complete an Ironman triathlon

Natalie Grabow is already planning more races.

Israel’s top military lawyer arrested after leaking video of Palestinian allegedly being raped

The Israeli soldiers accused of violently assaulting a Palestinian detainee last year are doing media appearances to try to win public sympathy and rightwing politicians are championing them as “heroes”. Meanwhile the military advocate general, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who leaked the video of the assault, is in jail.

Girl reportedly expelled for hitting boy who made a deepfake explicit image of her

A 13-year-old student was expelled from a Louisiana middle school after hitting a classmate who shared an AI-generated sexual image he had created of her, according to the family’s lawyers.

Influencer ordered to pay $1.75m for ‘seducing’ her manager

Brenay Kennard, who has 2.9 million followers on TikTok, was sued by her manager’s ex-wife, Akira Montague, under North Carolina’s alienation of affection law. According to court documents, Kennard was accused of engaging “in behavior designed to seduce” the married man, including “flicking her tongue to expose her tongue rings in a flirtatious manner”. A jury ordered her to pay $1.75m to Akira Montague. Kennard criticized the ruling and said Montague had consented to the affair, which Montague had denied in the suit.

The week in cawtriarchy

A very important scientific study out of the University of Exeter has concluded the best way to stop a seagull from stealing your food is to yell at them. Only 15% of gulls who heard a male voice shouting, “No, stay away, that’s my food” persisted in trying to snag a snack. The experiment only played male voices because it was meant to show physical violence is not necessary to scare off gulls, and men are more likely to commit crimes against wildlife. A future study may look at whether women’s voices have the same im-peck-able effect.

• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist