George Washington was looking to hold New York City with 10,000 inexperienced troops, short on gunpowder, and spread across multiple defensive lines across Long Island. British Generals Clinton and Cornwallis landed over 20,000 well-trained British and Hessian troops on Staten Island, and then slipped through a poorly-defended Jamaica Pass overnight.

The result was a rout: the Continental Army’s lines collapsed, and over 1,000 men were lost. But thanks to the sacrifice of brave soldiers, especially hundreds from the Connecticut and Maryland Regiments (led by William Alexander, aka Lord Stirling, for whom M.S. 51 is named), Washington and his troops were able to retreat across the east river, up through Manhattan, and then eventually across to New Jersey. Although they lost New York City (which was under British rule for most of the Revolutionary War), the Continental Army survived to fight another day, and eventually win the war seven long years later.

The battle was re-enacted in Prospect Park on Saturday, followed by a ceremony honoring the Maryland 400 at the Old Stone House (where the story of the battle is on permanent display). On Sunday, we observed the anniversary on Battle Hill inside Greenwood Ceremony.

If you missed the celebrations, don’t worry! There’s an exhibit at the Center for Brooklyn History through the end of the year. And Greenwood Cemetery now has a wonderful new visitor center called The Green-House at 25th Street and 5th Avenue, which is well worth visiting.

There’s also an important pop-up exhibit through November at the Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park, on“Black People and the Battle of Brooklyn. Black New Yorkers served as soldiers on both sides, built American forts, and maintained British ships. Some fought at Battle Pass itself, which is now inside Prospect Park.

Many of the Black soldiers who fought on the British side during the war were enslaved Africans, largely recruited from Southern states, although slavery was still legal here at the time, who were promised their freedom. When the war ended, in the Treaty of Paris negotiations, Americans wanted the formerly enslaved people who’d worked for the British returned to their enslavers; the British refused and instead evacuated roughly 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia rather than hand them back. Some had been Brooklynites.

The Lefferts House itself, originally located in central Brooklyn, was part of both battles for freedom, for the young American republic, and against slavery. The Lefferts family enslaved people on a 300-acre plantation covering much of what’s now central Brooklyn. In 1776 British troops burned their farmhouse, and it was rebuilt afterward by the very people the family enslaved. Descendants of the enslaved Lefferts household later helped found Weeksville, one of the first free Black communities in the country. And a Lefferts heir who later became a U.S. congressman voted against ending slavery dozens of times. So the same house carries both the founding-liberty story and its direct contradiction, under one roof, in our beloved park.

Two hundred and fifty years later, it’s worth reflecting on what we can learn from the sacrifice of the Maryland 400 and the Connecticut Regiment, from Washington’s resilient leadership, and from the slaves contesting what independence would actually mean, and whose freedom must be fought for.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, too much of the official commemoration of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding has been marred by Trump’s zero-sum approach to our history. In addition to emphasizing cage matches on the White House lawn – emphasizing violence, rather than the ideas worth fighting for – he has worked hard to demonize and exclude stories like those being told at Lefferts House.

But on Sunday, in the commemoration on Battle Hill in Greenwood Cemetery, new Brooklyn Borough Historian Asad Dandia invited us to view America 250 as a conversation – one that always involved dispute and disagreement, where questions of freedom and equality were always debated – and to make sure we continue that conversation. If you’re looking for some thoughtful approaches as part of your commemoration, I recommend the conversation that Brian Stevenson had with Ezra Klein earlier this summer. Or, as always, Jill Lepore’s brilliant book, These Truths.

For me, the Battle of Brooklyn commemoration also always marks the end of summer – so it has me reflecting on the remarkable summer we’ve had in New York City, beginning with the Knicks victory, and moving through the World Cup games. I believe that “these truths” we celebrated on July 4th – political equality, natural rights, democratic self-governance – and the virtues that we honor today – resilience, grit, diversity – are alive and well in New York City.

We’ll keep fighting against would-be kings and authoritarians. We’ll keep insisting on building a nation that brings people together to fight for freedom, regardless of where they come from – a creedal, immigrant nation, rather than a blood-and-soil one. We’ll keep pushing to live up to our values, and looking with clear eyes at the ways we fall short.

And we’ll keep honoring the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in that pursuit.

I’m excited to bring that spirit to Congress, to fight alongside colleagues for those beautiful ideals of Philadelphia, with the resilience of the Maryland 400 (most of whom died in Brooklyn and whose graves were never recovered), with the insistence of enslaved Africans whose descendants continue to be such a central part of this city, and in the spirit of the diverse, immigrant city we’ve been lucky to celebrate this summer.

Happy Battle of Brooklyn @ 250 Day.

One month ago, the voters of NY-10 made me the Democratic nominee for Congress. I had not envisioned being on-air on CNN when the race was called, but I got to spend the rest of the evening celebrating (check out the video our team put together). A month later, I remain profoundly grateful to our incredible team and supporters, humbled by the faith New Yorkers have placed in me, and – most of all – energized for the urgent fights ahead.

It’s been an exhilarating time to be a New Yorker. The Knicks championship run and the World Cup reminded us over-and-over how the diversity, grit, creativity, and team spirit of our city can captivate the world. And even with those beautiful games in the rearview mirror, I find reminders all the time. Just this past week, from the ethereal “soundbath” at Brooklyn Botanical Garden to a picket line where Rosa was one of the strike captains, I’ve been reminded anew why I love this place so much.

The spirit that’s moving in this city – on Election Night, I called it solidarity – offers a path forward to a future so much better than the grim, selfish, zero-sum world that Trump and AI oligarchs are offering. To have any chance to secure that future, we’ve got to get busy both fighting to win House and Senate Democratic majorities in November and preparing the boldest agenda to deliver for people once we get there.

The victories of progressive candidates here in New York (and across the country in Colorado, California, New Jersey, and elsewhere) have attracted a lot of attention. Trump and his minions have taken to referring to us as “communists,” though of course they and their apparatchiks are the ones corrupting our government and abducting our neighbors. But there’s been plenty of debate within the Democratic Party as well. As we head toward the fall’s elections, we can’t let MAGA Republicans distract or divide us. We need simultaneously to heed the call of voters for bolder Democrats, and to unify around some clear, broadly-shared principles.

On Election Night, I outlined themes to guide Democrats through this fall and beyond:

1. We have to fight, hard and visibly, against a system that most people have rightly concluded is rigged against them.

2. We have to focus, relentlessly, on delivering for working families — on housing, health care, child care, on jobs that pay enough to afford a life with dignity.

3. We cannot compromise on anyone’s humanity, in the five boroughs, across red and blue states, in Israel and Palestine, and across the world. We should help people why it’s better to be human, to be a good neighbor, than it is to be a fascist, or an AI.

In just the few weeks since then, we’ve seen some signs of how that’s possible. Senator Warren’s 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed Congress overwhelmingly and became law. It’ll cut red tape, boost housing supply, expand homeownership, and put the first restrictions in place on the expansion of private equity ownership. Despite Trump’s authoritarian temper tantrum, the bill united progressive Democrats, moderate Democrats, and Republicans in the effort to deliver homes for people – about as basic as our politics gets.

And last week, in a vote that I believe was shaped in part by our election wins, over 100 House Democrats voted for Thomas Massie’s amendment to suspend aid to Israel. That would’ve been unthinkable as recently as a few months ago. It’s a sign our leaders know they need to catch up to a party base that is pleading for Congress to stop funding Netanyahu’s wars. You may have seen me talking about Israel and Palestine, and the role of U.S. and of American Jews, on CNN with Dana Bash, on NewsNation with Batya Ungar-Sargon, with Peter Beinart, with JStreet, with Ha’aretz, or in an exchange of letters with Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove. You almost certainly won’t agree with me on everything here – but I’m trying hard to help us have a better conversation about these issues.

I’m working hard to be a constructive force in the dual-track effort to win a bolder Democratic Party and a strong House majority. Like AOC, I’ve made clear I look forward to voting to elect Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker on the first ballot, to show the unity necessary for a real opposition party – but also that I plan to follow the example she set when she came in as a freshman, when she sat in Nancy Pelosi’s office to demand bolder action. Voters are fed up with a broken status quo, and we better be ready to change it. In that spirit, I explained to NPR listeners what democratic socialists are pushing for, and why the effort “to extend democracy into more aspects of our lives - into workplaces and communities and schools and health care - so folks have more say over their lives” fits firmly within our party.

You can see that dual-track effort in the endorsements I’ve made since winning. To keep pushing our party forward, I endorsed Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. I first met Abdul through our dear friend Ady Barkan, who died of ALS while courageously crusading for Medicare for All. I know there is no one who will work harder than Abdul to finish Ady’s fight. And as with Mayor Mamdani, while Abdul and I don’t have identical views on how to ultimately achieve peace, justice, and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis, we share the belief that the rights and safety of Jewish and Muslim people are inextricably intertwined, from the Midwest to Midtown to the Middle East.

Closer to home, and to help show the unity we need, I joined Congressmember Pat Ryan up in Kingston for his re-election campaign kickoff a few weeks ago (along with Governor Hochul, Attorney General James, Comptroller DiNapoli, and many others). Ulster County is not exactly a place you’d expect to see me, but I’m all-in the effort to win back the House and support my soon-to-be colleagues. (As it was a week after July 4th, I also talked about the underappreciated connections between the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776, and the drafting of the New York State Constitution in Kingston in April 1777). As I said at his event, the line right now isn’t between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and folders – and if you’re a fighter (like Pat Ryan is), then we need to unite in common cause and defeat the fascists corrupting our government and rigging our economy.

Because we’re reminded everyday of what we’re up against. Trump’s illegal, reckless war in Iran is again spiraling out of control. Pete Hegseth testified this week that the war has now cost American taxpayers $37.5 billion. Every dollar of which would’ve been better spent here at home on housing, childcare, and healthcare. Not to mention the mass devastation and lives lost as a result of this President’s violent impulses. Our party could be a lot louder and a lot bolder in forcing this war to come to a quick end.

The morning after the election, after thanking voters at the 7th Avenue subway stop, I headed back to immigration court for a courtwatching shift, to keep bearing witness to this administration’s cruelty. This month, I’ve witnessed sweet little kids be separated from their parents and held in custody – without a lawyer or anyone to guide them through a convoluted legal process that is tilted against them at every turn. I was literally at the hearing for a three-year-old girl who our government has kept separated from her mom for more than 10 months. More and more, ICE has been using kids as “bait” to arrest and detain their relatives. You don’t have to be a parent to realize how devastating or evil this is. You just have to be a human. The cruelty is mind-boggling.

In my Election Night speech, I frequently pivoted back to the theme of solidarity. About how it’s the force we need to beat our biggest foes. That remains a guiding light for me and this movement we’re growing together. We won a big fight on June 23. But there’s still a marathon ahead of us. To materially improve the lives of working people. To end the inhumanity of Trump’s deportation machine. To stop funding illegal wars and human rights violations. To grow a unified Democratic Party bold enough and strong enough to do all of it. To win a city, a country, a democracy, worthy of everyone who lives here.

That’s why we fought so hard to win the election one month ago. And that’s what we’ll be fighting for, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the months ahead.

Thanks to The Door, JFREJ, and her child advocate, Estrella had people speaking up for her – and I did so, too, pleading with the judge that we should not keep this little girl separated from her mom.

The judge gave Estrella 21 days to file an asylum application, but I don’t know how that’s going to work, since she doesn’t have a lawyer, she’s separated from her mom, and again, she’s three years old.

I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident, but it is not. The Trump administration has gutted policies that were designed to give immigrant kids access to legal counsel, relief from deportation, and the ability to be reunited with their families while they apply to stay in the U.S.

As a result, children are being detained and removed at about three times the rate as during even the first Trump administration.

Since last year, ICE and the Office of Refugee Resettlement have made it much harder to be designated as a sponsor for a child, even if you’re related. They’ve added all kinds of new bureaucratic and paperwork requirements – proof of income, identification, backup caregiving, and more. And they now require sponsors to attend ID checks where ICE agents are present. In many cases, ICE has abducted potential sponsors from these interviews, essentially using their kids as a trap.

Meanwhile, the federal government has cut funding for the lawyers who are contracted to help these kids file for asylum or other humanitarian protections – at the same time that they’ve accelerated the court docket aggressively. So removals are up, detentions are up, and the time kids are spending separated from their families is up. Average time in ORR custody has jumped from one month to six months, and some kids have been in detention for more than a year.

You don’t have to be a dad to know how devastating that is, or how long term the consequences will be. All done by our government, with our tax dollars.

We’ll keep pushing for Estrella to be reunited with her mom. As always, huge thanks to the amazing organizations supporting these kids. Please support them, and join the movement of thousands of people working to protect our neighbors from ICE, in our courts and everywhere else.

But if you were wondering about the impact of Trump’s genuinely evil immigration policies, or why we need to abolish ICE, thousands of kids needlessly separated from their families for many months is one more hideous reminder.

Nothing about “these truths” — political equality, natural rights, the consent of the governed — has ever been self-evident in this country. We don’t agree on where they come from; “self-evident” was always something of a dodge. And our failures to live up to them are foundational. Those principles are, of course, wildly inconsistent with genocide against Native Americans, with the transatlantic slave trade and property in human beings, with the denial of the vote to women.

The founders weren’t naive to these hypocrisies. Jefferson’s third draft, included the abolition of slavery and the sentence that, at least as concerned inheritance, “females shall have equal rights with males.” But these wound up on the cutting room floor. Seventy-five years later, Frederick Douglass would ask, “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?”

And yet “these truths” are our founding principles, and still damn good ones. They aren’t self-evident — but they’re worth pledging, still, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor to. They have always had to be argued, organized, legislated, marched for, and — again and again — defended against people working just as hard to deny them.

We often tell American history as running in one direction: founding, flaw, struggle, progress. Slavery, then abolition. Denial of rights to women, then suffrage. Jim Crow, then civil rights. Exclusion, then a more perfect union, always trending toward justice if we’re patient. It’s a comforting shape, and there’s real truth in it — people did fight, and win, and expand who counts as “we the people.” That’s ours to tell, too.

But Lepore’s history doesn’t let us stop there. For every Reconstruction, there was a Redemption. For every expansion of who belongs, there has been an organized, well-funded, often electorally successful countermovement insisting the expansion went too far, and that some earlier arrangement of power was the real America to which we should return. That countermovement is not a deviation from our history. It is our history — as old as the founding, running alongside the freedom strand the whole way, sometimes losing, sometimes winning, often in the very same people and the same laws at the same time.

That’s where we are today. One sentence Jefferson wrote, and that survived every edit — “A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free” — describes our current one.

He has looted the American people for billions, in corruption schemes so brazen they make Teapot Dome and Watergate look like high-school pranks. He has abducted tens of thousands of our immigrant neighbors without lawful cause. He has taken us into reckless, illegal wars. He has corroded and dismantled systems we built to educate our kids, feed the hungry, and care for the sick.

So the question today isn’t whether these truths are self-evident, or even how we understand the history of trying to make them real. It’s what we’re doing about it now. And I don’t just mean defeating Trump and Trumpism, though surely we must. The founders fought a war to be rid of George III — but what we actually celebrate today is what came after: they built a government, derived from the consent of the governed, to make our lives in common better.

They also built in the means to amend and evolve that government, so it could keep working for centuries to come. That’s our charge now — and it’s why I ran for Congress. Not as an inheritance to protect, a victory to defend, or even a wrong to right, but as an assignment to fulfill together.

In the years ahead, we’ll need major structural changes to our democratic institutions: expanding and reforming the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, proportional representation in Congress, overturning Citizens United and getting money out of politics. We’ll need to establish new rights as part of our social democracy — universal health care, child care, housing — and build the systems to deliver them. We’ll need to harness technologies like AI for the public interest, and bring our full capacities to confronting climate change, whose brutal impact we feel this very weekend. And we’ll need to reset our relationship to the rest of the world — moving beyond American hegemony to seeing “these truths” as a multilateral project we help anchor, but do not control.

That’s not a job for one person, or for people who happen to hold office. If these truths get made true by politics — organizing, showing up, voting, serving on your community board, knocking on doors, arguing with your uncle, building coalition one relationship at a time — then that work belongs to everyone who wants to be part of the “we” in “we hold these truths.” That’s the invitation this anniversary is actually extending, if you listen past the fireworks: not “come admire what was self-evidently achieved,” but “come help finish writing the story.”

For the epigraph of her book, Lepore quotes Lincoln, writing to Congress in December 1862 as the war ground into its bloodiest year: “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” That work of disenthrallment is still urgent. Lincoln understood the war as a reckoning with the gap between “these truths” and property in human beings. Trump wants us to forget that gap ever mattered, to treat naming it as a kind of treason.

But there’s another kind of disenthrallment happening right now, one Lincoln didn’t have to contend with: so many of us have become disenthralled with the very possibility of American democracy. Worn down, cynical, half-convinced that self-government is a game already lost to money and grievance. That exhaustion is its own threat to the country, because a democracy nobody believes in is a democracy nobody shows up for.

So maybe what this moment calls for is some new enthrallment, too — getting caught up in something bigger than ourselves. We’ve felt a version of it these past few weeks in New York, watching this city — every borough, every language, every line of difference — pour into the streets for the Knicks, giddy and loud and, for a few nights, unmistakably something bigger together, more than the sum of our parts. And while that was sports, and not politics, you could feel the way it was connected to being New Yorkers, to the inheritance we have as the city with that copper-plated statue out in the harbor, the Mother of Exiles, bringing us together.

Charting that course as Americans feels even harder, to be sure, than a 53-year championship drought. But today, I think we should keep faith in it, recommit to it. Two hundred and fifty years on, the project of political equality, human rights, and democratic participation remains worthy of our lives, our fortune, and our sacred honor. Not grim duty, or something self-evident that we’re defending with gritted teeth. But enthrallment at what we could yet become.

Let’s go find out what that looks like, together. Happy 250th.

What a glorious time to be a New Yorker.

These past few weeks, a powerful energy has been moving through this city. A generosity of spirit. A refusal to give up, even when the odds seemed long. A feeling of joy, out in the streets, shared by every kind of New Yorker there is.

Our win tonight belongs to those streets. To the people who organize there. Who never give up on their neighbors.

It was my name on the ballot today. But tonight’s victory belongs to everyone in this room.

We’ve been organizing together for thirty years. We stopped the evictions of seniors and families. We won the PPW bike lane. We brought participatory budgeting to New York City. We desegregated our middle schools. We rezoned Gowanus. We won justice for fast food workers, Uber drivers, deliveristas, and freelancers.

And we are standing up to ICE — in our neighborhoods, and in our immigration courts – I’ll be back at 26 Federal Plaza tomorrow morning.

I wish I could thank every one of you by name. I have to settle for a few people who stand in for this whole, incredible team:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The Working Families Party — my political home. JFREJ, Indivisible, Brooklyn Resisters, MoveOn, Stonewall, Lambda, 504 Dems. Unions including NYSNA, CWA, 32BJ, PSC-CUNY, Workers United, Local 100. A campaign team for the ages, led by Luke Hayes. Thank you Emmitt, Katy, Emily, Lauren, Harry, Luke, Connor, Neil, Emma, Dana, Riya, Cal, Grace, Penelope, and Alison. And to the Fight, Deliver, GSG, and Melted Solids teams as well.

And my family: My Mom and Dad, from whom I learned most of what I know about care & listening. To my incredible kids, Marek & Rosa; both of you inspire me every single day. And the most extraordinary person in my life, Meg Barnette, who I am beyond lucky to be married to.

I also want to thank Dan Goldman, for a hard-fought campaign, and for your service to this community and to our country. I intend to preserve the triage center you set up for immigrants abducted by ICE, and to build on the fierce questions you asked Kristi Noem and so many others.

And I want to specifically praise how you responded to the toxic rhetoric that you & your staff faced over the past couple days — with gratitude and grace. That’s an approach we need more of in public life.

I want to say to those who cast their votes for Dan: though we have some differences, I feel strongly that we actually have more in common. I know you want to rescue our country back from Trumpism and renew our democracy. I know you want to find a better, more humane path for us on the world stage. I will always endeavor to listen thoughtfully to you, and to represent you – and everyone in this amazing district – with great care.

Last Thursday, I gave a name to the spirit that’s been moving through this city: solidarity. I said it was the force we need to beat our biggest foes — and no, I don’t mean Wemby and the Spurs. I mean Trump’s fascism. I mean ICE. I mean the billionaires rigging our economy against us.

This campaign was born out of solidarity. Solidarity is not the same as unity. Unity means we already agree. Solidarity is a practice of building bridges, even when we don’t.

We did that last year, when we joined together to defeat Andrew Cuomo and elect Zohran Mamdani mayor, to win a city everyone can afford. We proved politics doesn’t have to be a cage match. It can be a team sport for the values we share.

We ran this campaign like a team sport, because that’s what it takes to stand up to billionaires and bullies.

And that’s what I intend to do in Congress. Our team of progressive champions has been winning across the country, and our ranks will keep growing, tonight and in the months ahead.

Now — when you’re insurgents, you spend a lot of time criticizing. But coming out of the primary, our job is to do two things at once: take the lessons voters just taught us, and build the unity Democrats need to take back Congress this fall.

So, I’m going to lay out a few of those lessons. And I’m going to ask, in the spirit of solidarity, for a few minutes to do it.

When I launched this race, I said it wasn’t progressives versus moderates. It’s fighters versus folders. As we head into November, here are four lessons that I believe are worth fighting for.

First: we have to fight, hard and visibly, against a system the American people have already concluded is rigged.

The clearest evidence of that rigging is corporate money in our elections. It is time for the Democratic Party to walk away from dark money — from PACs funded by crypto, Wall Street, AI and AIPAC. People can see through this. They have seen through it for a long time.

If we’re going to stand against Trump and his cronies corruption, we cannot blur that line. We have to make it as sharp as it actually is.

Second: we have to focus, relentlessly, on delivering for working families — on housing, health care, child care, on jobs that pay enough to build a life.

Heading into this fall, Democrats have to show people clearly what we’re fighting for, not only what we’re fighting against. That’s one of the lessons of Zohran’s win, and of his first months in office.

So here’s a proposal for Democratic unity: one of the best things Democrats did last year was turn the government shutdown into a fight over health care subsidies. Let’s do that again, but this time, hold strong to the end. Let’s be clear: we will only vote for a budget that restores the health care subsidies Republicans cut last year. Let people know they can count on us to be the party that delivers for them.

Third: we cannot compromise on anyone’s humanity.

This one should be straightforward, but alas, it sure doesn’t feel that way right now. Democrats are painfully divided by our differences about the U.S. relationship to Israel and Palestine, and we have to face up to it squarely.

Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden’s “hug Bibi” strategy was a catastrophic mistake. I believe it made us complicit in genocide. Bombs we paid for killed more than seventy thousand Palestinians — most of them women and children. Tanks we paid for left a million people homeless. Humanitarian aid still is not getting in.

We cannot keep paying for Netanyahu’s wars with our tax dollars. Democratic voters are saying this, loud and clear.

What we need instead is a politics of shared safety. One that sees Palestinian kids in Gaza and the West Bank as made b’tzelem Elohim — in God’s image — exactly as fully as Marek and Rosa. One that understands Israelis will not be truly safe until Palestinians are free.

That politics of shared safety must include Jews, too, of course — in the U.S. and in Israel. American Jews have stood on the front lines of civil rights struggles for generations. As New Yorkers, Americans, Democrats, progressives, socialists. Let’s keep it that way.

You can criticize Israel and not be antisemitic. You can be an anti-Zionist and not be antisemitic — many Jews are, and non-Jews too. But too often, people use “Zionist” as a slur for Jews. Check my mentions if you don’t believe me. Antisemitism rises with fascism, and it rises in wartime — both are happening now. Progressives should be the ones standing against it, not looking away from it.

There is so much trauma here. So much grief, so much fear. We hold onto all of it so tightly, and fear so rarely brings out our best selves.

But we have an opportunity in this moment. A responsibility. To insist on everyone’s humanity, all the way through.

Last week, at a synagogue in Brooklyn, I met three Israelis who do something called “protective presence” in the West Bank. They put their own bodies between Palestinian families and the settlers trying to drive them from their homes.

The Palestinians they work alongside couldn’t be there with them — they can’t get visas to travel here. But they do this work together anyway, because they know their fates are bound up together.

In Congress, I will try to carry a fraction of the courage that they carry.

I will be one of the Jewish members of Congress most willing to stand up for Palestinian human rights. And I will stand firmly against bigotry aimed at Jews.

Those are not two different jobs. They are the same job.

That’s the job Rabbi Hillel gave us, two thousand years ago:

Im ein ani li, mi li? If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

Uchsheani l’atzmi, mah ani? But if I am only for myself, what am I?

V’im lo achshav, eimatai? And if not now — when?

Hillel put this idea another way, and it brings me to my fourth and final lesson:

B’makom she’ein anashim, hishtadel l’hiyot ish. In a place where no one is acting human — strive to be human.

Because that is exactly the moment we are living in.

On one side, our empathy is being hacked by a fascism that needs someone to blame — immigrants, trans kids, women — for problems it has no intention of solving.

On the other side, algorithmic social media — and now AI — are coming for something quieter, but just as real: our attention, our judgment, our capacity to sit with each other’s complexity instead of optimizing each other away.

So here is the fourth idea I think Democrats should run with this fall. Not just a platform. A spirit. Call it a New Humanism — one built for this exact moment, when the loudest forces in our politics and our technology both have an interest in making us less human, not more.

A new humanism doesn’t ask what’s efficient. It asks what’s worthy of us.

It says dignity isn’t a value you balance against other values — it’s the floor everything else stands on.

It says joy is not a luxury for after the fight is won. Joy is part of how we win it — you saw that in these streets these past few weeks, and you should never let anyone tell you that was frivolous.

And it says purpose comes not from being right alone, but from being bound up with other people — all other people, including the ones an algorithm or an administration finds it convenient for us to ignore.

Pope Leo, in his recent encyclical on AI, made a version of this same case. You don’t have to share his faith to recognize the instinct: that there is something in us — call it soul, call it dignity, call it whatever you want — that neither a fascist nor an AI can take from us.

That’s the spirit that’s been moving through this city these past weeks.

It’s the spirit I’ve tried to practice, alongside every one of you, for thirty years now.

It’s the spirit we won this campaign with.

It’s the spirit I’ll carry into the United State Congress.

Thank you.

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary. And of course, we’re spending it by getting out the vote :-)

We did take a little time off over the weekend to celebrate (rooftop cocktail bar, dim sum, Hadestown). And we’ll get some time farther away from the fray this summer. Whatever happens on June 23rd, we’ve got an immense amount to be grateful for – including the fact that we still really like to hang out together.

Brad’s choices to run for office have hampered our anniversary celebrations before. Elections are on even-year cycles, of course, so theoretically they shouldn’t spoil both your 25th and 30th anniversaries – but Brad ran for Comptroller in the City’s odd-year election cycle in 2021, and he’s running now. So he did manage to do that.

Being married through decades of life in politics presents more significant challenges than a distracted husband on big anniversaries. We share a deep commitment to gender equality, but that doesn’t mean our marriage always reflects it. Too many times, Brad’s career came first, and the injustices and contradictions around gender in society have shown up in our own lives in ways that have real consequences.

Of course, those injustices and contradictions have affected other people’s marriages more harshly than ours. The brutality of family separations at 26 Federal Plaza is especially, painfully clear when you’re witnessing it with your spouse. When we got married, we weren’t that much older than a young couple from Ecuador we met inside an immigration courtroom a few months ago. They had traveled here together, crossed the border together, started to build a life, and were looking forward to becoming parents. They showed up together in court to do the right thing, and they exited the courtroom feeling relieved.

But moments later in the hallway, masked ICE agents lawlessly abducted him, and she fell sobbing into Meg’s arms. A habeas petition by Make the Road reunited them a few weeks later – but not until after their child was born.

Thankfully, there have also been so many joys together, over the past year, and the 29 before. We are so grateful to have raised Marek and Rosa in this community, and we’re thrilled by their “New York or nowhere” approach to starting out as adults. We never tire of finding new foods or cultural venues to try, or of the joys of watching young people discover the longstanding treasures of this crazy, magnificent city.

All of that is made possible by the extraordinary community of friends and neighbors we’re blessed to be surrounded by, and fighting alongside. In our most joyful moments, and our most challenging ones, we find hope and gratitude in faces of people rallying, marching, praying, singing, eating, rooting, culture-consuming, and straphanging.

In our ketubah (wedding contract), signed 30 years ago today, we wrote:

“Together, we will appreciate what is wondrous in the world, and work to see these things shared more equally: work and play, spirit and memory, laughter and song, endurance and rhythm, beauty and pleasure, sustenance and compassion, celebration and struggle, bread and roses.”

Three decades later, we feel blessed to still be helping each other appreciate what is wondrous in the world, and still working to see it shared more equally.

Since everything is a vertical video now (as much as Brad would prefer to share content-heavy, earnest emails that Meg consistently tries to get him to edit), we’re releasing a video of Meg canvassing for Brad last week. We hope you’ll check it out!

Meg chose background music which reflects her true feelings about canvassing. But really, when you come down to it, aren’t “The Things We Do for Love” pretty much the whole ballgame?

With appreciation for life’s ironies, but mostly with gratitude and with love,

Brad & Meg

Dan Goldman’s votes against the Biggs Amendment and the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act helped to give the federal government unchecked power to spy on political opponents, and use dating apps and other personal data to track Americans, all without a warrant.

In contrast, Brad Lander has consistently fought to protect civil liberties. In the City Council, he led efforts to oppose spying on Muslim New Yorkers, create the NYPD Inspector General’s office, and pass the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act. In Congress, Brad will fight Donald Trump’s warrantless surveillance. He will never compromise on Americans’ civil liberties, as Goldman has repeatedly.

Dan Goldman handed the Trump Administration power to spy on Americans.

Dan Goldman has repeatedly voted to expand surveillance on American citizens. He has allowed the Trump Administration and its corporate allies to trample on our constitutional rights and make a profit in the process.

(1) Goldman cast the deciding vote against the Biggs Amendment, ensuring the Trump Administration can spy on its political opposition.

• The Biggs Amendment, which failed in the House 212-212, would have added a warrant requirement for U.S. person queries under FISA Section 702, enabling what the ACLU characterized as “the most dramatic expansions of warrantless government surveillance since the Patriot Act.”

• Goldman’s vote ensured that the Federal government has the authority to spy on American protestors, donors, journalists, and politicians without a warrant.

• Goldman did not just vote against the amendment, but help organize to defeat it, citing his experience as a prosecutor: “Based on that experience, I can say with confidence that requiring a warrant would render this program unusable and entirely worthless,”

• The Trump Administration is now attempting to use its massive Section 702 database to deny entry to legal immigrants who have been critical of President Trump. They are also seeking to reauthorize Section 702. Now that it has become politically toxic, just as he is running for re-election in a hotly-contested primary, Goldman is reportedly considering changing his tune.

(2) Dan Goldman voted to allow ICE to use dating apps and other personal data to track Americans without a warrant.

• Goldman also voted against the ‘Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act’, which aimed to prohibit law enforcement from purchasing Americans’ personal data from third-party data brokers to sidestep Fourth Amendment warrant requirements.

• This legislation sought to prohibit law enforcement and intelligence agencies from “purchasing personal information about customers or subscribers of electronic and remote computing service providers (for example, social media, cell phone, email, and cloud-computing companies) from a third party. …[and would have required] a law enforcement or intelligence agency to obtain a court order before acquiring customer or subscriber information from a third party.”

• By voting against the bill, Goldman voted in favor of the government’s ability to purchase otherwise protected information about Americans through applications like The Weather Channel and Tinder without a warrant based on probable cause.

• ICE has used this power to access data that would otherwise be protected.

Brad Lander will protect his constituents from Trump’s authoritarian spy tactics and prevent government overreach, regardless of who is in the White House.

Brad Lander has consistently fought to protect the constitutional rights of his constituents and prevent unwarranted government surveillance. When the NYPD’s Demographics Unit was revealed to have spied on Muslim mosques, businesses, and student groups, Lander co-led the successful effort in the City Council to create the Office of NYPD Inspector General and strengthen the city’s prohibition of bias-based policing. He subsequently co-sponsored the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act to require transparency around NYPD use of surveillance technology. In Congress, Brad will continue this fight, building on the model of Rep. Jerry Nadler to safeguard New Yorkers from warrantless surveillance:

• Support Senator Wyden and Representative Jayapal’s ‘Government Surveillance Reform Act’ to close the backdoor search and the data broker loophole that Goldman supported.

• Authorize House investigations into corporate accomplices to illegal mass government surveillance.

• Investigate Palantir for allegedly helping the government build “mega-databases” in violation of federal privacy laws.

• Investigate government contacts with companies like Mobile Fortitute and Clearview AI over allegations they are being used to surveil protesters.

• Support Representative Ayanna Pressley and Senator Ed Markey’s Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act to restrict government use of facial recognition technology.

• Codify President Biden’s Executive Order 14117, which will bar American corporations from selling our personal data in bulk to foreign powers.

• Prevent the consolidation of private data in mega-databases among federal agencies to mitigate security risks, data abuse, and prevent private contractors like Palantir from accessing unprecedented amounts of personal data. This proposed legislation would directly counter President Trump’s EO14243, which allows for this dangerous type of data collection.

• Reintroduce H.R. 4124 (115th Congress) to end warrantless surveillance and allow individuals being surveilled to contest the constitutionality of surveillance in court.

With only a week until FISA, Section 702 expires, Dan Goldman refuses to fight to close the loopholes he once enabled, which allow the Trump Administration to spy and target Americans. In Congress, Brad Lander will be a vocal critic of warrantless surveillance and fight back against the Trump Administration’s attacks on our civil liberties.

Passover has long been my favorite Jewish holiday, since my Grandma Alice and I started adding interpretive readings to the Weissman Family Haggadah when I was a kid.

At its heart, the Seder is simple. We share a meal, we tell a story. Avadim hayinu, ata b’nei chorin. Once we were slaves, and now we are free. And we don’t just retell the story, we reenact it. We are commanded: Bechol dor vador chayav adam l’irot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mi-Mitzrayim. In every generation, we should each feel as if we personally felt the lash of slavery and the thrill of freedom. We should stand in the shoes of slaves and refugees – and think about what their story means for us today.

But I find that interpretive work can go in (at least) two very different directions.

Some interpretations focus on Vehi She’amda, the line in the Haggadah that says: “Not only one arose and tried to destroy us [i.e. the Jewish people], but in every generation, they tried to destroy us, but God saved us from their hands.” On this reading, honoring the Passover story means recounting oppressors from Pharaoh to Nebuchadnezzar to the Romans to the Inquisition to pogroms to the Holocaust, and focusing on the survival of the Jewish people. With antisemitism surging around the world, there’s all-too-much reason to focus on identifying and fighting it.

Other interpretations draw from Exodus 23:9: “You shall not wrong a stranger, nor oppress him, for you know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” On this more universalist reading, the lesson is that we are required to help all people achieve liberation. “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” as Fannie Lou Hamer said. And so we have filled our Seders over the years with readings about struggles for civil rights across the globe, for oppressed workers, displaced refugees, gender equality, ending mass incarceration. We have joined in the call for freedom for blacks in South Africa, Jews in the Soviet Union, the people of Tibet. And yes, Palestinians, yearning for an end to their captivity, for their freedom.

In the Weissman Haggadah, we resolve this tension with lines from Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I?” That works well narratively — but I find it’s much harder in practice.

Those competing interpretations have felt more deeply in tension since October 7, 2023, since Hamas’ attacks on southern Israel, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza. It’s not that I feel I’ve leaned too far to one side or the other of Hillel’s instruction – it’s that I don’t feel like I’ve done enough in either direction.

This year, as I sat down to work on the Haggadah, with Grandma Alice’s memory on my shoulder, I was thinking especially about children.

That started after an attacker drove his explosives-filled truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, which at the time was mostly filled with pre-school kids. One of the rabbis there was my cabin co-counselor at a Jewish summer camp outside of Indianapolis in the summer of 1987, so I was thinking of those kids like they were our campers. How could anyone attack them, just for being Jewish kids?

The FBI has charged that the assailant’s antisemitic act of terrorism was inspired by Hezbollah, and that his brother was a Hezbollah member who had been killed by an Israeli missile the week prior. That attack also killed his niece and nephew, who did not deserve to be killed any more than the children at Temple Israel.

The derangement of killing children has become all too widespread.

I’m angriest at Hamas for killing and kidnapping dozens of children on October 7th, the youngest of whom was just nine months old.

I’m angriest at Israel for killing at least 20,000 Palestinian kids in Gaza, with at least 1,000 of them under the age of one, and making a million kids homeless. That’s a big part of what persuaded me we should recognize Israel’s destruction of Gaza as genocide (that, and my own daughter introducing me to the work of Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, who developed the term).

While very little of Trump and Netanyahu’s current war makes sense to most Americans, we’re rightly especially angry at the missile that hit a school, killing hundreds of kids.

Isn’t it wrong to kill other people’s children?

The Haggadah doesn’t help much with this. At the climax of the Exodus story, after trying nine other plagues, the Holy One sends the Angel of Death (the maschit) to kill the first-born Egyptian children, in order to force Pharoah’s hand.

Like many others, I’ve long struggled with this. Isn’t it wrong to kill other people’s children? They did not have anything to do with the Israelites’ enslavement.

This year, thanks to Moment Magazine, I found a medieval midrash that really shook me on this question. According to Exodus Rabbah 18:2, before the last plague struck, God instructed the Israelites not to leave their homes, and to mark their doorposts with blood as a sign for the maschit to pass over them. When Moses announced God’s intention to smite the Egyptian firstborn, some Egyptians, having seen the devastation that the prior plagues delivered, went to neighboring Israelite families and implored them: “Take this one and let him stay the night with you.”

Exodus Rabbah reports that some Israelite parents not only opened the door to their oppressors and offered sanctuary to their firstborn children, but took them into their beds. I can’t help but imagine their inner dialogue, as their own sleeping children briefly stirred, with a quizzical look that they must have taken to mean: “How can you risk my safety, what if the maschit comes in here and kills us all? Didn’t you mark the doorpost for our protection?”

And those parents must have silently answered: “My dear one, I love you more than life itself. I’ve fought for your freedom all these years, and I pray we will finally see it in the morning light. But I can’t have you grow up in a world where you would watch your parents stand by and allow the murder of other people’s kids.”

When midnight arrived, says Exodus Rabbah, the Holy One killed all the Egyptian firstborn, even the ones in the Israelites’ beds: “The Israelites would awaken and find the Egyptian dead between each and every one [of their children].”

Whatever drives God’s inscrutable judgment to slay Egyptian firstborn children, down here on this earth, if there is some hope for redemption, it is in the compassion and courage of those Israelite parents (mostly mothers, I think) who welcomed firstborn Egyptian kids into their kids’ beds.

As we sit around the seder table tonight, with our beloved Jewish children, we’re going to wrestle with this midrash. We’ll ask how we best keep them safe and free and aiming for redemption, mindful of so many dangers. And we will also ask whether we would take the children of Egyptian, or Palestinian, or Iranian, or Lebanese, or Venezuelan, or Cuban families into our homes, into our beds?

We won’t come up with any easy answers. It’s a night for hard questions.

Thankfully, we’ll drink four cups of wine to taste joy and liberation. We’ll eat gefilte fish and matzah ball soup. We’ll pass on family stories and traditions and jokes from seders’ past.

With its hard questions and its powerful and joyful traditions, the Haggadah has gotten our people through tougher times than these, helping preserve our traditions, our spirits, our values, our commitment to shared liberation.

I’m so grateful for it tonight.

Chag Pesach Sameach,

Brad

As Donald Trump continues to threaten congestion pricing and funding for key infrastructure projects, New York City needs a strong transit advocate in Congress to fight like hell for high-quality public transit and federal dollars. With Representative Jerry Nadler retiring, New York is losing our foremost Congressional advocate for federal transit dollars at a critical moment. While the recurrent federal transportation funding reauthorization expires this year, Congress will likely defer action on a new bill until 2027. Brad will be a leader in Congress in the fight for strategic transportation policy and the transit and infrastructure funding that our city needs.

Brad will champion efforts to renew our approach to transportation and infrastructure spending with a sharper eye on sustainability, on creating good jobs, and on promoting more affordable, connected, safer, thriving metropolitan communities.

Brad for NY-10

Brad is running to represent his neighbors in New York’s 10th Congressional District because we are facing a five-alarm fire for working families and for our democracy — and we need Democrats who will fight more boldly for both. Trump is abducting our neighbors, wreaking havoc in the economy, dismantling the federal government, and taking us into reckless and illegal wars. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthy and powerful and the rest of us has never been larger. The affordability crisis grows daily.

Working families need champions who will fight for them. Over three decades in public service, as a housing advocate, City Councilmember, and Comptroller, Brad has championed working families and fought for a more sustainable future. In Congress, he’ll continue the fight.

Brad’s Record of Transportation Advocacy

Brad has never shied away from advocating for safe streets, critical infrastructure, or forward-looking transit policy. His first big fight in public office was the battle for the Prospect Park West bike lane, which was vehemently opposed by a small group of well-connected people, but quickly became a beloved part of our community’s transportation network.

In the New York City Council, he consistently fought and won public transit and transportation alternatives: CitiBike, subway elevators, bus rapid transit and route improvements, public plazas, open streets, and outdoor dining. A champion for Vision Zero, he spearheaded the Reckless Driver Accountability Act, the City’s only tool to hold dangerous drivers accountable.

Brad was a champion for congestion pricing long before it was cool, dating back to 2007 when he helped organize support as director of the Pratt Center for Community Development. He stuck with the policy and the coalition that fought for it over the next two decades. When Governor Hochul put congestion pricing “on pause” at a critical moment in 2024, Brad convened the coalition of advocates and attorneys to fight back.

The result was two key lawsuits that helped get the program implemented before Trump entered office, ensuring its remarkably successful implementation.

Brad’s Plan

In Congress, Brad will fight to increase the percentage of federal dollars allocated to public transit, invest those dollars in operations to ensure high-quality service, upgrade critical transportation infrastructure like the BQE, and foster sustainable jobs and growth.

Rebalance the Transit Funding Formula to Invest in Public Transit

Federal transportation dollars have historically favored highways over public transit capacity. A funding formula agreed upon under President Ronald Reagan ensured that highways received 80% of Congressional funds, giving a mere 20% to public transit.

Brad will fight for a reauthorization package that is fair to transit riders and fair to New York.

• Brad believes that transit investments should be on par with road maintenance and will advocate for an even split of federal dollars. Our outdated and arbitrary funding formula artificially preserves sprawl and hangs public transit and its riders out to dry. Nearly 4 million people use our subway on an average weekday. A fair funding formula would ensure that our transit systems are fast, accessible, and affordable.

• Brad will fight for New York’s fair share of transit dollars. Despite moving nearly 50% of American transit riders, New York has typically received a mere 15% of federal transit funding. New Yorkers also continue to pay more taxes than they receive in services. A fair percentage of transit dollars would allow us to build and maintain high-quality public systems and infrastructure. Brad will fight like hell for the funding that the city’s transit system deserves.

Fund Transit Operations, Not Just Maintenance

Federal funding for public transit is allocated ineffectively. While operation costs typically make up two-thirds of a system’s expenses, federal dollars can only be spent on maintenance and repair. As a result, the frequency, consistency, and speed of public transit have suffered from insufficient funding. We need world-class transit operations to build a broad constituency of riders across the country. We can do that by investing in the operation of systems around the country, providing genuinely safe, affordable transportation, and freeing Americans from car dependency and the billionaire fossil-fuel lobby.

• Brad will cosponsor Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson’s Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act and pursue its incorporation into the larger transportation funding reauthorization. The “Johnson bill” would invest $20B in transit operations annually, supporting more frequent bus and train service, better maintenance, and brighter, cleaner train stations and bus stops.

• Brad will also amplify the work of national organizations like Transportation for America, whose World-Class American Transit vision would invest billions more to buy buses and train cars, build more transit routes, and fix legacy systems like New York’s 120+-year-old subway network.

• Brad will work to streamline the fund-to-build process to ensure transportation projects are completed in a timely manner. We must move efficiently to execute funded projects to build abundant transit that connects and serves communities.

Institute a ‘Fix It First’ Scoring System

Federal highway funding has long favored Sunbelt sprawl over urban infrastructure. As a result, bridges and roads in New York City have aged, with no fix in sight. Here in NY-10, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway continues to receive temporary fixes, despite needing a more permanent fix.

• Brad will fight for a scoring system favoring projects that “fix it first.” This would prioritize allocating funding for repairs to existing infrastructure before building new sprawl. It will make a big impact on communities in Brooklyn that continue to deal with the impact of aging and faltering infrastructure, like the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

• Brad believes that this scoring system should also evaluate new projects based on their ability to impact safety and prioritize projects that will reduce traffic fatalities.

• Embracing the lessons of the historic Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition, Brad will propose a Participatory Infrastructure Planning provision, modeled after New York’s municipal Participatory Budgeting, to elevate and respect community visions for legacy infrastructure reconstruction. This will be key for incorporating the voices of residents as we work to fix our transit structures.

Foster Smart and Sustainable Jobs and Growth

Federal transportation policy and funding should encourage sustainability, good jobs, and strategic metropolitan growth. The Trump Administration has dismantled strategic planning, doubled down on climate-killing transit practices, and abandoned workers. But even before that, federal transportation funding too often funded highways, supported sprawl, and did little to build sustainable communities. A strategic, forward-looking transportation vision is crucial for improving both livability and affordability in the New York City metro area and around the country.

• Federal transportation policy must encourage sustainability. In Congress, Brad will build on his “Shifting Gears” report as Comptroller on strategies for steering federal infrastructure funds to support NYC’s transportation future. He will push the federal government to require agencies to evaluate projects based on their ability to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), which will improve quality of life, protect the environment, and encourage smart growth.

• Public dollars for transportation and infrastructure projects should generate good jobs. Brad will partner with Jobs to Move America, which fights to ensure that the transportation jobs of the future pay fair wages and provide good benefits. Brad will advocate for labor provisions that guarantee protections for transit and manufacturing workers, and an overall approach to infrastructure spending that involves communities in planning for their futures and ensures that public funds create durable public goods.

• Brad will prioritize public design to enable safe, convenient, human-powered transportation like cycling and walking. In the Council and as Comptroller, Brad worked to build safe streets and connect communities with bike lanes and smart public design. He will continue to fight for pedestrians and cyclists in Congress.

• Brad will work to reconstitute and dramatically expand the Partnership for Sustainable Communities to foster smart metropolitan growth. During the Obama Administration, this initiative brought together funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to strategically dedicate federal resources to build livable communities. This common-sense coordination treated transportation, housing, and sustainability as interconnected systems, instead of individual silos. But even at its height, it was largely a pilot program, with the bulk of spending taking place in different agencies. With an urgent need for more affordable housing, climate solutions, and more connected metropolitan areas, the Partnership for Sustainable Communities should be renewed as a central feature of federal infrastructure investment.

As a federal transportation policymaker, Brad will do what he’s always done best: build coalitions with allies and advocates to secure big wins for his constituents. He will fight to rebalance the transit funding formula to increase investments in public transit, push to fund transit operations, not just maintenance, support a ‘fix it first’ scoring system, and foster smart and sustainable jobs and growth.

So, on Tuesday night, I flew there to meet with some of the courageous neighbors resisting ICE’s occupation of their city. I went together with Hannah, an organizer with Hands Off NYC. (Hannah shared some of her reflections in a beautiful and widely-read post on Instagram).

Our goals were to listen and learn, to share their rage and pain, to show our gratitude for their leadership in this critical moment. And then to come back and act on it.

We met with organizers, neighbors, faith leaders, small business owners, and elected officials. We joined volunteer trainings, neighborhood patrols, protests, and community conversations. By listening to what they have to share, we aimed not only to show solidarity — but also to learn lessons we need to build collective power to defend our city, and help change our country. Here are a few of the lessons I came away with:

They are enraged. And struggling to understand how it is that our own government is occupying their city, abducting their neighbors, and killing people over nonviolent expressions of dissent. At the memorial for Alex Pretti, I was struck by this sign, which captured something they’re trying to tell us.

On Wednesday night, we went to a protest along Lake Street, which felt pretty Minnesota to me. The temperature was sub-zero, but hundreds of people were out, at a series of corners up & down the long avenue, with many immigrant-owned small businesses. The protestors “occupied the corners,” but stayed peacefully on the sidewalk. They loved when a car went by blasting Springsteen’s new “Streets of Philadelphia” (but not, like, too loud). An immigrant business had brought an industrial thermos of delicious, and very hot tea.

Despite these many signs of “Minnesota nice,” their rage at ICE was clear. My sense is that they don’t usually curse in their chants. But they are now. They want ICE out of their city, dismantled, abolished. They are furious.

They are good neighbors. You could see everywhere that they are serious about protecting their neighbors, regardless of where they’re from, or how long they’ve been here. It’s far too cold for a cardigan (well, maybe as one of many layers), but it did feel like they’re channeling Mr. Rogers. If anyone is showing what it looks like to turn empathy into a superpower, it’s the good neighbors of Minneapolis.

Their patrols are organized by neighborhood, and people are meeting in powerful new ways (even if, so far, many know each other by their Signal codenames).

They’re walking kids to school, building on organizing by Minneapolis Families for Public Schools, as well as grassroots action that has emerged through parent groups in recent weeks.

So many small businesses have become hubs for gear, whistles, masks, hand warmers, snack food.

In addition to the ICE watch patrols, a strong network of mutual aid has emerged – in schools, synagogues and mosques and churches, and neighborhood groups. They’ve raised millions of dollars to cover rent for immigrant families whose breadwinners are afraid to leave their homes. They’re pushing for an eviction moratorium, so no one is thrown out of their homes amidst frigid cold and federal occupation.

They’ve developed tools and tactics that we can learn.

We learned a lot about how they organize ICE-watch neighborhood patrols, how they train volunteers, how they coordinate across neighborhoods. Their networks are distributed – there’s no one leader or organization – but they are sharing tools (e.g. an license-plate database to keep track of the vehicles ICE is using) and resources.

They’re building “inside/outside” partnerships of activists and elected officials. This is a moment that calls for connections across movements, and for elected officials to support and partner with organizers. We cannot, and will not, stand by while ICE kidnaps and murders people in our communities. I was grateful to meet City Council President Elliot Payne, Majority Leader Aisha Chughtai, and Councilmember Aurin Chowdhury (who I connected to through Local Progress, of course) all out on the streets with their constituents.

And Congressmember Ilhan Omar really showed what courage looked like this week, when she did not flinch in the face of an assault at a town hall. She not only kept speaking, but the next night, she organized a thank-you event for volunteer and patrollers — to make sure they know she has their backs.

Most importantly, organizers are bringing new people in all the time, and continuing to scale their efforts. Every group we talked to reported that, in the days after the murders of Renee and Alex, thousands of new people signed up. Think about that: people see there’s a risk they’ll be killed, and yet they are signing up in droves. They know the stakes, and they are stepping up to lead.

A movement is growing.

You can feel it on the streets, and in the songs. By now, you’ve heard Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis,” and maybe Billy Bragg’s “City of Heroes” (although I have a kinder take on Martin Niemoller). Maybe you’ve started following Singing Resistance Twin Cities. I especially liked this send-off of Bovino. And there are many more; please share your favorites with me.

Paul Krugman likened what’s happening in Minneapolis to the “color revolutions,” the nonviolent uprisings that overthrew some of the autocratic regimes that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For me, it had the feeling that Rebecca Solnit describes in her essential book, A Paradise Built in Hell — a feeling that I felt most palpably in those days after Superstorm Sandy.

What is this feeling that crops up during so many disasters? An emotion graver than happiness,” that provides “an extraordinary window into social desire and possibility.” The superpower of empathy in action during times of crisis gives us “a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become. The recovery of this purpose and closeness without crisis or pressure is the great contemporary task of being human.”

I heard this in a conversation I had with Jewish Community Action (a Twin Cities organization similar to Jews for Racial and Economic Justice). Even in this time of trauma and emergency, they are working to learn longer-term lessons, and prepare for a different future.

(In this, they are mindful of the weeks and months after the killing of George Floyd, when many of these groups were working together for racial justice, only to face a backlash that rolled back so much of the progress they hoped to make. Bonds they forged then are re-emerging. They are eager for progress to be more durable).

The people I spoke with in Minneapolis want us to follow their lead: To be enraged. To see the clear, present, deadly danger for what it is. To love our neighbors. To learn from and adapt their tactics. To stay/get busy organizing.

Folks in Minneapolis were out in the cold again on Friday. I especially loved this amazing frozen lake SOS.

(David Guttenfelder, New York Times)

By then, I was back NYC, where I went straight from the airport to the protest — and was blown away not only by the size and energy of the crowd, but especially by how many students there were, who had walked out of their schools in the general strike.

And Hannah and the folks at Hands Off NYC trained thousands more people this weekend.

Some of you have asked me what you can do to support the groups and people in Minneapolis. Stand With Minnesota and ActBlue have both put together good lists of organizations you can contribute to. Some other groups I was impressed with include Unidos MN, Minneapolis Families for Public Schools, Jewish Community Action, and Isaiah (but again, there are so many others organizing on the ground). ICE Out of Minnesota is a toolkit for solidarity action.

And they really want us getting ready here, as well. So sign up for a training with Hands Off NYC. Or for solidarity action with New York Immigration, Coalition, Make the Road New York, New Sanctuary Coalition, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, South Brooklyn Sanctuary, Haven Fund, The Door, ROCC NYC, or one of so many other groups working on the ground here.

When the history books are written, they will look at this moment. At the state violence of the Trump regime. At the heartbreak of the loss of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. At the abduction and cruelty to so many immigrant families (thankfully Liam Ramos has been released at last, but what a hideous example, out of so many others).

But they will also record the extraordinary response of the good neighbors of Minneapolis — and of everyone else who rises to their example. Let’s do all we can to make this the moment when the story changes.

In solidarity,

Brad

Earlier in the day, my son Marek joined me up in the cupola of the Municipal Building, where I took the oath of office four years ago. As I reflected on the past four years – and especially on this last one, which has surely been a wild ride – I welled up with gratitude.

It’s hard for me to describe how profound an honor it has been to serve. We tried to summarize that work in our final report, Accounting for Our Term. It’s an accounting of the work we’ve done to keep the City honest, secure our future, build stability for New York’s families, govern with New Yorkers, and to walk our talk.

We ran all the way through the tape, issuing four audits in my final week (including one that The City called “explosive”). Our audits over the term helped the City save billions of dollars, catch cheaters (scoundrels from DocGo, to ghost plate drivers, to employers who don’t pay what they owe), restructure NYC Ferry, involve NYCHA residents in oversight and much, much more.

By the numbers: those 120 audits contained 785 recommendations. City agencies agreed to implement 478 (61%) of them – not bad, that’s definitely a higher percent of the time than Eric Adams and I agreed! Of these, 361 have been implemented, 29 are partially implemented, and 316 are still pending.

We created a tracker, so you can follow along! It’s one of a dozen new dashboards we launched, which will continue under Comptroller Levine, that track NYC government performance indicators, agency staffing, claims against the City, pension fund assets under management, homelessness, Rikers/DOC, climate commitments, and the creative economy.

So many things that matter can be measured – and must be. The work of doing it as a powerful act of stewardship. So I’m honored to pass the reins over to Comptroller Mark Levine. I know he’s going to do a great job. We’ve known each other for decades, and he brings a passionate love for the city, and a clear-eyed commitment to making it better. He’s put a great leadership team together, with some of the fantastic folks who came in with me four years ago, and some dynamite new talent as well.

But honestly, it wasn’t the things that can be counted that made me tear up with gratitude in the cupola yesterday. Instead, I found myself humming a song by Billy Bragg (with words often misattributed to Albert Einstein, actually said by sociologist William Bruce Cameron):

Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted, counts. Like the solidarity that New Yorkers show in the hardest times. After 9/11. After Hurricane Sandy. In showing up now to protect our immigrant neighbors.

In her book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit describes that “feeling that crops up during so many disasters,” “an emotion graver than happiness but deeply positive,” that gives us “a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become.” If you’ve been there in those moments of crisis, and felt the solidarity of working together with neighbors to build something better, you know what she’s talking about.

That’s what made me so grateful yesterday. Over the past 16 years serving the city, the past 4 as Comptroller, and across this last wild ride of a year, I have had more chances than I can count to work together with so many of you, through hard times and tough fights, to make this extraordinary, messy, wounded, wonderful city of ours a little better. In every single corner, New York City is full of people hungry to do it.

Another word for that is hope. And that’s what today is all about.

I’m headed to the inauguration shortly, to watch Zohran Mamdani become the 112th Mayor of New York City, Jumaane Williams be re-sworn in as Public Advocate, and Mark take the reins as Comptroller.

In his campaign, Zohran captured that feeling that Solnit describes. He identified the crisis of affordability facing New Yorkers, and offered community in organizing to do something about it. That didn’t help with my mayoral campaign, of course. And yet, somehow, I’m grateful for it. Amidst the anger, fear, corruption, and chaos of Donald Trump, amidst the sense our democracy is not up to its tasks, he has inaugurated a profound sense of hopefulness.

There will be time, of course, for measuring how he delivers. Those dashboards will keep counting. Future audits will come. But we need a shared sense of possibility to believe it all matters. That’s what I’ll be grateful for, out in the cold today.

And finally, a very big part of the gratitude I’m feeling is for the extraordinary outpouring of support you’ve shown for my campaign for Congress, since we launched it three weeks ago. Thousands of you have contributed, signed up to volunteer, offered to host house parties, offered ideas and pushback. Told me how excited you are about it – and how hopeful it makes you feel.

Thank you. Seriously, thank you. Every single one matters.

We’ll report our numbers soon, of course (last night at midnight was also the deadline for our first quarterly campaign filing). But for today, it’s the things you can’t count that I’m feeling profoundly grateful for.

And looking so hopefully forward to.

With deep gratitude, abiding hope, and the warmest wishes for a bright and healthy start to 2026 for you and your loved ones,

Brad

P.S. If you’re a history nerd like me, you may have followed the controversy over whether Zohran is the 111th or 112th Mayor of New York City. If you’re looking for the official list of New York City Comptrollers, we created a new Comptroller’s office history page as part of my transition into that history. My favorite remains Andrew Haswell Green, who served from 1871 to 1876, and then went on to lead the effort to consolidate the five boroughs into Greater New York – unleashing something far beyond anyone’s ability to measure.

When I took office, we established a clear mission for our work: to promote the financial health, integrity, and effectiveness of New York City government, in order to strengthen trust, secure a thriving future for all New Yorkers, and to build a more just and resilient city.

Alongside the nearly 700 employees who make up the Comptroller’s Office, I have worked hard every day to live up to this mission, and to fulfill the promises we made to New Yorkers.

I am immensely proud of the work we have done and delighted to present it to you in this final report: Accounting for Our Term.

As you’ll read, we took our commitments seriously — and delivered on them. The achievements outlined in this report are only possible thanks to every one of you. It’s my name on the report, and my picture out on that ledge (happy to say that “no Comptrollers were harmed in the making of this report”). But let’s be clear: it’s the city we love; the city we call home that we are celebrating.

I leave this office profoundly optimistic about New York City’s future, and profoundly grateful to all of you.

Sincerely,

Brad

This week marks my wife Meg & our dear friend Joyce’s sixth “kidney-versary.” In December 2019 (with the pandemic just a few short months away, unbeknownst to us at the time, of course), Meg donated one of her kidneys to Joyce at Weill Cornell Medical Center. It remains one of the most remarkable, selfless, brave, compassionate acts I have ever witnessed. And not the least bit surprising, if you know Meg.

To celebrate, we went with Joyce & her husband Joe (who taught me housing policy & helped me find my first job in housing three decades ago) to see Christian Sands play holiday jazz in Dizzy’s Cafe at Lincoln Center on Friday night. As we were leaving, some folks came up to me to thank me for my work. I explained why we were there, and of course everyone quickly agreed that it was Meg’s actions that really merit praise.

I find it all a little funny these days: after the stretch drive of the primary (cross-endorsing with Zohran, debating Cuomo, getting arrested by ICE), I get a lot more attention than I did before. I won’t pretend that I don’t like it: I’m grateful for it, and try to put it to good use. But Meg’s quiet, out-of-the-limelight courage puts it in pretty clear relief.

In the course of their lives, people play team sports all the time – not always as selflessly as my remarkable wife, but still making big sacrifices for others. That’s at the heart of the Christmas story. It’s at the heart of what we mean by “solidarity,” too. Sometimes kidney donors know the people whose lives they are saving, as Meg did with Joyce, and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are part of long donation chains that involve many donors, and save many lives.

Our politics, unfortunately, generally don’t feel like that. But that conversation in the lobby of Jazz at Lincoln Center makes me long for it: for a politics that’s like a kidney donation chain, inspired by the courage and sacrifice of kidney donors. What MLK called “an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

Please consider following Meg’s example and becoming a living kidney donor – you really can save someone’s life. It is without doubt one of the most powerful and compassionate acts a human being can do.

Grateful to Meg every single day for reminding me what’s possible when people show up as their most courageous and compassionate selves.

I was arraigned on charges stemming from my arrest on September 18th, along with a dozen other elected officials – when we demanded entry to the area on 10th floor at 26 Federal Plaza that is being used as a detention facility. When we were not allowed entry, we sat on the floor and sang.

For that, we were charged under Section 41 of the Code of Federal Regulations, 41 CFR 102-74, 390(b). The offense we are charged with is: “unreasonably obstructs the usual use of entrances, foyers, lobbies, corridors, offices, elevators, stairways, or parking lots” in the federal courthouse.

Here’s the critical thing: the “usual” use of the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, prior to this spring, was not as a detention facility, where people who have been violently ripped apart from their families by masked ICE agents – who don’t identify themselves, present a warrant, or give a reason for the arrest – are forced to sleep on the floor, in cruel and inhumane conditions. There’s nothing usual about that.

The usual use (of those entrances, foyers, lobbies, corridors, offices, elevators, stairways, and parking lots) is as part of the U.S. Immigration Court. It is for the operation of the rule of law, where people have the opportunity – pursuant to the Global Convention Against Torture, and U.S law – to present their credible fear of persecution if they are deported.

We did not unreasonably obstruct the usual use of 26 Federal Plaza. We are not guilty of the charge.

Someone else is, though:

ICE unreasonably obstructs the usual use of the Federal building.

Kristi Noem unreasonably obstructs the usual use of the Federal building.

Donald Trump unreasonably obstructs the usual use of the Federal building.

The crime is not what we were doing in the elevator lobby, demanding entry, and then sitting on the floor and singing when we were denied. The crime is what ICE is doing on the other side of the door.

We must not allow the cruel, inhumane, authoritarian actions of Trump’s ICE to become viewed as “usual” or “normal.” It is not normal.

That’s why I pled not guilty yesterday. And that’s why I’m taking this case to trial.

Of course, I don’t have nearly as much to fear as the individuals we accompany in Immigration Court, or who are being grabbed off the street. Not even close.

Earlier in the day, at the very same courthouse where I was arraigned, lawyers had to demand the release of Aissatou Diallou, a home health aide who has lived in the U.S. since 2001, when she immigrated here from Guinea. She is the aunt of the remarkable Adama Bah, founder of Afrikana, a Harlem-based nonprofit that welcomes people with compassion and dignity.

Diallou had been detained at LaGuardia while waiting to board a flight to Texas to visit her son for Thanksgiving, and was shipped to a detention center in Louisiana.

Southern District Judge Arun Subramanan ordered her release, and eviscerated the government lawyers who tried to explain the nonsense reasons for her abduction. Aissatou, thankfully, had a very able legal team, led by Rebecca Press of the excellent firm she founded, Co-Counsel NYC, a non-profit organization that provides direct immigration legal representation to NYC’s immigrant communities.

And I have great lawyers, too: Deirdre Von Dornum of Sher Tremonte, and Justine Harris of Harris Trzaskoma, and their able teams (you may remember Deirdre and Justine from our fight against cruel conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park). Happily, despite the fact that the federal prosecutors asked Judge Ricardo to impose bail, he released me on my own recognizance.

Of course, far too many of the individuals seeking asylum here, and facing abduction by those ICE agents, don’t have any lawyers at all. That, sadly, is “usual” – but it’s something we can change.

What we’re fighting for – at 26 Federal Plaza, and out in our neighborhoods – is equal justice under law. And we won’t stop until that is what’s usual.

Brad

Correction: Following TheCity.NYC (an excellent publication, and where Gwynne Hogan has been doing incredible work covering immigration and especially the abduction of our neighbors, but which like everyone else occasionally makes a mistake), I mis-identified the law firm where Rebecca Press works. Rebecca previously worked at Unlocal, but two years she co-founded Co-Counsel NYC with Terry Lawson, where they have built something really special — you should check it out and contribute to them! And I could have known this, because Rebecca grew up in Park Slope, and I’ve worked with her mom and known her parents for decades, who are quite rightly extremely proud of what their daughter has built!

Ady died of ALS two years ago this month, after the most courageous 7-year battle with the disease that steals your ability to walk, talk, breathe, or hug your kids.

At his memorial, Ady’s wife Rachael King told a story about how their young son Carl had been upset because they weren’t able to do a family activity that was inaccessible given Ady’s wheelchair. “ALS is stupid,” Carl said. “Its always taking things from us.”

Using his excruciatingly slow eye-typing, Ady asked Carl if he could think of anything good that ALS had brought into their lives. “Nothing!” Carl declared. Rachael asked, “What about Rosalba and Izzy?” and Ady’s other caregivers, who had become dear family to all of them. Carl reluctantly agreed that there were things to be grateful for, even from the cruel death sentence that stole his dad.

In so many recent years, my Thanksgiving message has been roughly the same: “Lots of things sucked this year. Insert Superstorm Sandy, Trump, Covid-19, October 7th and the destruction of Gaza, Ady’s death, Trump again. So we really have to dig down really deep to find things to be grateful for.”

A mistake I’ve been making, I think, has been looking for the things to be grateful for underneath, separate, protected from, unencumbered by all that heartbreak.

And of course, it is worth being grateful for the blessings in our lives that present themselves without our having to struggle for them: our favorite park (you know mine), the food we love, sunlight, the air we breathe. Gratitude functions to make sure we don’t take those things for granted.

But as Ady and Rachael taught Carl, and me, there’s an even deeper gratitude for the people who help us heal broken things. That’s true in our personal lives, in more ways that we can count. For caregivers & organ donors, for therapists & loved ones, for finding our way back together after something has pulled us apart.

This year had more ups and downs than I expected (and not only while eating a hot dog on the Cyclone). I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I emerge for the people who showed up along the way. To everyone who worked and volunteered on my campaign, helped me navigate the hard decisions, showed up at Foley Square the day I was arrested by ICE, or just asked how I was doing along the way: I’m thankful for you.

And to my family, especially, who I’ll be blessed to spend the holiday with in Brooklyn. My folks, Carole and David, who celebrated their 60th anniversary this summer, are here from St. Louis, joining Meg, Marek, and Rosa and me for the holiday. We’ll serve Thanksgiving meals, as they’ve been taking me to do for as long as I can remember, and then have one of our own. I am blessed beyond measure to come through this campaign year with even more love and admiration and support and understanding from them, when it would be so easy to get fed up with the headaches (and worse) that I bring.

In the wider world, this year has been one of so much fear and heartbreak. For me, the worst parts have been the family separations and abductions that we’ve seen almost every week, at 26 Federal Plaza, and now increasingly out in our neighborhoods as well.

Photo: Graham Macindoe

Edgardo, who I was separated from when I was arrested in June, was deported back to a place where he fears for his safety, and is still trying to get out.

The next week, Meg and I were walking out with a young Latino couple, who had arrived here together. She was 8 months pregnant, and fell sobbing into Meg’s arms when they ripped her husband from hers.

In July, I was with Carlos Lopez’ sister Lilliana when they abducted Carlos in front of our eyes.

And just a couple weeks ago, I was with Joel Ramos, a 16-year-old living here without his parents, who was hoping to make it back to high school in time for his history class when he was detained.

Through all that heartbreak, what I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving is the solidarity, compassion, and hard work of everyone who has been showing up to try to help these families and young people put their lives back together. Seeing so many people show up at 26 Federal Plaza to courtwatch, in legal service clinics, doing outreach and know-your-rights work, in rapid response on the streets (like so many New Yorkers did spontaneously on Canal Street, and many more are preparing for), at the Hands Off marches (where I marched with Carlos’ sister Lillian and Dylan Contrera’s mom Raiza).

Make the Road New York brought the habeas proceedings that freed Carlos, and reunited that father with his wife and new child. Ben Remy and Alison Cutler, lawyers from NYLAG, have been in court more than anyone I’ve seen, along with folks from Immigrant ARC, courtwatchers from JFREJ and New Sanctuary Coalition. Adama Bah, Power Malu, Candice Braun, Ruth Messinger. New York Immigration Coalition. The gratitude list is long.

Over the past few months, the visits that stand out the most are the ones with young people who are here without their families. Like Joel, Yasir, Ibrahima, and Abdur-Rahman. While so many people and organizations are helping them, I really need to mention two.

Charlotte Soehner is only in her mid-20s herself, but she’s already made a profound difference. She works tirelessly with Resources, Opportunities, Connections & Community (ROCC NYC) to support young people like those four, and many more, seeking Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS). ROCC NYC was founded by Power Malu in the wake of Hurricane Maria (originally as Artists Athletes Activists), and then was then built by Power and Candice Braun into a powerful force to welcome immigrants as they started to arrive in larger numbers to NYC three years ago. With ROCC NYC’s support, young people like Joel, Yasir, Ibrahima, and Abdur-Rahman are finding mentors, filing their SIJS applications, getting settled in their schools … and becoming New Yorkers.

Beth Baltimore is the Legal Services Center Deputy Director at The Door, which provides comprehensive support for young people, many of whom are on their own. Their legal clinic is helping hundreds of young people find their way in a system that would stymie any of us. Beth is representing many of these kids, and she was with Joel when he was detained, and moved immediately (along with NYCLU and other legal partners) to file the habeas motion that got him released from detention after three weeks. The judge called his detention “either Orwellian or Kafkaesque” – it’s rotten to live in times when the judicial system can’t decide which fictional horror comparison is more apt. But thanks to Beth and their team, Joel could finally get back to his high school.

I’ll leave you with this: Back in July, I accompanied Yasir, a 21-year-old who fled Sudan after he was kidnapped and tortured by the RSF (he’s Zaghawa, a group that is systematically targeted there) for an ICE check-in.

We got to talking about national traditions, and national foods. I told him about hot dogs for July 4th, and turkey for Thanksgiving. He told me about jollof rice. Growing up, he had thought of it as the national dish of Sudan. But here in New York City, he had tasted jollof rice of people from Guinea – and he thought theirs was better. And he even likes hot dogs. I told him: “Yasir, you’re becoming a New Yorker!”

Thanksgiving has its origins, of course, in something terribly broken. Rafael Lemkin, the Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide, viewed the colonization and destruction of Native Americans as a genocide (I believe he would have viewed both Hamas’ attacks on October 7th, and Israel’s destruction of Gaza as genocidal; a topic I’m sure we’ll discuss around our Thanksgiving table. Not everyone will agree, and that’s ok, too). So I was glad that the Prospect Park Track Club has made the annual Turkey Trot we ran this morning into a “run for reconciliation” benefiting the American Indian Community House.

Everyone who is showing up to protect neighbors from Trump’s authoritarian regime is not only helping to heal something broken for those individuals and families. You are participating in the work of trying to heal what’s broken in our democracy.

I think you can see a path forward in the stories of these young people. Yasir, Joel, Ibrahima, and Abdur-Rahman have seen more tragedy and heartbreak than anyone should have to endure. But, like Ady and Rachael and Carl, and like you and me, too, they are finding ways to heal what’s broken, with the help and care and solidarity of so many extraordinary people (who are, of course, also busy trying to heal what’s broken in their own lives).

In Yasir’s smile, in the new communities and families that are forming, in the country we’re working to build together, in meals with jollof rice from Sudan and Guinea, in hot dogs on roller coasters, and in the turkey and stuffing (or whatever you’ll have at your table tonight), we can start to taste just how beautiful that could be.

This Thanksgiving, there are a lot of broken things to heal. And a lot to be grateful for.

Brad

(12/3/25) This post was edited to correct some details about ROCC NYC.

Summary

1. Under my leadership, New York City’s pension funds have taken the boldest and most comprehensive action on climate of any U.S. public pension fund. By far.
   

2. We are living up to the commitments we announced this spring to evaluate whether our asset managers (including BlackRock) are aligned with our Net Zero Implementation Plan. As promised, we will make recommendations this fall to the pension fund trustees about moving money away from those who are not. The asset managers submitted their plans to us on June 30th, and we will bring our recommendations to the boards before Thanksgiving. This is the timeline we committed to in the spring — it has not changed.

3. New York Communities for Change are acting in a bad-faith, counterproductive way, with ad hominem attacks, disrupting the events of other nonprofits, unions, and community groups, including a rally for affordable housing, a picket line of striking workers, and a workforce development graduation for public housing residents (none of which were my events). We are living up to the commitments we made, but I have no interest in further dialogue with them about this.

Receipts

Climate change is among the most urgent issues we face, and we have an obligation to take aggressive, meaningful, and sustainable action.

Under my leadership, New York City’s pension funds have taken the boldest and most comprehensive actions on climate of any U.S. public pension fund. By far.

We’ve done that in ways that are consistent with our fiduciary duty to the City’s pension beneficiaries, so that it is consistent with our pension responsibilities and will survive legal challenges.

• In 2022, we completed the divestment of over $4 billion from fossil fuel reserve owners (e.g. Exxon, BP, etc) from the public equities portfolio of NYCERS, TRS, and BERS. This process was begun under the prior comptroller, after advocacy from a range of groups including NYCC, and voted on by the pension fund boards. But it was stuck and had not been completed when I took office in January 2022. I got it unstuck and completed it. It remains the largest divestment of public pension funds from fossil fuels (full list of companies we divested from here).

• In 2023, we extended this divestment to private equity investments in “upstream” fossil fuel infrastructure (e.g. drilling) – something no other U.S. public pension fund has done.

• In 2023, we adopted the boldest Net Zero Implementation Plan of any public pension fund in the country, with a target of being net-zero in financed emissions by 2040. Since then, we have been working diligently to implement it. In April 2025, we announced that we are one year ahead of schedule, having achieved a 37% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions since 2019 (details here).

• In consultation with climate finance activists, in 2024 we introduced shareholder resolutions at major U.S. and Canadian banks, pressuring them to move away from fossil fuels. This was actually the first thing that NYCC “demanded” of me when I came into office; they were angry that the prior comptroller had refused to do it. They quickly lost interest, but we continued working with other activists, and as a result J.P. Morgan Chase and Citibank agreed to begin disclosing their fossil-fuel to clean energy finance ratio. Climate finance activists called this a big win.

• We are currently engaged in similar pressure on utility companies, who are responsible for a large share of our financed emissions.

• We successfully beat back a lawsuit challenging our fossil-fuel divestment, affirming that our decarbonization work is consistent with our fiduciary duty and on solid legal ground, a critical element of climate leadership.

• We have taken leadership in working together with other pension funds and asset owners around the world, knowing that broad action will be necessary to address systemic risks. We joined the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (at a time when many investors are abandoning climate coalitions), and we have regularly led action with other investors to advance shared goals. In September, I was the one investor invited by Congressional Democrats to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on how we preserve responsible investment tools in the face of MAGA attacks.

• As part of our Net Zero Implementation Plan, we have invested over $15 billion in solar, wind, and renewable energy, and other climate solutions. This is an important part of climate transition.

• In addition to our climate finance leadership as investment advisor to the City’s pension funds, we have taken extensive action on climate using a wide array of other tools during my tenure: appointing the first Chief Climate Officer; launching the NYC Climate Dashboard; creating Public Solar NYC; convening the coalition that brought successful lawsuits to implement congestion pricing when it was put on pause; and issuing policy reports on strengthening Local Law 97 enforcement, addressing the gap in the City’s cooling centers, implementing overdue coastal resiliency projects, investing in community-based social resilience and environmental justice, improving preparedness for flash flooding, and many more.

Can we do more to confront the climate emergency? Of course. Everyone can and should. But I don’t think you’ll find a public official, and certainly not a city or state financial official, who has worked harder on it over the past 4 years.

We are living up to the commitments we announced last fall and this spring to take strong next steps: to exclude midstream/downstream fossil fuel infrastructure, and to hold our asset managers (including BlackRock) accountable for net zero implementation. As promised, this will include making recommendations this fall to the pension fund trustees to move money away from asset managers who are not aligned.

Last fall and this spring, alongside a broad coalition of climate groups, we announced a series of next steps, as part of our Net Zero Implementation Plan. We are living up to those commitments.

• Midstream/downstream infrastructure: In October 2024, I announced my support for extending our exclusion of investments in private equity from “upstream” fossil fuel infrastructure (e.g. drilling and exploration) to “midstream” (e.g. pipelines, LNG terminals) and “downstream” (e.g. refineries, transportation assets). This policy – which would be the first of its kind in the country (no other fund has yet even excluded “upstream” infrastructure, as we have – was announced alongside a diverse group of climate community leaders – including New York Communities for Change, Fridays For Future NYC, Climate Families NYC, 350 NYC, and the Sierra Club.

We developed the policy and proposed it formally to the pension fund boards for a vote in June of 2025. I made clear I would vote for it, and urged the other trustees to do so as well. I am just one trustee on those boards; for any proposal to pass, representatives of the labor unions (including DC37, UFT, Teamsters 237and the Transport Workers Union) must support it. So far, no union is supporting this proposal. As a result, the pension fund boards voted to table it. Advocates including NYCC indicated they would lobby the other trustees to support the proposals in order to secure the votes to adopt them. So far, I am not aware of any advocacy they have done with labor trustees. None of the labor trustees have indicated they are prepared to vote for the proposal; I will be thrilled to call a vote on the plan as soon as they indicate that they are.

• Asset managers (incl. BlackRock): As part of our Net Zero Implementation Plan, we had previously announced that we would require all of our public markets asset managers (of which Blackrock is the largest, but we have 49 in total) to submit decarbonization plans to us by June 30, 2025. In April 2025 we went further in our commitment to Holding Asset Managers Accountable for Net Zero Implementation, specifying what we expected to see in their plans. We committed that we would review and evaluate those plans, and that this fall, we will announce the results. We will recommend to the pension fund boards which ones are aligned with our expectations, and which ones are not – and we will propose to the boards that we move money away from those managers who are not aligned.
  
  We are conducting those reviews now; in some cases, we have sought additional information and details. Activists can pick targets and make demands as part of a campaign. Investors have a legal responsibility to conduct thorough research and act in a manner consistent with their fiduciary duty. If my office decides to recommend that the board take action on BlackRock or other managers, it must be because the managers have failed to meet the clear climate expectations that the boards have set for our asset managers, consistent with our fiduciary duty. We will be, as we committed, announcing the results and proposing action to the boards this fall.

New York Communities for Change are acting in a bad-faith, counterproductive way, with ad hominem attacks, disrupting the events of other nonprofits, unions, and community groups, including a rally for affordable housing, a picket line of striking workers, and a workforce development graduation for public housing residents (none of which were my events). We are living up to the commitments we made, but I have no interest in further dialogue with them about this.

Over the last four years, we have worked in partnership with many climate finance groups, including Sierra Club, Stand.earth, 350NYC, Fridays for Future, Climate Families NYC, Americans for Financial Reform, etc. They and others have consistently praised our leadership and worked with us in good faith to figure out next steps.

In contrast, NYCC has decided to engage in a long-standing campaign of public disruption. Last week, they disrupted a rally for affordable housing. The week before, they disrupted the graduation of Green City Force, a wonderful workforce development nonprofit, where about 50 young people, mostly residents of public housing, were celebrating completion of a six-month workforce development program. In the spring, they disrupted an RWDSU union picket line outside of REI that I had joined in solidarity. To be clear: these were not “my” events. In each case, they took attention away from other advocates’ causes – affordable housing, workers rights, green workforce development.

I believe their actions are counterproductive to the cause of climate finance. I’ve had several Democratic State Treasurers and Comptrollers, whose funds have not yet divested from fossil fuel companies, reacting to NYCC protests by saying to me: “Why would I take the big step of divestment, when activists will just protest me even more?” It is hard for me to fathom, with Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans catastrophically rolling back climate action, and many other investors retreating, how it makes sense that I am a priority target.

So, I felt it was important to publicly detail the work my office has done over the past four years, and is committed to do before the end of my term. NYCC can keep disrupting the events I attend, distracting from the good causes of other organizers. I’ll try to be good-natured, live up to my word, be as transparent as I can, and keep moving forward.