How N.J.’s congressional delegation voted in July

Click here for a web version of the New Jersey Globe’s July 2025 vote tracker, with links to the bills and votes in question, or scroll to the bottom of this article for a PDF version.

Note: this tracker does not cover votes during the first three days of July, among them the votes on the One Big Beautiful Bill, which were instead combined with the June 2025 vote tracker.

After failing to reach a compromise to confirm more of President Donald Trump’s pending nominees, the Senate departed Washington on Saturday, not to return until early September; the House had already skipped town earlier in July for fear of votes on Jeffrey Epstein.

For New Jerseyans, perhaps the most important vote that happened in the last month came when Emil Bove, a controversial figure in Trump’s Justice Department, was confirmed to a New Jersey-based seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Two Republicans (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski) joined every Democrat in opposing Bove’s nomination, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from being approved 50-49. New Jersey’s two senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, both voted against Bove and decried Republicans for pushing ahead despite the numerous allegations of misconduct against him. 

“Throughout this process, it became clear that our Republican colleagues had no interest in a thorough or fair examination of [Bove’s] record,” Kim and Booker said in a joint statement after Bove was confirmed. “They repeatedly dismissed credible evidence and even disparaged multiple whistleblowers who risked their professional reputation to come forward with concrete proof of misconduct. An honest evaluation of his record would lead any person to conclude that Emil Bove should be nowhere near the federal bench.”

It wasn’t just Bove’s nomination that Kim and Booker voted against; of the 48 Trump nominees who came before the Senate in July and August, the two Democratic senators both opposed 45 of them. (Kim voted for two nominees and missed one vote; Booker’s voting record was an unbroken string of 48 nays.)

On another key vote, though, the two senators weren’t in accord. A pair of unsuccessful resolutions proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) blocking certain arms sales to Israel split the Democratic caucus in half, with Kim and Booker on opposing sides; Kim supported the resolutions, saying that the weapons the U.S. plans to sell to Israel “would only take us further from the change that is needed and prolong the suffering we witness,” while Booker voted against them.

“It’s time for the conflict in Gaza to end – there must be an immediate ceasefire that stops the fighting, ends the suffering for innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, brings the hostages home, and dramatically increases humanitarian aid,” Booker said in a statement explaining his vote. “These Joint Resolutions of Disapproval would restrict our country’s ability to provide future security guarantees without achieving the goal of ending this war now or increasing vital humanitarian aid.”

Booker and Kim also split on a bipartisan appropriations bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs, with Booker voting no – one of only nine senators to do so – and Kim voting yes. The House has begun passing its own appropriations bills as well, but in much more partisan fashion; the House GOP’s Defense Department appropriations bill passed with zero yes votes from New Jersey Democrats.

Both the Senate and the House passed a controversial bill in July rescinding $9 billion in funding previously approved by Congress for foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which funds PBS and NPR); Trump then quickly signed the bill into law. The vote among New Jersey’s members was party-line: the state’s 11 Democratic representatives and senators voted no, while Reps. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), Chris Smith (R-Manchester), and Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) voted yes.

“You can draw a straight line from the mass decline of local media outlets and Americans’ growing national alienation and distrust,” Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon) said in harsh opposition to the bill. “I view this bill as an attack on democracy itself and strongly oppose it.”

The rescissions bill may have united all Democrats in opposition, but the same was not true of two cryptocurrency-related bills, the CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act, that divided the Democratic caucus along unusual lines. 

Reps. Herb Conaway (D-Delran), Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), and Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) joined the state’s three Republicans in voting to pass both bills, one of which was quickly signed into law. Gottheimer, who helped shepherd the bills through the Financial Services Committee, said that while the bills are imperfect, they provide clearer rules to “crack down on snake oil salesmen, protect investors, and ensure America leads the way, not other nations, in [the cryptocurrency] space.”

Reps. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), meanwhile, voted against them; Watson Coleman echoed many Democrats nervous about Trump’s own cryptocurrency holdings when she said the bills are “a scam to help President Trump cash in on his crypto dealings.”

Lastly, buried in a series of amendment votes to the House’s Defense appropriations bill was an interesting nugget: Van Drew, who has voted for amendments cutting aid to Ukraine in the past, declined to do so again this time around. He told the New Jersey Globe that, with new deals in place and with Trump now in the White House, he feels more comfortable allowing the U.S. to provide some assistance.

“My view of this is the same as it was then. Circumstances have changed,” Van Drew said. “We’ve got a new sheriff in town.”

Click here for a web version of the vote tracker.