Only one week remains before Congress skips town for the holidays, and there’s plenty of unfinished business left to attend to.
Chiefly, there’s the pressing issue of whether or not to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year, but Congress also took votes this week on national defense, collective bargaining, and even impeachment. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
Can’t believe Congress has forced America to learn what a discharge petition is
The number of different health care bills popping up has multiplied, but it’s unclear if Congress is much closer to a solution that prevents health care premiums from rocketing up for more than 400,000 New Jerseyans on January 1.
The Senate took up two bills this week: one from Democrats that would extend the ACA credits for three years, and another from Republicans that contained a number of health care-related provisions but didn’t touch the credits at all. The vote on the former bill fulfilled a promise Republicans made to end the government shutdown, but both were doomed to fail from the beginning; each got 51 votes, nowhere near the 60 needed to succeed.
Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker voted for the Democratic proposal and against the Republican one: “Every person in the Senate chamber today had the choice to stop this cruelty,” Kim said. “Senate Republicans made their choice, and it was the wrong one for America.”
In the House, meanwhile, at least four proposals are on hand: the Democratic three-year extension bill; two bipartisan bills extending the subsidies for shorter amounts of time and with new restrictions in place, one of which is co-led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly); and a new health care package from GOP leadership that doesn’t extend the ACA credits but that may be accompanied by an amendment vote to do just that.
The first three bills are all the subject of discharge petitions, a mechanism that circumvents House leadership and puts bills directly on the floor if they get 218 signatures. Every House Democrat has signed the three-year extension discharge petition, but Republicans are unlikely to follow suit; Gottheimer has signed his own bill’s petition, and Van Drew has signed onto both bipartisan bills.
The two bipartisan petitions each now have enough Republican support that they could trigger a vote if every House Democrat signs on, and Democratic leaders say they’re currently weighing their options about what to do.
“We’re not going to sign the petitions, we’re going to wait for leadership to give us guidance, because we don’t want to negotiate against ourselves,” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) said.
The bargaining stage
President Donald Trump has issued more than 100 executive orders since taking office – and New Jersey’s three Republican congressmen joined an effort this week to bring one of them down.
Thanks to a successful discharge petition, the House was forced to vote this week on a bipartisan bill reversing a Trump executive order from March that stripped a huge number of federal workers of collective bargaining rights. Reps. Van Drew, Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), and Chris Smith (R-Manchester), all of whom have ties to New Jersey’s powerful organized labor community, were among the 20 Republicans who supported it.
The vote marked a rare break from Trump, who has largely been able to keep the GOP-controlled Congress in line behind his initiatives, though Smith and Van Drew both insisted the vote had little to do with Trump himself.
“I believe in collective bargaining – I always have, that’s not a new position, I’ve had that position for many years,” Van Drew said. “I support 99.99% of [Trump’s] executive orders. If you’re a human being, you’re going to have an opinion on things, and I certainly do as well.”
Lyme aid
The issue of collective bargaining in the federal government also came up during the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, the final version of which passed the House this week.
Rep. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), a member of the Armed Services Committee that wrote the bill, had successfully inserted an amendment undoing Trump’s collective bargaining order for Department of Defense workers specifically. But the amendment was then stripped out, reportedly due to opposition in the Senate; the broader bill that passed yesterday goes further than the Norcross amendment, but unlike the NDAA, there’s no guarantee it will pass the Senate.
“Less than 24 hours ago, in this very room, we had a chance to immediately restore collective bargaining rights just for the Department of Defense. [Republicans] all voted no,” Norcross said on the House floor during debate on the collective bargaining bill. “And today, they want to vote yes? A day late and a dollar short, is what I’m talking about.”
Several other notable New Jersey amendments, though, did stay in the NDAA, including one from Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill limiting the Trump administration’s ability to gut Picatinny Arsenal in Morris County and another from Rep. Smith probing whether the Department of Defense weaponized ticks with Lyme disease during the Cold War.
The NDAA vote was bipartisan, but four New Jersey Democrats – Reps. Menendez, Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) – voted no.
Homeland Security theater
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee yesterday, and quickly ran into a buzzsaw of hostile questions from the committee’s Democratic members.
One of those Democrats was Rep. McIver, who has a long history with Noem’s department; the congresswoman is currently under indictment on federal assault charges after scuffling with ICE agents at a DHS facility in May. McIver used her five minutes of questioning to chastise Noem for her conduct, and Noem was equally dismissive of McIver and her fellow Democrats in return.
“The truth is, you are deeply unqualified for the post you hold,” McIver told Noem. “This is on full display in the way you treat the people in this body, myself included, who have been elected to serve our communities and keep them safe: Representative [Adelita] Grijalva, Senator [Alex] Padilla, myself, and others whose character and integrity and bodies were attacked by your department without evidence and without apology.”
Another New Jerseyan, Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), also serves on the committee – but Noem left the hearing before Pou’s turn to ask questions arrived. (She said she was leaving to attend another meeting, but it turned out that the other meeting had been cancelled.)
“I planned to press Sec. Noem on her agency’s reckless practices and attempts to undercut New Jersey’s security ahead of the 2026 World Cup,” said Pou, who co-leads a task force on World Cup security, on social media after the hearing ended. “But she bailed under pressure.”
The new leader of the U.S. Attorney’s office will be known as ‘The Triumvirate’
A week after a panel of Third Circuit judges ruled that she had been appointed unlawfully, Alina Habba resigned from her contested role as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey this week, capping off an extraordinarily fraught few months for the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Habba made it clear that her departure was not by choice: “Do not mistake compliance for surrender,” she said in her resignation announcement. “This decision will not weaken the Justice Department and it will not weaken me.” Both Habba and Attorney General Pam Bondi implied that further legal action could be on its way, though they did not say what that action might be.
In Habba’s absence, the U.S. Attorney’s office is left without an obvious leader, since Habba had technically been serving as her own deputy. The Department of Justice said that it was naming three new officials – Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox, and Ari Fontecchio – to the office, with each being given authority over different divisions.
Senators Kim and Booker, who blocked Habba’s nomination from moving through the Senate, are now imploring the Trump administration to work with them on finding a replacement both sides find suitable.
“Rather than prolong this issue at the expense of the people of New Jersey and the orderly functioning of the federal legal system, we urge you to work with us to select a U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey in the manner required by the Constitution and federal law,” the senators wrote in a letter to the White House Counsel’s Office.
Maiden America
Senator Kim hit the one-year mark in the U.S. Senate this week, which meant it was time for a classic Senate milestone: his maiden speech.
Kim had spoken on the Senate floor countless times before, of course, but his address on Tuesday technically counts as his first “official” Senate speech. And he used it to focus on the theme of caregiving; the senator’s father was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and he said he’s been reckoning with caring for him while continuing to fulfill his duties as a senator.
“I remember dropping him off at the appointment and sitting in the car, alone, left to grapple with our new future – realizing for the first time that to my list of core identities as a son, as a brother, a husband, a father, an American, a public servant, I now add ‘caregiver,’” Kim said.
And the U.S. Senate, Kim said, should focus on that same message of care: caring for one another, for the American people, and for democracy.
“Just as caregivers have a responsibility to those in their care, we as senators, as Americans, have a responsibility to one another – as community members, as people,” he said.
AI Caramba
After failing several times to pass a similar policy through Congress, President Trump issued an executive order yesterday intended to hinder states from implementing their own state-level regulations on artificial intelligence, a move that quickly drew negative reactions from both outgoing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and incoming Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
“In Congress, I fought hard for the Kids Online Safety Act, which passed the Senate overwhelmingly and then Big Tech killed in the House,” Sherrill said. “Because the federal government won’t act, we simply cannot allow them to preempt states from doing the right thing to protect our kids.”
House Democrats, meanwhile, debuted a new Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Innovation Economy this week, with Rep. Gottheimer at the helm as a co-chair. The Democrat-only commission, which also includes Rep. Pallone as an ex officio co-chair, will focus on developing a Democratic AI agenda and educating House Democrats on the issue.
“As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on the National Security Agency and Cyber, I see every day just how quickly the landscape is shifting,” Gottheimer said. “That’s why this new Commission on AI is critical. We need to ensure Congress is educated on these new technologies, that we’re putting the right policies, legislation, and guardrails in place to grow and protect Americans, and that the U.S. continues to be the leader in AI-fueled jobs and innovation.”
Other Garden State plots
• Another rogue effort to impeach Donald Trump came up for a vote this week, and once again it was tabled by Republicans and a not-insignificant number of Democrats. Among New Jersey Democrats, Rep. Gottheimer voted to table the resolution; Reps. Menendez, Norcross, McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) voted against tabling it; and Reps. Pou, Pallone, and Herb Conaway (D-Delran) joined Democratic leaders in voting present.
“In order to hold any President to account for high crimes and misdemeanors, impeachment requires a transparent process with hearings, testimonies, and investigations with the support of the majorities in the House and Senate – all conditions that are simply not available under the current Republican leadership,” Pou said following the vote. “Because there is no viable process for impeachment at this time, I voted present on today’s motion to table the resolution.”
• Rep. Norcross helped to introduce the Empowering App-Based Workers Act this week, a bill that aims to improve working conditions for workers who earn their paychecks through app-based jobs like food delivery or ridesharing.
“As an electrician, I knew who my boss was, knew my pay, and knew how decisions were made,” Norcross said. “Workers in the app-based economy, like Uber and DoorDash drivers, deserve the same transparency. That is why [Rep. Pramila Jayapal] and I introduced the Empowering App-Based Workers Act.”
• Rep. Smith chaired a Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa hearing this week on Sudan – Smith said it was his seventeenth Sudan-focused hearing – at which he called for the Sudanese paramilitary group RSF to be labeled a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
“Crimes against humanity – particularly by the RSF – including mass rape, ethnic targeting, and systematic looting, must be investigated, and perpetrators held accountable,” Smith said.
• In response to President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in cities and states that didn’t request it, Senator Booker introduced a bill this week that would require the president to justify any such deployments to Congress within 24 hours.
“Over the last 10 months, Donald Trump has assumed control of the National Guard to send troops into American cities without a clear objective or purpose,” Booker said. “Under the guise of crime control, he has weaponized the military against our own citizens as punishment directed at Democratic-led cities. These actions are a gross abuse of his limited authority to federalize the National Guard.”
