The time for a spine

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At a recent virtual town hall with Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi organized by a local Long Island Facebook activist group, a woman unmuted her mic to confront the congressman. She told him he was too polite and that we need representatives with passion in these terrifying times as the Trump administration attempts to destroy the federal government from the inside and dismantle human rights. Shortly after the woman was expelled from the group after attempting to defend herself in the comments against accusations that she’d been rude to the congressman. 

I know all this not because of a top secret tip, but because I heard it straight from one of Suozzi’s constituents: my mom. And when Suozzi voted Thursday to censure a fellow Democrat, Rep. Al Green of Texas, for disrupting Trump’s recent speech before Congress, my mom’s point became crystal clear. And suddenly the nation took notice.

Trump addressed both houses of Congress Tuesday night in a speech I chose not to watch. Members of Congress like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maxine Waters and Senator Chris Murphy declined to attend the farce altogether. Others, like Green, elected to bear witness; but within minutes, he’d had enough. The 77-year-old stood up and shook his cane at the criminal president, and when he wouldn’t sit down, was removed from the chamber.

After his removal, Green told NBC News that as "a person of conscience," he believes Trump "has done things that I think we cannot allow to continue." He said he was standing up to defend Medicaid cuts in the GOP budget. “When he [Trump] said he had a mandate, it triggered something. It really did. Because he doesn’t have a mandate, and he doesn’t have a mandate to cut health care from poor people.”

Two days later, every House Republican and 10 House Democrats voted to censure Green, who is Black, for his protest. Suozzi was joined by fellow Long Island Democrat Laura Gillen, along with Ami Bera and Jim Costa of California; Ed Case of Hawaii; Jim Himes of Connecticut; Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania; Marcy Kaptur of Ohio; Jared Moskowitz of Florida; and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington. 

As a Long Island native, I’ve been aware of Suozzi for years now and have written about him at great length since George Santos briefly held his seat in 2023. If you’re a newer member of The Handbasket, you may have missed the moment in time when I was one of the foremost experts on Santos, the Republican congressional candidate who was elected in November 2022 based on an almost entirely fabricated bio. I wrote an almost-daily feature about him in the early days of his notoriety, went on TV to talk about him, went to his court appearances after he was charged with multiple crimes, and even thought about writing a book about his breathtaking lies. 

This is all to say that I am invested in the representation of New York’s 3rd Congressional District. And after Santos was expelled from Congress and Suozzi regained the seat he’d previously abdicated to run for governor, I knew it would just be more of the same fecklessness dressed up as bipartisanship. And here we are.

After Suozzi voted to publicly admonish Green, he posted on X and then re-shared the post on Instagram. 

The Instagram version of Suozzi’s post currently has a paltry 215 likes and nearly 1,900 comments—all of them negative, as far as I can tell. That is what we in the industry call a “ratio”.  Here’s a selection of comments:

Suozzi’s constituents are furious and people outside his district who’d never ever heard of him before now loathe him. He put a spotlight on a career that has been defined by cowardice and kowtowing by engaging in the ultimate act of spinelessness. 

Gillen, who just unseated Long Island Republican Anthony D’Esposito in November, also posted about her shameful vote. She wrote on X and Instagram:

Her comments have also been filled with angry constituents and other Democrats expressing their disgust. 

All the Democrats who voted in favor of censure are so-called moderates, but their decision makes one wonder what that word even means anymore. The leaders of this current Republican administration are people to whom you cannot give an inch, and for some reason certain people who are supposed to be the opposition seem willing to give them a mile. It is, in a word, deranged. 

We’re seeing this in the continued manufactured controversy on college campuses like Columbia University where students are exercising their First Amendment rights and adults in power will do anything to stifle them—including making nice with Trump after he canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to their university in the name of combating antisemitism. 

“But let me be very clear: Columbia is taking the government’s action very seriously,” Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s Interim President, wrote in a statement Friday. “I want to assure the entire Columbia community that we are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns.”

Siding with antisemites in the name of fighting antisemitism is both frightening and profoundly stupid, and playing nice with terrorists will get you nowhere. But if your goal as an institution is to make donors happy at the expense of students, then this move makes sense. Columbia students and Congressman Al Green have been punished for trying to make their voices heard above the fascist din when billionaires would rather they blend in with the noise. 

Right now there’s too much appeasement and not enough fighting. If we really want to restore order to the federal government, if we really want to fight antisemitism, if we want to achieve anything that would benefit the greater good, we must push back at every single turn. Trying to appeal to a voter who will congratulate you for scolding a member of your own party for peacefully protesting fascism is a losing game because that voter does not exist. 

“I did it from my heart, and I will suffer whatever the consequences are,” Rep. Green said. “But truthfully, I would do it again.”

It’s time to follow suit again and again and again. And it’s time for leaders who don’t have that fight in them to move out of the way.