While Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) was in Somerset County last night for the county’s Democratic convention, the rest of the New Jersey congressional delegation was stuffed into the House chamber to watch Joe Biden give his third – and possibly last – State of the Union address.
Biden’s speech bookended a week that also included more government funding votes and a potential ban on TikTok; here’s some of what New Jersey’s 14 members of Congress were doing.
Joe Biden thinks Union County is doing really well
Spoiler alert: Joe Biden says the state of the union is strong.
The president delivered an amped-up speech that focused on defending democracy, supporting Ukraine, and reforming U.S. immigration laws, among many other things. It drew predictable responses from New Jersey’s congressional delegation, with Democrats full of praise and Republicans full of criticism.
“The President spoke about the story of our country, a story of progress, possibilities, and resilience,” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) said. “And he showed a clear contrast between his and the Democrats’ forward-thinking vision for our country and Trump and the Republicans’ plans to roll back so much of the progress that has been made… I stand behind the vision that President Biden communicated tonight and I look forward to continuing our work together.”
“This evening, President Biden failed to deliver a message to help unite a divided nation and he failed to demonstrate the strength and leadership that this American moment demands,” Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) countered. “With the absence of leadership that we saw tonight, it is important that Congress step up and deliver.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), probably Biden’s harshest critic in the New Jersey delegation and a strong Donald Trump supporter, live-tweeted the speech, and he was a bit meaner.
“Is this the State of the Union or a campaign speech by the most unpopular and desparate President in United States history?” he said.
Each member of Congress was also able to bring one guest to the address; New Jerseyan guests included the family members of hostages held by Hamas, a Westfield high schooler-turned-anti-deepfake activist, and the New Jersey state director of the Communications Workers of America.
Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), meanwhile, didn’t bring a guest – but he did get a compliment from the president on his sense of style.
TikTok on the rocks
According to Pew Research Center, the social media app TikTok is used by one-third of all Americans, including 62% of people under the age of 30; according to U.S. national security officials, it’s also a potential cybersecurity risk thanks to its parent company’s ties to the Chinese government.
Hence a vote yesterday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, on which Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) is the Democratic ranking member, to approve the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The bill would allow the president to ban TikTok from American app stores unless ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the app, sells it off.
“My hope is that, if enacted, H.R. 7521 will force divestment of TikTok and Americans will be able to continue to use this and other similarly situated platforms without the risk that they are being operated and controlled by our adversaries,” Pallone said of the bill.
Despite a lobbying push from TikTok itself, the committee approved the bill on a unanimous 50-0 vote – unusual given the sensitivity of the subject matter and the wide range of ideologies present on the committee. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), who along with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Wyckoff) is one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said the bipartisan vote was an encouraging sign.
“Since we’ve introduced this bill, TikTok has begun a campaign of lies to protect its enormous profits and obscure its direct link to the CCP,” Sherrill said. “This only further underscores the critical need for this bill that would separate ByteDance from TikTok to protect the American people, our national security, and our children.”
The lobbying was so intense, in fact, that Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) sent a letter to TikTok executives today probing the company’s efforts, especially its apparent recruitment of TikTok-using minors to push their congressmembers to oppose the bill.
“The policies and practices of TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are driven by the [Chinese Communist Party’s] authoritarian agenda to assert soft power and negatively influence a generation of young Americans,” Smith wrote. “The fact that children were not only used to advance this agenda but were targeted to be the primary agents of lobbying Congress on behalf of a foreign power is deeply disturbing.”
The Energy and Commerce Committee also unanimously advanced a bill sponsored by Pallone, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act (which is distinct from the TikTok bill despite their similar names). Pallone’s bill would prohibit data brokers from selling American users’ personal data to foreign adversaries.
According to Punchbowl News, while both bills were approved without opposition, there could still be trouble ahead. Democrats are treating the TikTok bill and Pallone’s bill as a joint package, but not all Republicans are on board with the latter – and if Pallone’s bill starts running into trouble, Democrats could withdraw their support for the TikTok bill.
Funding frenzy
Many D.C. Dispatches over the last few months have included repetitive write-ups about Congress kicking the can down the road and passing temporary government funding measures.
Well, this week, parts of the federal government are set to finally get funded long-term, thanks to a deal brokered by Democratic and Republican congressional leaders. The House passed a compromise package funding around half of the government in a bipartisan vote on Wednesday; the Senate is set to soon follow suit, though some procedural hiccups may lead to a delay that briefly causes the government to shut down at midnight tonight.
The set of six appropriations bills funds a variety of government departments – among them the Departments of Justice, Energy, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development – and, like all appropriations packages, contains quite a bit of federal money for local projects and programs in New Jersey.
In an exact repeat of every previous funding vote this Congress, Van Drew voted against the package, but he was alone in the New Jersey delegation in doing so; New Jersey’s 11 other members of the House all supported it (and Senators Cory Booker and Bob Menendez are very likely to as well when the Senate eventually holds its vote). Some Democrats, though, criticized the bills for including conservative provisions that came as part of the bipartisan agreement.
“This funding bill is not without its faults,” Rep. Kim said in a statement. “Some of it displays the extreme values the Republican Party cares most deeply about, including rolling back the firearms background check system. This cannot go unnoticed.”
Hamas hostages
A day before Biden’s State of the Union address, Reps. Gottheimer and Donald Norcross (D-Camden) joined a number of their colleagues at a press conference calling for Hamas to release the Israeli and American hostages they still hold; also at the press conference were many of the hostages’ family members.
“It blows my mind that this isn’t talked about every single day in our country,” Gottheimer said. “As a father, I can’t begin to comprehend what they have been going through for the past five months. No family should ever have to experience this unfathomable pain.”
One of the hostages, Edan Alexander, is a native of Tenafly; Gottheimer and Norcross each took one of his parents as their State of the Union guests. Gottheimer also brought the father of hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, while Rep. Van Drew brought the father of released hostage Liat Atzili.
“We shouldn’t have to be here, but the fact of the matter is, we are,” Norcross said. “We should not have to spend the State of the Union with parents grieving over their loved ones… The pain is all too real.”
TorNATO alert
As the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Rep. Kean has one of Congress’s top perches on Europe-related policy issues. This week, he joined several of his colleagues in introducing a resolution affirming U.S. support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military alliance between the U.S., Canada, and much of Europe.
“I am proud to co-lead this resolution symbolizing the bipartisan support for the United States’ commitment to the NATO alliance,” Kean said. “This resolution also stresses ahead of this year’s Washington summit that the alliance must continue to call on all its allies to meet the 2% defense investment minimum to send a message to Vladimir Putin that his unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine has only made NATO more powerful.”
In past years, such a resolution – which has a bipartisan list of sponsors, including the subcommittee’s Democratic ranking member – likely would have been fairly uncontroversial.
But NATO has recently drawn the ire of some top Republicans, chief among them Donald Trump, who said last month he’d be fine with foreign adversaries attacking NATO member nations that “don’t pay.” Kean’s resolution gestures to the need for NATO members to continue dedicating at least 2% of their GDP to national defense, but it still could draw opposition from the right wing of his party.
Other Garden State plots
• The House passed a bill this week sponsored by Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) that reauthorizes the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer, a registry tracking firefighters’ cancer rates, through 2028.
“With our creation of a national firefighter cancer registry, we have made important advances in keeping our heroes healthy and I am proud the House has agreed to renew the program today,” Pascrell said. “Thank you to the bipartisan Congressional Fire Services Caucus co-chairs for their support. Firefighter safety is public safety, and I am committed to keeping our communities’ heroes healthy and safe.”
• At a press conference in Red Bank on Monday, Rep. Pallone called for Congress to take action on legislation that would eliminate junk fees, something that Biden has also worked to accomplish through executive regulatory actions.
“While the Biden administration’s actions will bring much needed transparency to the live event, car rental, hotel, and banking industries, it’s past time to take legislative action and end this deceptive practice companies use to unfairly raise prices on consumers,” Pallone said. “I applaud the Biden administration’s actions and will continue to fight to eliminate these misleading fees and lower prices for Americans.”
• The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has released a new preparedness plan to address future pandemics like Covid – a plan that came about thanks to legislation Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) got passed in 2021.
“When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, we had to learn the hard way just how unprepared we were,” Watson Coleman said. “When I drafted this legislation, I sought to bolster our readiness so the next time – and unfortunately, there will be a next time – we are prepared for the worst. I’m pleased to see the TSA’s plan is thorough and will go a long way to keeping workers and passengers safe.”