Weekly Member Update - September 8, 2025
We’ve dedicated a lot of proverbial ink to the topic of the Democrats over these last few months. The Party’s cratering favorability numbers and the palpable frustration of the American people with Democratic leadership has been nearly as much a hallmark of the past 8+ months as has been the Orange King’s chaotic and corrupt authoritarianism. Unfortunately, the past week has given us more examples of this distressing phenomenon, both at the national level and close to home.
On the national level, we have the bespectacled avatar of feckless Democratic leadership, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. On the heels of his feeble capitulation in March over federal government funding, New York’s senior Senator seems poised to prove that he has learned nothing over the past six months, with word that Democratic Senate leadership is poised to give away the store once again. Later this month, Republicans will once again require Democratic votes to keep the government open. With the Trump Administration exercising increasingly greater control over the appropriation process with its unconstitutional “pocket rescission” scheme, one would think that Democrats would want to utilize their considerable leverage this time around to obtain meaningful GOP concessions and (at the very least) claw back rightful Congressional authority over the budgeting process. Apparently not. Reporting suggests that the Democratic “plan” is to instead negotiate for an extension of the Obamacare subsidies that were cut as part of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. While restoration of those cuts is critically important – millions of Americans will otherwise see astronomical and cost-prohibitive increases to their healthcare premiums – the Democratic Senate leadership is not demanding that the ACA subsidies be permanently restored. Rather, Dems are apparently only looking for a temporary, short-term extension of the subsidies so that the cuts will still come, but not until after the 2026 midterms. The trouble is, of course, that if Democrats fail to take control of Congress in the midterms, Obamacare (and likely a whole lot more) will be gone forever. So the Democrats’ big negotiating chip is apparently to merely delay what is currently inevitable while simultaneously gifting the Republicans the ability to avoid the GOP’s “greatest midterm threat” throughout the 2026 election cycle. It’s political and policy malpractice, pure and simple, and we shouldn’t stand for it. Fortunately, Indivisible has put together a comprehensive toolkit to help you put the pressure on Schumer and the 10 Senate Democrats, including our own Kirsten Gillibrand, who caved this past March. Let’s make our voices heard and make sure our Senators do the right thing and use the levers of power they have at their disposal.
Closer to home, we have Albany County Executive — and Vice Chair of the State Democratic Party — Dan McCoy. After spending the entirety of 2025 in veritable silence on local issues arising from the actions of the Trump Administration — the regular abduction of local residents by ICE and the presence of Avelo Airlines at Albany International Airport come to immediate mind — Boss McCoy was forced to comment this past week when the actions of ICE culminated in the abandonment of an American seven-year-old on Everett Road. First of all, kudos to the dedicated public servants from the Albany County Department of Children, Youth and Families who were able to reunite this child with his mother. That said, McCoy’s nonchalant reaction to the incident – he shrugged it off as “above [his] authority” and encouraged “everyone” to carry identification in case ICE demanded to see their papers – is exactly the type of do-nothing complacency that has the American people up in arms over what is currently passing for Democratic Party leadership. To be sure, the Albany County Executive has no authority over the actions of a federal agency like ICE. But nothing is stopping elected Democrats like Dan McCoy from showing just a little goddamn rage at the sight of unidentified and masked federal agents indiscriminately stopping people on the streets of Albany County. When Democratic leaders throw up their hands and proclaim their powerlessness, it normalizes what is decidedly not normal and conditions their constituents to accept ever-increasing overreach by federal authorities. In the face of fascism eclipsing our Republic, shrugging what-are-you-gonna-do ambivalence is the last thing that the American People need to see from opposition leaders.
Compare the flaccid resignation of Dan McCoy to the constant, vicious – and often hilarious – trolling of the Trump Administration by California Governor Gavin Newsom. Or, better yet, look to the example of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. This past week, as the Orange King proclaimed his intention to wage literal war on the City of Chicago, Pritzker was having none of it. While Pritzker, like Dan McCoy, has no authority over federal authorities, he didn’t let that stop him from rallying the people of Chicago to the cause of resistance. He labeled the actions of Trump for what they are, “illegal, unconstitutional and unAmerican,” and smashed the ridiculous pretense put forth by Trump and his acolytes:
“This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the President of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection”
And then, Governor Pritzker spoke to the Republicans who are enabling Trump’s tyranny:
“To my fellow Governors across the nation who would consider pulling your National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its People: You would be failing your constituents, and your Country. Cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our Nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to. The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump Administration in Court, we will use every lever at our disposal to protect the People of Illinois and their rights. Finally, to the Trump Administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago to try and incite my People into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This Country has survived darker periods than the one we are going through right now, and eventually, the pendulum will swing back. Maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice, for a time, but history shows that you cannot prevent it from finding you, eventually. If you hurt my People, nothing will stop me – not time, or political circumstance – from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.”
That, our friends, is the type of courageous leadership that our era demands. The bottom line is this. Donald Trump is a dictator, full stop. He is not a mere wannabe, or a President with “authoritarian ambitions.” He sits in his gilded Oval Office, beaming as Cabinet officials and Tech CEOs lick his boots, while he sends federal troops into American cities, persecutes his enemies with the apparatus of the federal government and seeks to wield his mercurial power over every aspect of American life. The passive and resigned appeasement of GOP authoritarianism by Democrats like McCoy and Schumer demonstrates that they just don’t understand where this Nation is at the moment. The only acceptable response to the machinations of Donald Trump and his cohorts is full-scale resistance, not acquiescence or “bipartisan” dealmaking. For the last 8+ months, we have seen the American people take to the streets in ever increasing numbers in opposition to the Trump Regime; it is long past time that all Democratic officials – from Governors and Senators to County Executives and Dog Catchers – stand by the People in solidarity.
While New York is currently lacking in the Governor-Pritzker department, the fact remains that our big, beautiful, blue State can be a focus of Blue State Defiance against the authoritarian Trump regime. We will be talking a lot about “soft secession” and the rebirth of federalism as a bulwark against authoritarianism over the coming weeks, but we saw a small example of this in the past week in the realm of public health. As one of our members recently highlighted, Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. is currently taking a blow torch to our national public health infrastructure, particularly in the realm of vaccinations. Secretary Brain Worm’s actions led to the threatened unavailability of COVID-19 vaccines this coming fall but, ultimately, Governor Hochul followed the lead of California, Massachusetts and a host of other blue states and declared the public health emergency necessary to insure that COVID-19 vaccines would be immediately available in New York. But a more lasting legislative fix is still needed and, in addition, more will need to be done to ensure that the full panoply of childhood vaccinations remains widely available. We will therefore be encouraging you to keep up the pressure on Governor Hochul to guarantee the continued availability of the childhood vaccine panel. We are also joining the growing chorus of those calling for a special legislative session before Legislators are scheduled for their annual return four months from now. As we indicated above, this current moment demands bold and urgent leadership, and a sooner-than-expected return of the State Legislature would signal that New York will not stand idly by as Trump, RFK Jr. and their collaborators lay waste to the American way of life. A special session need not be restricted to vaccine availability, of course, and we likewise encourage the prompt consideration of a host of other legislative initiatives, particularly those that could potentially impact the positive well being of our immigrant communities, such as the NYForAll Act, the MELT Act and Senator Patricia Fahy’s SAFE AIR Act.
In closing, remember to keep an eye on our Events Calendar for an ever-expanding list of rallies, town halls and other events all over the Capital Region. A few items deserve special attention here, however:
On Monday, September 15, we’ll be holding our Monthly Member meeting at the Guilderland Public Library from 6 to 8. Sign up here so that we know to expect you!
On Saturday, September 27, from 11:30 to 1:00, it will once again be time to hit the streets around Albany International Airport to call out Avelo Airlines and their cruel complicity with ICE. Our monthly protests against Avelo get bigger with each passing month, so please come join us. And, if you are new to the scene and need to know more, be sure to check out our Hell No Avelo Page for everything you need to know about “America’s Most Convenient Airline” and its relationship with ICE and the Trump Administration.
Finally, mark your calendars for Saturday October 18 for No Kings 2.0! Back in June, you showed up in droves, making your voices heard in one of the largest days of peaceful protest in this Nation’s history. But No Kings is not a one-off event, it is a durable and sustained movement, and with the Orange King becoming more tyrannical by the day, it is more important than ever that we stand up together in massive numbers to show Trump and his lackeys that we are not going anywhere. We are still working out the details of our Capital Region events, but we will pass on more information as it becomes available. Watch this space!