D.C. Dispatch: What N.J.’s members of Congress did in Washington this week

Shutdown!

At midnight on October 1, the federal government ground to a halt after Republicans and Democrats failed to come to a deal that would allow a funding bill to pass the Senate. Plenty of government services remain functional, but hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been furloughed, and the consequences are likely to grow greater as the shutdown drags on.

There’s been plenty of blame flying around in the Capitol over who’s to blame, and the New Jersey delegation is at sharp odds over how to move forward. There also was plenty of news on other issues important to the delegation; here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.

Eyes Wide Shutdown

Who’s at fault for the ongoing shutdown, now on Day 3 and seemingly nowhere near any kind of conclusion? Each party says the other.

The Republican argument: the House passed a fairly standard stopgap funding bill that keeps the government open for two months. All but one House Democrat opposed that bill, and Senate Democrats are now blocking it via the filibuster; any blame for a shutdown ultimately lies with Democrats until they renege and allow the bill to pass.

“House Republicans fulfilled their promises to the American electorate by delivering and passing a short-term CR that funds the government’s operations while legislators wrap up negotiations on remaining appropriations bills,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) said. “Bottom line: President Trump and Republicans are working tirelessly to protect American citizens’ hard-earned money and domestic interests, whereas Democrats are not.”

The Democratic argument: Republicans and President Donald Trump have, throughout the appropriations process, largely shut Democrats out, and haven’t come to the negotiating table since the shutdown began. Democrats have fairly specific demands, including an extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies and guardrails to ensure the Trump administration doesn’t revoke funds at will, and say Republicans haven’t been good-faith negotiators.

“Instead of working across the aisle to lower health care costs and protect Jersey families, the far-right in Congress has now chosen to shut down the government,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) said. “As a result, service members will work without pay, veterans will lose access to critical counseling and transition assistance, seniors will lose access to Meals on Wheels, travelers will face delays, and mothers and infants will lose access to food.”

The Senate has taken new votes almost every day on a pair of funding proposals – one the House-passed GOP bill, the other a Democratic counteroffer – and repeatedly failed to break the 60-vote threshold on either. The House, meanwhile, wasn’t in town this week and cancelled votes for next week, too; many House Democrats showed up in Washington anyways, arguing that Republicans are shirking their duties.

As long as the shutdown continues, many New Jersey members of Congress – Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker and Reps. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) among them – will decline their salaries.

America’s last refuge of wokeness: multi-billion dollar tunnel projects

One immediate consequence of the government shutdown: the cancellation or delay of a number of infrastructure and green energy projects, seemingly executed by the Trump administration as retribution for Democrats’ failure to support a bill to end the government shutdown.

Among the projects affected is the Hudson Gateway Tunnel, where billions of dollars of funding was frozen, though construction will be able to continue for a few weeks. The Department of Energy is also targeting a trio of green energy projects at Rutgers and Princeton totaling around $6.7 million, but the details on what those projects are remains unclear.

The Trump administration claims the reasoning for the funding freezes and cuts is only tangentially related to the shutdown, saying that a review into “unconstitutional DEI principles” is to blame for the Gateway freeze. But the political connotations are hard to miss – nearly every single Energy Department program on the chopping block is in a state with two Democratic senators – and Democrats have reacted swiftly and harshly.

“It’s clearly political retribution. They are gloating about it,” Senator Kim said. “This is the kind of stuff that people get really turned off by. It’s the kind of mafia tactics that I know people just can’t stand.”

New Jersey Republicans, meanwhile, have thus far declined to break from Trump even as his administration targets the state’s funding, instead blaming Democrats in Congress for the shutdown and its attendant consequences.

“Democrat leaders in New Jersey and New York need to stop playing senseless political games, which are threatening to result in real delays in construction,” Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) said. “We need to do everything necessary to keep [the Gateway project] moving forward.”

New Jersey congressman caught in Charlotte’s web

Although the House was off this week, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) trekked down to Charlotte, North Carolina to hold a field hearing of his Judiciary Committee subcommittee on oversight. The hearing’s focus: violent crime, with particular attention paid to the fatal August stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee on Charlotte’s light rail system.

“Every time the committee visits a new city when we do these field hearings, which is a good thing to do, the story is the same,” Van Drew said in his opening remarks. “The faces may be different, the accents may be different, the city may look different, but the same story: we’re mourning for innocent lives that have been lost.”

The hearing included few regular members of Van Drew’s subcommittee and instead largely featured members from North Carolina and nearby states, including 12 Republicans and two Democrats. It’s not entirely clear how invitations were extended to participating members, but Van Drew faulted Democrats for not showing up in greater force.

“Only TWO Democrats showed up to our hearing on violent crime today in Charlotte,” Van Drew said on social media. “They fight for soft-on-crime policies but hide when it’s time to face the devastation those policies have caused.”

Waitin’ in the rain

Newark’s controversial Delaney Hall immigrant detention center remains front-of-mind for New Jersey’s Democratic members of Congress, with six House Democrats sending a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and David Donohue, the CEO of the private prison company that operates Delaney Hall, expressing “deep concern” about how those visiting detainees at the facility are being treated.

The letter, led by Rep. Norcross, specifically references a September 6 incident during which visitors to the facility were left to wait outside and unprotected in the middle of a thunderstorm. The members demand that future visitors be given indoor waiting areas, consistent visiting windows, and reliable access to restrooms and parking.

“It is both shocking and deeply irresponsible to line people up against a metal fence during an active lightning storm, a situation that poses obvious and severe risks of electrocution,” the letter states. “Reports have also surfaced of visitors left standing for hours in the heat of the summer sun, exposed to extreme temperatures and health risks. These conditions are unacceptable and reflect a profound disregard for the dignity, wellbeing, and basic rights of those who come to visit individuals who have been detained.”

The Delaney Hall facility has been at the center of political discourse about immigrant detention in New Jersey since it reopened in May; most famously, an oversight visit by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and several members of Congress resulted in a scuffle with law enforcement agents and assault charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), who signed onto this week’s letter.

Dist-Herb-ing

Delaney Hall may not be the only huge immigrant detention facility in New Jersey for much longer; the Trump administration also has plans to use Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a military installation in Burlington and Ocean Counties, as a new detention center.

New Jersey Democrats aren’t happy with that plan, and in July, six Democrats led by Reps. Norcross and Herb Conaway (D-Delran) sent a letter to top officials asking for more details on what, exactly, the plan entails and when it will go into effect. They got a response this week, but the three-paragraph letter from Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense M. Roosevelt Ditlevson contains no answers to their questions or other new information.

“On July 15, 2025, the Secretary of Defense certified that the provision of Department of Defense land at JBMDL, for temporary use by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to house illegal aliens will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness,” the letter states. “DHS and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will ensure that facilities at JBMDL meet the current ICE National Detention Standards for Non-Dedicated Facilities.”

Conaway and Norcross said that they were disappointed by the Trump administration’s lack of specifics, and that they’ll once again request an in-person briefing to learn more.

“We are deeply disappointed in the Trump Administration’s failure to respond in a timely manner to our questions and concerns regarding housing undocumented immigrants at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst,” they said. “The response we received this week did not answer any of our questions and provided no new information about how this plan would be executed.”

Getting bossy

Under a resolution proposed by Reps. Menendez and Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), September 23, 2025 would be officially designated as Bruce Springsteen Day. That is all.

Other Garden State plots

• Last weekend, Rep. Gottheimer led a bipartisan House Intelligence Committee trip to Iraq and Jordan, a trip he said was focused on combating Iran, ISIS, and other groups causing conflict in the Middle East.

“In the Middle East, I met with our Jordanian and Kurdish allies to strengthen our shared goal of peace and stability in the region,” Gottheimer said. “Our bipartisan delegation reinforced America’s commitment to combat ISIS and Iran-aligned terrorist groups, support our allies, and keep Iran’s aggression in check.”

• The Trump administration released its yearly Trafficking in Persons report and spotlighted countries like China, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, and Belarus for their failures to combat trafficking; Rep. Smith, the author of the original Trafficking Victims Protection Act, greeted the report with praise.

“I wholeheartedly welcome President Trump’s TIP report of 2025, and I applaud his commitment to protecting victims of sex and labor trafficking and demanding accountability from countries who fail to meet the necessary anti-trafficking criteria outlined in my TVPA,” Smith said.

• Rep. Van Drew celebrated the opening of the newly rebuilt Lake Lenape Dam in Mays Landing last week, an event which he called “a proud day for South Jersey.”

“The Lake Lenape dam had become a serious, life-threatening hazard,” Van Drew said. “Because of the $4.6 million in federal funding we fought for and delivered, this dangerous structure was replaced with a dependable dam that protects the homes, businesses, and families of our local community.”

• After reports came out last week that the National Archives had improperly released some of Rep. Sherrill’s unredacted military records to her GOP gubernatorial opponent’s campaign, New Jersey’s entire Democratic delegation called for congressional investigations into the snafu.

“This is a dangerous and corrupt attempt to weaponize the federal government for political purposes and meddle in New Jersey’s fall elections,” the members said. “Determining all individuals involved in this illegal act and punishing them to the fullest extent of the law is essential to restoring public trust and reassuring current and former servicemembers that their privacy will not be violated by their own government, nor will their military service be misconstrued for partisan gain.”