* The New York Times…

A group of six Democratic governors pressed Senator Chuck Schumer of New York during a tense call on Wednesday night to be more aggressive in fighting back against President Trump’s nominees and agenda, all but begging the minority leader to persuade Senate Democrats to block whatever they could.

The call, described in detailed notes as well as interviews with two participants and five other people briefed on the conversation, revealed the growing tensions among Democrats about how forcefully they should oppose Mr. Trump. Mr. Schumer convened the call to discuss a collective response to the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, which was pulled back on Wednesday. […]

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts each told Mr. Schumer that Senate Democrats should not vote for Mr. Trump’s nominees after the administration issued a memo freezing the funding. […]

Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, who is the chairwoman of the Democratic Governors Association and helped organize the call along with Mr. Pritzker, said their party needed to do a better job with its digital outreach in response to Mr. Trump. She called for Democrats’ online strategy to become “down and dirty.”

* The governor was asked about the call today during an unrelated news conference…

Pritzker: As to the call that we had last night with Leader Schumer in the US Senate. It was a productive call. We had a lively conversation about the challenges that people in our states are going through as a result of the threat of the freezes that appear to be the aim of the Trump administration. And Leader Schumer was receptive to things that we had to say. Understood, you know, he’s from New York. They also had the same things happen to them in New York, and he heard directly from people that are his constituents. So it was a good conversation. I think Chuck-

Reporter: Have the lines of communications reopened between the state and federal government?

Pritzker: Yeah, I haven’t heard of a failure to communicate between the two after that day. When there was so much of a challenge and we had some of our people rejected having conversations with our counterparts at the federal level. I haven’t checked in to see if those conversations have reopened. But my sense is, I haven’t heard anything new, that things have calmed down quite a lot.

Having said that, there is no indication, you heard this from the White House press secretary, there’s no indication that the Trump administration has any intention of pulling back on the idea of a freeze or even an elimination of major federal programs that benefit people in the state of Illinois, Meals on Wheels, Head Start, Medicaid, things that really matter to people every day. Not to mention grant programs for state police, for local police, those are all things that are at risk as a result of the threat that was made.

And it’s clearly their intention to carry it out. It’s just that they got so much negative feedback all in one day from all across the country, including from Republican elected officials, Democratic elected officials and nonprofits across the country. So I think they’re rethinking how they can still accomplish the goal without getting all the negative feedback.