The Statue of Liberty will remain open during the U.S. government shutdown, President Donald Trump’s administration said Thursday. The shutdown leaves federal workers without pay and closes federally funded museums and monuments, like Lady Liberty. After Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state would not pay to maintain the monument during the shutdown, the Trump administration announced the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island would remain open.
“Thanks to the leadership of President Donald J. Trump both Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty remain open for the enjoyment of the American people,” a spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told the New York Post.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Hochul said more than 100,000 federal workers in New York, including National Park Service workers at Ellis and Liberty Islands, will temporarily go without pay, and she blamed the shutdown on President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans.
Standing on the Lower Manhattan waterfront with the Statue of Liberty symbolically looming behind her, Hochul cited the famous poem by Emma Lazarus that adorns the monument—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”—and criticized Republicans for “inflicting pain” on millions of Americans.
“Not because of an act of God or a horrific storm, or a flood hurricane, but literally because Donald Trump and the Republicans in Washington forced a government shutdown, extinguishing all hope that Washington could find a path to avoid inflicting pain on millions of Americans,” she said.
“And I want to be very clear: This shutdown is a choice—a deliberate decision by Donald Trump and the Republicans to abandon the very people they were sent to Washington to represent, and they alone are responsible for this,” Hochul added.
The governor also warned that the shutdown could jeopardize several federal programs, noting that one in 10 New Yorkers may now struggle to put food on the table due to funding shortfalls for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
When the government shut down several times during the Trump administration in 2018, then Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached a deal with the Interior Department and paid $65,000 per day to keep the monument and Ellis Island open to visitors.
“Under no circumstances do I believe the dysfunction of the federal government should dim the Statue of Liberty’s lights or shutter its doors,” Cuomo said in a statement, as reported by Gothamist. “I was proud to have New York step in to keep the Statue of Liberty open. I felt it was the right thing to do then, and that’s also how I feel today.”
The federal shutdown is the result of unresolved budget disagreements between Republican and Democratic lawmakers, which have prevented the passage of a bill funding the government into October and beyond, according to the BBC.
Democrats are pushing for an extension of expiring tax credits to make health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans, as well as a reversal of Trump’s cuts to Medicaid.
While Hochul blames the shutdown on Trump and congressional Republicans, the president has fired back, with the official White House website displaying a countdown clock of the ongoing shutdown alongside the message: “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government.”
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