Weekly Member Update - December 22, 2025
Join us on the eve of the 2026 Legislative Session as we mark Three Kings Day with A Vigil of Hope and Solidarity for Immigrant Neighbors
Starting off the week by letting y’all know that this will be the last Update for the year. Between now and January 5, however, you can stay on top of things with our Events Calendar and give us a follow on Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Bluesky and Reddit.
We’re resisting the solstice urge to offer up a “Best of 2025” list, mostly because 2025 has been a horror show, of course. It’s tough to wax nostalgic when masked goons are snatching our neighbors off the street and an Imperial Presidency is using our government as an instrument of corruption, punishment and hate.
But 2025 also gave us this community and each of you, and for that we’re eternally grateful. For a lot of us, this time last year — in the immediate wake of Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris — was a time of despondency and existential dread. How many of us just checked out for a bit, disappointed, scared and in need of some serious self-care? When 2025 started, most of us were complete strangers. But as the year progressed, we all emerged from our emotional foxholes, looked around and found one another. We stood side by side, chanted, ranted and marched. Hands Off, No Kings 1 and 2, Good Trouble, Avelo x 7 and more honk and waves than we thought humanly possible. Indivisible Albany didn’t even exist a year ago, and now it’s part of a local coalition of thousands of friends from the North Country to Colonie, Guilderland, Bethlehem and Troy. You gave us — and each other — solidarity, friendship and an outlet for our collective rage. But, most of all, you gave us a shit-ton of hope and reminded us that we are part of a community of patriots who will not go down without a fight.
Thanks to 2025, we’ll also always have the sad Parable of Elusive Elise, perhaps the greatest example so far of the collective power we all became as this year progressed. Remember, when the year began, Elise Stefanik was Trump’s annointed UN Ambassador, poised for a deluxe apartment in the sky and significant influence over the trajectory of American foreign policy. But then, Trump’s GOP decided that Elise needed to wait her turn because NY-21 was looking uncomfortably purple. Unbowed, Representative Stefanik announced that she would be first Republican to win statewide office in NY in a generation and would become our next Governor. However, we ruined her coming-out party with the Albany County Republicans in May and, when the aspiring Nazi Youth of the NY Republicans decided to honor Elise as “Congresswoman of the Year,” we rained on that parade too. By August, our friends in Plattsburgh were showing the world how it’s done by literally booing Elise off the stage — twice — and, after Trump decided not to endorse her gubernatorial run, Elise found herself primaried by a perennial statewide loser from Long Island and got to see some brutal polling written all over the wall. And so, in a late Friday news dump coinciding with the ongoing coverup of the Epstein files, Elusive Elise announced that she would be spending more time with her family, leaving the Governor’s race entirely and ceding the Republican nomination in NY-21 to the likes of the Sticker Mule guy. By all accounts, it was a pathetic and ignominious end to the rise of Elise Stefanik; you could almost feel bad for her if she hadn’t brought this upon herself by abandoning her constituents in favor of the cult of Donald Trump. We’re disappointed that we can’t vote against Elise next fall, of course, but the State of New York will be better off by her absence from public life.
We’ll conclude with some recommended long-form journalism and other compelling reads to help fill some of your leisure time over the next couple of weeks:
The excellent Talking Points Memo has offered up “Undocumented Underground” a six-part series from the front lines of Trump’s mass deportation machine.
Jezebel has a lengthy piece on the Trump Administration’s plans to dramatically expand its efforts to denaturalize American citizens in 2026.
The ACLU has compiled a series of declarations from immigrants who have been detained at Fort Bliss, and they tell a harrowing tale.
If deep dives into judicial process is your bag, you’ll want to read The New Republic’s obliteration of the philosophical underpinnings of the Roberts Court; spoiler alert, “originalism” is a fraud.
The New York City Bar Association has issued a comprehensive report on the Trump Administration’s Abuse of Presidential Power and Breach of Public Trust.
Writer and historian Anne Applebaum explains how the foreign policy of the Trump Administration is an assault on liberal democracy itself.
To understand the full scope of the malice of the Trump Administration, you need to understand The Shadow President, OMB Director Russell Vought.
As if Vought isn’t villain enough, The New Republic tells the genealogical tale of Stephen Miller and his dark plans for our Country.
ProPublica has produced a tool to help you know where your generic prescriptions have been made.
The incomparable ProPublica also looks into the dire repercussions of the gutting of USAID by Trump and DOGE.
We were delighted to see that Poestenkill — and Stewart’s Shops — rejected efforts to install more Flock cameras on the roads of Rensselaer County. To fully understand the danger that Flock cameras (i.e., Automated License Plate Readers) pose to our civil liberties, we recommend this video, and this piece by the ACLU.
The once-hallowed 60 Minutes and CBS News my have been coopted by Trumpian oligarchs and turned into a propaganda machine, but Frontline has already released its own CECOT expose in concert with ProPublica.
Finally, don’t forget to join us tonight when we once again address the impotent Albany County Legislature about the continued presence of Avelo Airlines in our community. The Public Forum starts at 7:00 in the Albany County Courthouse and is viewable on YouTube if you can’t get there in person.