As politicians and politicos back in New Jersey gathered this week for the first two gubernatorial debates and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce’s revamped Walk to Washington, New Jersey’s congressional delegation continued to do battle in D.C. over President Donald Trump’s norm-breaking first weeks.
On the docket this week: protests at the Treasury Department, controversial Cabinet nominees, resurrected bills on antisemitism, and more. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
The gang’s all here, except the ones who aren’t
While in D.C. for the Walk to Washington, Gov. Phil Murphy convened a meeting of the entire New Jersey congressional delegation, though ultimately only its Democratic members ended up attending.
“We talked about what you would expect we would be talking about: what can we do together to get those 1+1=3 moments on behalf of the residents of the great state of New Jersey,” Murphy said of the meeting. “This is a meeting we used to do with regularity, and we haven’t done it in a while, although we all connect bilaterally.”
A top focus of the meeting, Murphy and several members said, was talking about how to deal with “volatility” coming from the Trump administration, which has spent its early weeks in office attacking government grants and taking apart federal agencies with little warning provided to Congress or state executives like Murphy.
“Trump Term 1 really hurt New Jerseyans: we lost our State and Local Tax deduction, which put thousands of dollars onto the taxes of New Jerseyans, and we saw us be targeted as a state, and the freezing of a lot of our transportation money and resources,” Senator Cory Booker said. “In Trump Version 2, we are in the same push to make sure that they are not doing things to continue to drive up costs on New Jerseyans. That’s something that’s really important to us: making sure that we are protecting New Jerseyans from Trump’s actions.”
Lend some AID
Speaking of fighting back against Trump’s actions, two different New Jersey delegation members made headlines this week as they visited agencies that Trump has targeted.
On Monday, Senator Andy Kim visited the offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is under sustained – and so far successful – attack from Trump as his administration works to dramatically curtail foreign aid. Kim, a USAID intern during college, was denied a meeting with acting USAID administrator Jason Gray, and was told that employees were being prevented from entering the building at all.
“This is no way to govern, this is no way to treat public servants, and this is no way for us to conduct our foreign policy as a country,” Kim said outside the USAID building. “I just had to show up today to see it with my own eyes – the chaos of this administration, and their attacks upon public servants in our country.”
The next day, Reps. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark) and Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) joined a protest outside the Treasury Department after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained access to the department’s payments system.
“We will not take this! We will fight back!” McIver said in remarks that later got picked up by the Trump White House and conservative media. “Goddamn it, shut down the Senate! We are at war! Anytime a person can pay $250 million into a campaign and then be given full access to the Department of the Treasury of the United States of America, we are at war!”
Not all New Jersey members of Congress, though, are so upset about Musk’s and Trump’s actions. In a statement released this afternoon, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) detailed foreign aid programs that he said were a waste of American tax dollars, lauding DOGE for its cost-cutting recommendations while cautioning against any cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare.
“We cannot continue to spend money we do not have on the things we do not need,” Van Drew said. “We must do the right thing by focusing on waste, not the core programs that millions of Americans depend on. We are working with the administration to ensure that we no longer spend money on programs like teaching journalists in Sri Lanka to ‘avoid binary-gender language.’ This is about protecting our country’s future, keeping our promises, and making sure America always comes first.”
Does DOGE Coin count as commerce?
In terms of formal power, though, perhaps no New Jersey member has more ability to push back on Trump’s bureaucracy-slashing agenda than Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), the Democratic ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee.
In a flurry of actions this week, Pallone kicked off a Democratic investigation of Trump’s attempts to freeze federal funding, slammed DOGE for apparently targeting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and joined several other top congressional Democrats in calling for an inspector general investigation into Musk’s efforts to gain access to sensitive health care information.
“Since taking office, President Donald Trump has broken the law and put crucial, congressionally appropriated investments in American workers, businesses, and communities at risk,” Pallone said in a joint letter alongside the ranking members of Energy & Commerce’s six subcommittees. “This chaotic rollout of an unconstitutional power grab by the President has left communities and organizations that are owed federal funding reeling. The full list of federal programs that Americans rely on is extensive and the harm of withholding these critical services is incalculable.”
Voughting no
Over in the Senate, Booker and Kim have a direct way of battling Trump: voting against his Cabinet nominees. Five Cabinet nominees came before the Senate this week, and both New Jersey senators – as well as many of their Democratic colleagues – voted against all five.
Perhaps the most controversial of the nominees was Russell Vought, now the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought, an architect of Project 2025 and of the Trump administration’s early efforts to freeze federal funding, got zero support from Democrats but was still confirmed 53-47.
“Russell Vought’s extreme views trample on the Constitution and opens the door for corruption at the expense of the American people,” Kim said in a statement. “We need a government that works for everyone, not just the well-off and the well-connected who pledge loyalty to the President. The fight against this nomination might be over, but the battle to stand up against corruption and unchecked power, and for the American people, has just begun.”
More generally, Kim and Booker said that the recent actions of the Trump administration mean that nominees can no longer just be judged on their own merits; they have to also be judged based on what Trump might order them to do.
“Given everything that’s going on, I think we’re trying to make a lot more of a discerning decision,” Booker said. “It’s not necessarily just about the individual candidate, but really about what this administration is doing.”
Not Joshing
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), alongside neighboring across-the-border Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York), reintroduced the Antisemitism Awareness Act this week, a bill that – somewhat controversially – would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism when the Department of Education enforces anti-discrimination laws.
Gottheimer said that, with antisemitic rhetoric and acts on the rise since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, strengthening the definition of antisemitism was a necessity.
“[The bill gives] state officials and law enforcement a clear framework for identifying and addressing antisemitism to hold harassers accountable,” Gottheimer said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill adopts the most widely recognized definition of antisemitism in the world, already used by more than 40 countries and 35 states. Hate and discrimination have no place in New Jersey or the country, and we must act now to protect our Jewish students and families from threats, intimidation, and violence.”
Critics, though, have said that the IHRA definition is overbroad and could infringe on free speech rights; when the same bill came up for a vote last year, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) and then-Rep. Kim voted against it.
Getting winded
More bad news for New Jersey’s offshore wind industry this week, with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) canceling public meetings on the Vineyard Mid-Atlantic wind project and Politico NJ reporting that the Murphy administration has “give[n] up on new offshore wind.”
And any bad news for offshore wind is good news for Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester), who has fought tooth and nail against the industry off the coast of his district. Smith’s office said that the BOEM’s meeting cancellation was the direct result of a letter he sent to the bureau.
“We are grateful to President Trump for his insightful executive order and his decisive action today ensuring that BOEM complies with it, canceling its dubious public hearings aimed at propping up the Vineyard Mid-Atlantic offshore wind project,” Smith said. “Under the new Trump Administration, bureaucrats at BOEM and their allies in the massive foreign energy companies will no longer be able to ride roughshod over the concerns of local New Jersey communities, jeopardize national security, and destroy the critical environmental and cultural resources that compromise our beloved Jersey Shore.”
Other Garden State plots
• Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran) joined a number of his fellow Democratic physician-representatives this week at a press conference opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“RFK Jr. is not only inexperienced, but his rhetoric and the misinformation he has spread about vaccines have had deadly consequences,” Conaway said in a statement. “Because of his lies, 83 people in American Samoa, mostly children, lost their lives, and this alone should disqualify him from serving as Secretary of HHS. His nomination must be rejected. As a doctor and a Member of Congress, I believe he poses a serious threat to public health in the United States.”
• Reps. Watson Coleman, McIver, and Menendez made an unannounced visit to the Elizabeth Detention Center on Monday, a visit which followed an ICE raid in Newark last month that left many New Jersey Democrats rattled and angry.
“Today, we exercised our oversight responsibility to inspect an ICE facility in Elizabeth – and we were denied access and delayed for nearly an hour,” McIver said. “Once inside, we questioned agents and saw the facility, but we still need more answers for our community on ICE activity and raids. The agency’s actions in Newark have threatened and scared people across New Jersey, and we are just getting started in the work to hold ICE accountable and demand answers about the safety of our neighbors.”
• Standing alongside the family of the late Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, Rep. Watson Coleman introduced a resolution this week condemning Trump’s pardons of those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“Officer Sicknick made the ultimate sacrifice,” Watson Coleman said in a press conference outside the Capitol. “Pardoning his attackers is an assault on his memory, an affront to his family, and is a disgrace to the Constitution that he swore to uphold.”
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September 15, 2023 -
