Welcome to a Thursday edition of Progress Report.
It’s chaotic here in New York City, where the UN is in session, people are climbing out of sewers, a Nor’easter is on the way, and most importantly, my son just turned four years old. Meanwhile, I’m slowly on the mend from my surgery, which I really only mention because it provides a nice little narrative framework for tonight’s story about healthcare and power.
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Time moves at half-speed at best in hospitals, urgency necessarily subsumed by priority and precision. S while my phone call wasn’t scheduled until 12:30 pm, the fact that I was sitting on a bed in the ER at 11:15 am, waiting to speak with a doctor, had me concerned.
The irony of the situation didn’t do anything to ease the growing tension, and if anything, underscored the importance of the pending call: there I was, sitting comfortably in the Mount Sinai emergency room, less than 18 hours after a physical therapy appointment at NYU Langone, gearing up to talk about the shamefulness of recent decisions made by those hospitals’ leaders and the impact they’ll have on families with nowhere else to turn.
I was only in the emergency room to follow up on some wonky at-home blood test results (I’m fine), but the doctors and nurses at Mount Sinai were far more thorough and attentive than I’d anticipated when I showed up looking for quick lab turnaround. But medical professionals don’t make the policy or legal decisions in our healthcare system, which is too bad, because administrators clearly don’t share their single-minded dedication to the well-being of complete strangers. If they did, neither hospital would have agreed to pay millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and stop providing life-saving gender-affirming care to trans children.
While technically nonprofits, both Mt Sinai and NYU are massive and well-heeled hospital systems that serve patients from around the world. That was particularly true for young people suffering from gender dysmorphia, treatment for which continues to be banned by weird, bigoted lawmakers in states across the country. The Trump administration does not have the power to issue a national moratorium against gender-affirming care, but over the past few years, the DOJ has abused the legal system to essentially do just that, pestering hospitals with legal threats and financial sanctions until they agree to abandon their most vulnerable patients.
When NYU agreed to pay the administration $8.5 million and end gender-affirming care last week, joining Mount Sinai (which cut a similar deal a few weeks ago) and six other major hospital systems in surrender, I fired off a tweet condemning the hospital for the decision. That would usually count as the bare minimum anyone could do about an injustice, but in this case, the tweet ultimately led me to connecting with Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY), who is the ranking minority member on the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the DOJ.
Luckily, I was discharged from the ER with just enough time to drag myself home (I live a few blocks away) and prep for the phone call, which began with a discussion of how Democratic lawmakers can stop this reign of medical terror and branched off into a chat about election season and some of New York’s most prominent politicians. A slightly edited and condensed version of that conversation is below:
Progress Report: What do these investigations look like? What are these hospitals afraid of? How are they weaponizing it?
Rep. Grace Meng: Well, this is unfortunately nothing new that we are seeing from this Department of Justice. Cruelty and coercion is the name of their game. What they are doing to attack and invade patient privacy and health care access, treating our young people and families in such a cruel way, is really disappointing. They know that they can’t win in court, so they’re just cheating through coercion.
Do they settle because it costs a lot of money to litigate? Because they’re at risk of losing federal funding? What are the ways that the Justice Department is able to coerce these hospitals?
Rep. Grace Meng: I mean, all of the above, right? I’m the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees all the DOJ funding. And we have seen this as we’ve been negotiating our budgets with them. They tried to include over 50 anti-LGBTQ riders, what we call poison pills, into the budget. And we, as House Democrats, were able to take them all out. But they wanted to insert 52 pieces of wording and legislation that would have restricted medically necessary health care for transgender people, basically allowing taxpayer-funded discrimination against same-sex couples, blocking any non-discriminatory and DEI-type efforts.
But they are persistent, so they try it through the budget process, and they can’t do that. Obviously, they’re trying to cheat by coercing these hospitals: NYU Langone, Mount Sinai, we’ve seen it with hospitals in other states. This is just their strategy and their tool to press these hospitals, who at the same time, have also suffered from funding and grant loss. They’re strapped for cash, and they’re just really bullying these decision=makers. And at the end of the day, the real victims are our youth and their families.
What would you like to see the hospitals do instead of settle? Hold out until the election?
Rep. Grace Meng: That’s why we’re on the political end fighting to win back the House majority, because then we have much more of a say and stronger teeth as we put together these budgets. But to these hospitals, their funding from agencies like NIH and NSF, they’re getting cut left and right. This president is now trying to have more direct authority on the NIH grants that these hospitals and colleges, for example, are getting.
And look, I’m not a hospital administrator. It’s above my pay grade. But what I have seen that is honestly encouraging in the last few days is how these media companies have treated the White House’s decision in terms of the pooling. They have decided to work together with a more collective strategy, and that’s an interesting take, right? And I wonder if there’s anything that hospital administrators can do to use their leverage. Because the DOJ, obviously, is not just targeting NYU Langone. They’re starting with these hospitals, and they’re just going to continue to bulldoze through these forced settlements.
I think the odds are pretty good that you’ll be in the majority in January. What does that look like in terms of oversight, in terms of using the budget? Not just striking out the riders, but preventing this weaponization or investigating how they weaponize?
Rep. Grace Meng: Right now, we’re in the [minority], and what we’ve been doing on the House Democrats side is trying to at the very least bring attention to what the administration is doing. So hopefully if we are in the majority, I want people to know oversight and our Appropriations Committee really go hand in hand. We literally have direct oversight over these agencies. They come in front of us. They ask for money. They have to tell us how they’re going to spend it. And we can certainly insert language that tells them how they’re not allowed to spend taxpayers’ money.
The riders are an example, and we’ll have more leverage if we’re in the majority to not just strike out harmful, poisonous language, but to be more constructive and insert language that can actually help people.
It’s not directly related, but something that I worked on was the “anti-weaponization” fund that the DOJ was trying to create, literally a legal defense fund for the January 6th insurrectionists. And because we were able to ask about it and talk about it in our committee, they came back and said, “Oh, yeah, we’re not going to do that anymore.” And they’re not doing that out of the goodness of their heart. They got attention on it, and they don’t like that, and they know it’s wrong and illegal. And so we just have to continue to conduct that type of oversight.
On the other hand, we just saw Mayor Mamdani meet with President Trump, who was once again singing his praises during a very surprising press conference. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to the mayor or anyone who’s involved in that, but I’m curious to know whether you have any insight into how he’s seemingly gotten the president under his spell.
Rep. Grace Meng: Yeah, I’m actually not surprised. When Mayor Mamdani had his first meeting in Washington, D.C., I actually reached out to the mayor and I said, “I have a weird feeling that President Trump really respects you and likes you.” And I was half joking, it was before all the pictures of them coming out all happy from the first White House meeting.
But I think a lot of what the mayor is fighting for for our city, these are issues that if Trump were to support and work along with him could make him more popular too. Obviously I wasn’t part of the meeting, and I don’t know all the details of what they talked about, but hopefully whatever the mayor can do to convince him to stop bullying New Yorkers and putting a target on the backs of New Yorkers and fellow Americans is appreciated.
Do you think it’s a star power thing? Trump cares more than anything else about that? Is he impressed by that?
Rep. Grace Meng: I think that occasionally the president knows how to read the room. And I think that he may like that New Yorkers are responding well to Mayor Mamdani’s fight for affordability and to root out corruption.
On the subject of New York Democrats… Mayor Mamdani upended the New York Democratic establishment, and now for the first time ever, Jay Jacobs, the state party chair, is being challenged in his re-election bid. And I’m curious what you make of the upheaval, all the Democratic primary challenges across the state, and the challenge to Jacobs in particular?
Rep. Grace Meng: I think that Chairman Jacobs will make his case as he runs for reelection, but it’s a team sport. And right now, regardless of which wing of the Democratic Party you’re in, we have to focus on the November election. There’s so much at stake right now. I will say that I am glad to see what the state party is doing now for the November elections. They are running a robust, coordinated campaign, for example, opening up more than 30 offices in areas that we need to flip blue, and so I would like to see more of that.
But there’s been so much conversation about the left wing, the moderate wing of the party. And I think that everyone can learn something from anyone. And I want to make sure that people are all rowing in the same direction as we head towards the November election. I’ve said that to Democratic Party leadership. I’ve said that to DSA leadership. We need to all work together for November.
The 2022 and 2024 elections were rough for NY Democrats, and probably cost the party control of Congress. You mention opening all these offices in places that need to flip blue: do you think that’s something that NY Democrats have slept on in the past?
Rep. Grace Meng: Oh, I think that there has been much improvement. We did not see this robust, coordinated campaign at this level in years past. And so I’m really glad to see that. Now we need to meet voters where they are, and opening up these coordinated campaign offices will be super helpful. We need to rebuild trust with people who have voted for us, people who’ve been lifelong Democrats, people who may have voted for Trump, and also brand-new voters and young voters. We need to meet them where they are. And I like that that’s being done right now.
What does rebuilding trust look like? Obviously Trump will still be president come January 2027, but Congress might be a different story. So what does rebuilding trust look like for a Democratic Party that has some control over things?
Rep. Grace Meng: I don’t want to speak for other people. But I think that it’s important to meet people where they are. We need to make sure that people feel that we’re not just lecturing from social media or from a cable news network, but that we’re meeting them in their neighborhoods. And for the everyday person who may be frustrated with what’s happening in this country and what they’re seeing in our neighborhoods, we need to find ways for them to get involved, for them to feel like they’re included, and for them to feel like they are able to weigh in, whether they are happy with how things are going or whether they want to be part of a way to improve the way that things are going.
It’s hard to build that trust when there isn’t a presence in some of these districts. And we saw this in past elections, including the one where Trump first won. I was one of the DNC officers during the first Trump administration. I was [vice chair of] the DNC from 2016 to 2020. And I traveled to 20-some states. I would meet people, even members of a union hall, who said that they were shocked that the Democratic Party was in their state or in their neighborhood. And they were so grateful that they felt like the Democratic Party was finally paying attention to them and listening to them. And so just continue to do more of that when there is a vacuum.
A lot of people used to ask, “What is our message? What is our message?” after Trump with his MAGA slogan. And for me, I just felt like it’s not just not having a message, but sometimes we don’t even have a messenger in some of these areas. So people need to feel like we’re listening to them and that we’re working with them and their opinions are valued. I always think about, to paraphrase that Maya Angelou quote, people may forget what you say or do, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. And that’s how we have to rebuild trust with people again for our party.
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Castration.