WASHINGTON — ​Senate Democrats are digging in for a fight on a House-passed stopgap funding measure that is needed by Friday night to avoid a partial government shutdown.

After a closed-door caucus lunch, Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that Democrats would fight for a one-month continuing resolution that would allow time for Congress to finish full-year appropriations bills.

“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort, but Republicans chose a partisan path drafting their continuing resolution without any input … from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said on the foor. “Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR.”

The House GOP’s continuing resolution, which passed on a mostly party-line vote Tuesday, would extend current funding through the end of this fiscal year, which is Sept. 30. Schumer suggested his caucus won’t provide the votes to get to the needed 60 to allow the measure to come to a final vote, raising the odds of a shutdown when current stopgap funding runs out Friday at midnight.

“Our caucus is unified on a clean, April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “We should vote on that.”

That demand erects a roadblock to swift Senate passage of the House bill. But it doesn’t necessarily mean the House bill is dead.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., took the initial step needed to get onto the stopgap measure Wednesday night, filing cloture on the motion to proceed to the House-passed bill. But how quickly the bill gets to the president’s desk — if at all — was in Democrats’ hands.

Democrats have been torn over whether to vote for a House bill they dislike or trigger the shutdown, which some dislike even more. If Senate GOP leaders grant Democrats a vote on a one-month CR, which likely would fall short, some Democrats may then be willing to join Republicans in advancing the House bill.

Thune said he was open to that idea, though Democrats hadn’t approached him yet with an offer.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Republicans might be open to allowing that kind of deal if it secures the Democratic votes needed in the end to advance the House-passed legislation.

“The reality is we got to work with Democrats … to get to 60 votes,” Tillis said. “Giving them a vote, I don’t have a problem with it if it secures the 60 votes to avoid a shutdown. But only if there’s a guarantee of that upfront.”

But Senate leaders would need to engage in some delicate bipartisan negotiations to make such an arrangement possible. And until they do, many Democrats were unwilling to tip their hand publicly on how they might ultimately vote on the House measure.

“I’m weighing the badness of each option,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he feared backing a House bill that he said could help Elon Musk continue to gut federal agencies and fire thousands of federal workers through his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

“The Musk brigade is doing so much damage, I mean colossal damage, to essential services, for kids and veterans and the like,” he said. “So I want everybody to know I am not going to have anything to do with helping that.”

But when asked if a partial shutdown could make that problem worse, Wyden said, “That’s what I’m saying for today.”

Other Democrats appear dug in, however.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he was prepared to fight for a short-term CR and would oppose the House bill, including on the critical cloture vote needed to advance it.

“We don’t need to do a (full-year) CR,” Kaine said of the House bill. “Just because the House decided to leave town on a Tuesday night, that doesn’t mean the Senate shouldn’t be a deliberative body. I’m a ‘no.’ I’m a ‘no’ on cloture and a ‘no’ on the bill.”

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she would oppose a one-month extension, as Democrats want, because there is no longer enough time to finish full-year appropriations bills and a short-term measure couldn’t even become law now.

“It’s simply too late,” Collins said. “The House has gone home. The president has said he would veto it.”

Democrats have some leverage to negotiate an endgame for the CR because Republicans need 60 votes to limit debate on the bill and they hold only 53 seats. And Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has signaled his opposition to the House bill.

That defection means GOP leaders would need at least eight Democrats to join them to push the CR over the finish line. Some Democrats might be willing to do so if they are first given a chance to show their support for a one-month extension and an 11th-hour effort to complete full appropriations bills for the current fiscal year, which is already half over.

It wasn’t clear after Schumer’s comments that Democrats were interested in a show vote that’s designed to fail, however.

After weeks of being told by the party base that they’re not being aggressive enough in fighting back against Musk and President Donald Trump, they are so far demonstrating a level of unity in opposing the measure that’s unusual for a must-pass spending bill.

Typically, Democrats are the party trying to keep the government’s lights on. With the shoe on the other foot now, House Democrats used Tuesday’s floor debate to paint the majority Republicans as flip-floppers, particularly hard-liners who’ve called themselves “Never CR” lawmakers.

In a joint statement Wednesday from their Leesburg, Va., retreat, House Democratic leaders called on their Senate counterparts to stand firm, saying they’re ready to back the April 11 CR if it comes back to them.

“House Republicans should get back to Washington immediately so that we can take up a short-term measure, pass it on a bipartisan basis and avoid a Trump-inspired government shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Minority Whip Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts, and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California said.

House Democrats lost only one of their members on final passage Tuesday: Jared Golden of Maine, one of roughly a dozen Democrats from districts Trump carried in November. In the Senate, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, a key swing state Trump won, is the lone declared “yes” vote on the House GOP stopgap bill.

Noting the need for bipartisan cooperation, Schumer said, “I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.”

Senate Republicans, so far, aren’t taking the bait. “Shutdown Schumer,” the Senate GOP took to calling the Democratic leader on social media Wednesday.

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