MSNBC Host Symone Sanders Townsend Announces She’s Leaving Democratic Party After Schumer Sides With GOP On Spending Bill

Alessio AtriaMarch 17, 2025, 9:44 pmNews >

MSNBC host Symone Sanders-Townsend declared she would be leaving the Democratic party and will become an independent after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer sided with Republicans on newest spending bill.

On March 12, Schumer announced that his party would not support the House-approved bill to keep most federal funding at current levels.

>MORE: SCHUMER SAYS HE’LL SUPPORT GOP SPENDING BILL

Instead, he demanded that Republicans pass a monthlong extension to negotiate separate spending bills and reach a bipartisan compromise. If no funding extension were to be passed, a government shutdown would have started at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday. Senate Republicans would require the support of at least eight Democrats to pass the spending measure.

On Thursday night, Schumer changed his mind and said he would vote to keep the government open.

Ten other Democrats joined him to push the measure in a 54-46 vote. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law on Saturday afternoon.

On MSNBC’s The Weekend Saturday, Sanders-Townsend stated that she was “p—ed” with Schumer’s choice and how, in response, she would go from being a Democrat to an Independent.

“There’s actually little that the Senate minority leader can say, and the ten Democrats that voted with the Republicans can say, to appease somebody like me,” she added. “I’m about to change my registration to independent, first and foremost.”

“In 2024, Democrats ran on warnings that Trump was going to destroy democracy, and now that he and his team are very much in the process of doing just that, these same politicians are questioning whether or not to stand up to him and his party at one of the first opportunities they have to meaningfully do so,” Sanders-Townsend noted.

“The only opportunity, I would add, there’s not another option for Senate or Senate Democrats or House Democrats to effectively push back,” the MSNBC host claimed. “This was it! They blew it! The Democratic Tea Party was born the same day that Chuck Schumer took to that podium to read that very well-crafted statement that told us he folded like a paper napkin.”

As of last month, Sanders-Townsend, along with former chairman of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele and anchor Alicia Menendez, is set to succeed MSNBC anchor Joy Reid after the network canceled her show, The ReidOut, on Feb. 23.