US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is facing opposition from progressives and a new group of Democratic lawmakers-elect to become Senate majority leader, in a rift that underscores the party’s divide on Israel.

Senators-elect Adam Hamilton of Kansas, Troy Jackson of Maine, and Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan all said on the campaign trail that they will oppose Schumer as Senate majority leader.

Meanwhile, progressive groups have said the Democrats’ sweeping midterm election victory on Tuesday should start the process of new lawmakers leading the party.

In February 2026, Schumer said that one of his most important jobs as Senate minority leader was to “fight for aid to Israel”. “I have many jobs as leader… and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs,” he told a group of pro-Israel Jewish leaders at the time.

Schumer is Jewish-American and has received support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). But recent polling shows that he is out of step with the majority of Jewish voters in the US, who lean heavily Democratic.