"The federal government is opening: without a deal on healthcare subsidies, or a check on any of the other abuses of the Trump administration.
"Shutting down the government had real consequences, it inflicted real pain—and opening it paves a path for new suffering, like rising healthcare premiums for millions of Americans. It’s obvious that MAGA Republicans don’t care about that harm, and we have to. At the same time, when it seems like this deal was struck just as people were beginning to understand the true lows of Trump’s authoritarianism, this feels like a failure of Democratic leadership at a time when the wind was at their backs. People are rightfully angry and have questions—about the strategy, about the politics, and about the purpose.
"The bill passed today. What’s the plan for tomorrow? The government is open—to do what? That’s the question I need answered.
"On the day the government shut down, almost 3 million New Yorkers needed SNAP benefits just to get by. Cutting off that funding created an immediate crisis that we responded to. The crisis isn’t over when SNAP funding resumes. When 3 million New Yorkers are food insecure, that is a crisis. And even when the government was open, it wasn’t acting on that hunger crisis with the immediacy it obviously demands.
"Healthcare and hunger shouldn’t be mere bargaining chips. We shouldn’t ask people to absorb real pain for political gains—and if we do, we better be able to deliver results that don’t just bring us back to the status quo.
"Want to energize people and get them back on your side? Show us why it matters. Show the people what government can do—and the people will hold government accountable when it doesn’t. That’s my job. Go do yours."