March 17 (UPI) — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has postponed a number of U.S. stops on a book tour over safety concerns after outrage among the Democratic base for his vote related to the averted government shutdown.
The New York Democrat, 74, was slated to be in New York City, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia and several California cities for the release of his new book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning.
“Due to security concerns, Sen. Schumer’s book events are being rescheduled,” Risa Heller, his book tour spokeswoman, wrote in a statement.
Schumer received backlash from many in the Democratic Party after he whipped nine other Senate Democrats to pass the Republican-lead funding bill backed by President Donald Trump in a 62-38 vote that kept the U.S. government open for another six months.
Schumer argued that a shutdown plays in favor of billionaire Elon Musk’s and the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to dismantle the federal bureaucracy, and that voting for it was the better of two bad options.
One of the postponed events in New York was scheduled to be a conversation between Schumer and Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who joined the criticism of the minority leader’s decision.
“Bailing out the Republicans without extracting anything in return is political malpractice,” Torres wrote on X. He called it a “strategic miscalculation that we as a party might live to regret” in a separate post.
According to two websites for the Washington and Baltimore events, “Sen. Schumer’s book tour events during the week of March 17 are being postponed for security reasons.”
“We will work to reschedule this event at a later date,” it added.
