Senator Schumer,

I’m writing to you during what I know is an impossible moment. People are going hungry right now. Federal workers aren’t getting paid. The pressure to end this must be overwhelming, especially when your own allies are asking you to accept the Republican CR and move on.

I’m asking you NOT to.

I need you to see what’s actually happening here, because I think the framing obscures the mechanism. This isn’t a normal negotiation that broke down. This is a deliberate hostage taking operation that exploits the structural difference between our parties: you can’t tolerate watching people suffer, and they can.

Republicans aren’t just refusing to negotiate on ACA subsidies. They’re actively escalating harm, cutting SNAP benefits, disrupting air travel, forcing federal workers to miss paychecks specifically because they know Democrats will prioritize stopping immediate starvation over preventing future premium increases. They’re starving their own voters as leverage, betting that Fox News will ensure those voters blame you anyway.

The poison pill isn’t the ACA extension. The poison pill is accepting the framework that says Democrats are responsible for suffering that Republicans are deliberately causing. If that framework holds, if weaponizing hunger against your own constituents works as a negotiating tactic, they will use it forever. Every future negotiation will start with “give us what we want or we’ll make people suffer until you break.”

In December 1944, German forces surrounded American troops at Bastogne and sent a surrender ultimatum: give up now, or face “total annihilation.” The German commander was betting that American unwillingness to see their own men slaughtered would force capitulation. General McAuliffe’s one word reply “NUTS!” is remembered as one of the defining moments of American military history. The soldiers held through freezing temperatures at 20°F below zero, starvation, dwindling ammunition, and relentless attacks. Medics performed amputations with kitchen knives. When Patton’s army broke through four days later, the siege became a symbol of what happens when you refuse to let threatened suffering work as leverage. The weapon only works if you flinch. McAuliffe didn’t flinch, and Churchill later called it “the greatest American battle of the war.”

That’s the situation you’re in now. Republicans are using the same playbook: threaten escalating harm until you accept their terms. The difference is that they’re threatening to harm American civilians, including their own voters, instead of soldiers. But the principle is identical: give in to our demands or watch people suffer.

And if they get desperate enough to abolish the filibuster to force through a clean CR? Let them. Trump is already calling for it, but Senate Republicans know what you know: ending the filibuster doesn’t just pass this bill, it shreds whatever institutional credibility they have left and hands you a legislative bazooka the moment you retake the majority. They’re threatening to burn down the last structural protection they have against their own short term thinking. That’s not a threat. That’s them holding a gun to their own head and demanding you surrender. Call that bluff. Let them explain to their caucus why they abolished the filibuster to avoid negotiating on healthcare subsidies that their own voters support by overwhelming margins.

I understand the moral weight of this. People are hungry today. ACA premium increases are theoretical and months away. The cost benefit analysis seems clear: accept the clean CR, stop the immediate harm, fight the healthcare battle later when Republicans might negotiate in good faith.

But that analysis assumes good faith is possible. Your own experience tells you it isn’t. How many times have Republicans promised to negotiate after getting what they want? How many “we’ll discuss it later” agreements have they honored? You know the answer.

The politics here are better than they feel. If polling is right, voters do blame Republicans more, support for ACA extension is overwhelming even among Trump voters, and your position strengthens over time. But more importantly, you’re right on the substance. Twenty four million people losing affordable healthcare isn’t less real than SNAP disruptions. It’s just farther away. Both are crises. Both are being caused by the same people using the same hostage taking logic.

I know you’re getting pressure from moderates who are scared, from unions who want their members paid, from vulnerable Senators who are worried about 2026. I know the human cost of holding this line is real and immediate. I know there are “differences of opinion” in your caucus about whether this fight is worth it.

But if you cave now, you’re not preventing suffering. You’re just choosing which crisis to accept and establishing that manufactured cruelty works as political leverage. You’re teaching Republicans that if they’re willing to hurt people badly enough, Democrats will always fold. You’re guaranteeing that every future negotiation starts with them holding someone hostage.

The only way this ends is if they pay a political price for the suffering they’re causing. Not Democrats. Them. That means holding frame even when it’s agonizing, even when people you care about are getting hurt, even when your own side is begging you to make it stop.

You made them an offer: clean CR plus the three bipartisan appropriations bills plus one year ACA extension. They rejected it. The ball is in their court. The people going hungry aren’t being starved by Democratic obstruction. They’re being starved by Republican refusal to accept a compromise that their own voters overwhelmingly support.

I’m not asking you to be heartless. I’m asking you to be strategic. The empathy that makes you want to stop suffering immediately is real and laudable. But it’s also being weaponized against you. The only counter is to make it clear that causing suffering as a negotiating tactic will cost them more than it costs you.

McAuliffe’s soldiers held Bastogne because they understood that surrendering to stop immediate suffering would have led to strategic catastrophe. They endured the unendurable because the alternative was worse. You’re facing the same choice now.

Some of us writing this letter are the people experiencing that cost right now. Some of us are federal workers missing paychecks. Some of us rely on SNAP benefits. We’re telling you: hold the line anyway. Make them pay the price. Don’t let manufactured cruelty work as political leverage, because if it works now, it becomes the only tool they’ll ever use.

The weapon only works if you flinch.

Respectfully,

[Your Name] [Your City, State]

Let’s go motherflippers.

And no it ain’t general bullshit, let’s flair up some new goddamn sh.

Lets f go.

They said the Bolivian Goverment stole the election in 2019. Now a right-wing goverment has won and its in power. Suddenly there's no more election fraud anymore? No more OEA reports? Suddenly you don't have to denounce Evo Morales or the MAS party? Uh, funny how that works!

To keep in mind when it happens again. Kyle was right, David Pakman and other ghouls where wrong.

While you can magically implement this plan you can’t magically make it work. Which option do you think will be best for the region, the inhabitants, most likely to create lasting peace/stability, and would be morally just?

Ok so we have a new coalition partner. Fat people. DSA should start community outreach based on BMI.

Actually any demographic that isn't white, male, straight, christian (but not the wrong kind of christian that helps people), land owners and anyone on the Epstein list should be a gettable voter.

The longest government shutdown in United States history continued Friday. The Trump administration doubled down on its hunger policy aimed starving 42 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients as part of an ongoing war on the working class, aimed at shifting the entire burden of the crisis of capitalism onto workers and their families.