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

One Big Beautiful Bill hits the Senate as Musk, Trump relationship implodes
By Joey Fox, June 06 2025 11:25 pm
Those who follow politics in New Jersey, currently in the final throes of its high-intensity gubernatorial primary season, are glued far more to state-level politics right now than to anything happening in D.C.
And yet things happened in D.C. anyways, from a new Circuit Court nomination to the Big Beautiful Bill’s arrival in the Senate to a nuclear breakup between the president and his former closest advisor. Here’s some of what New Jersey’s members of Congress did in Washington this week.
Third in the circuits but first in our hearts
Last week – when Congress was out of session – President Donald Trump announced that he would nominate Emil Bove, a top figure in the Justice Department and a former member of Trump’s personal legal team, to be a federal judge on the Third Circuit of Appeals.
Trump didn’t say whether he was nominating Bove to a New Jersey-based vacant seat or a different open seat in Delaware, and he does not seem to have officially submitted the nomination to the Senate yet. Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker, though, have gotten indications from the Trump administration that Bove will indeed fill the New Jersey seat.
“The fact that the White House reached out to both me and Senator Booker directly about this nominee gives me a sense of what they’re intending,” Kim said yesterday, adding that he spoke with Bove before Trump announced his nomination.
Regardless of what seat Bove fills, however, his recent history in the Justice Department means he’s likely to be a controversial choice for the federal judiciary, and Booker and Kim have already signaled their strong disapproval of his nomination.
“It is vital that the federal judiciary in New Jersey be committed to upholding the ideals of independence and objectivity,” Booker and Kim said in a joint statement last week. “On this measure, Emil Bove has fallen short, repeatedly engaging in conduct as a top advisor in Trump’s administration that undermines his credibility as an objective jurist… Judges must be committed to upholding the rule of law, due process, and fairness. Emil Bove’s actions have compromised our faith that he can be this.”
What a sober, well-informed policy debate our leaders are having
It’s unlikely that anyone needs the New Jersey Globe to inform them that Trump and Elon Musk, his billionaire former ally, have broken from one another in an extremely public and personal way.
The original impetus for the split, though, was policy-based, after Musk took to social media to bash the One Big Beautiful Bill that the House passed two weeks ago and that is now coming before the Senate. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report estimating that the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit, an outcome Musk blasted – but it’s not clear Republicans are all that inclined to listen to his critiques.
“Nobody elected Elon Musk, and a whole lot of people don’t even like him, to be honest with you, even on both sides,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) told Axios.
(Democrats were happy to poke fun at their Republican colleagues, too; Rep. Herb Conaway said in a House floor speech that he was “curious to see whom [his] Republican colleagues will choose in this breakup, because, unfortunately for them, they’ve pledged undying allegiance – directly or indirectly – to both of these men.”)
The deficit isn’t the only thing the CBO analyzed. It also looked at the bill’s impacts on Medicaid enrollment, finding that new work requirements and other policy changes could lead to 10.9 million people losing Medicaid coverage in the next ten years – which Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), the top Democrat on the House committee that handles Medicaid, said would be a disaster.
“Everybody will be affected by the disastrous Republican bill,” Pallone and other top Democrats said in a joint statement. “Despite Republican propaganda, Americans need to know that the bill’s thicket of red tape and increased out-of-pocket costs in Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act will fall especially hard on working families, including those with children, caregivers, Americans with disabilities, and those with chronic illnesses.”
Extra credits
The Senate is likely to make changes to the House-passed Big Beautiful Bill in the coming weeks, which brings opportunity and peril for one New Jersey member in particular: swing-district Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield).
The positive: during the House negotiation process, Kean and a cohort of other more moderate Republicans had pushed for the bill to leave many Biden-era clean energy tax credits untouched, arguing that revoking them would be chaotic for businesses and bad for economic growth. The final bill aggressively phases many of those credits out anyways – and Kean voted for it – but with the Senate now taking it up, Kean and his allies are taking another stab at protecting the credits from their more conservative colleagues.
“Our position has always been that the energy tax code should be modernized in a way that promotes fiscal responsibility and business certainty,” Kean and 12 fellow Republicans wrote in a letter to Senate GOP leaders. “Fully realizing that balance requires improvements to the House-passed version of H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
The negative: one of Kean’s key wins in the House bill is a State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction cap hike from $10,000 to $40,000, but Senate Republican leaders are now talking openly about altering that deal. Kean has not publicly criticized his Senate Republican counterparts, but he has called on Senators Booker and Kim, who are near-certain to oppose the bill regardless of its SALT provisions, to “join [him] in delivering the SALT relief New Jersey needs and deserves.”
“I have been disappointed to see your broken promises on SALT have left our constituents without relief for years,” Kean told the two senators.
Deeply troubling, indeed
When South Jersey Sikh leader Giani Surinder Singh was invited by Rep. Van Drew to give this morning’s prayer before the House of Representatives began its legislative business, he likely didn’t expect to become a national story. But that’s exactly what happened, thanks to Rep. Mary Miller (R-Illinois).
“It’s deeply troubling that a Sikh was allowed to lead prayer in the House of Representatives this morning,” Miller said in a now-deleted social media post that initially misidentified Singh as a Muslim. “This should never have been allowed to happen. America was founded as a Christian nation, and I believe our government should reflect that truth, not drift further from it.”
Miller’s comments were roundly condemned by her colleagues on both sides of the aisle; Van Drew, who represents Singh’s Sikh center in Vineland, came to his invitee’s defense and said he was “glad that [Miller] took that post down.”
“As a Catholic, I take my faith seriously and I also believe part of being American is respecting other people’s faiths too,” Van Drew said. “I was proud to invite a Sikh chaplain to open the House with prayer this morning. The Sikh community is peaceful, generous, and deeply rooted in family and service, values we should all appreciate, no matter our religion. What makes America special is that we can honor different traditions while staying true to our own. I’ll always stand for that kind of mutual respect.”
A banner year
After Trump announced a travel ban from certain countries, most of them with Muslim-majority populations, in the early days of his first term, it prompted an outcry that dominated headlines and lasted for weeks (and a court battle that lasted for years).
In a sign of how things have shifted in the eight years since then, Trump announced a new, far-reaching travel ban from 12 countries this week, but other news like his spat with Musk quickly eclipsed it. A number of New Jersey Democrats, however, released scathing statements calling Trump’s travel ban reckless and racist. 
“Despite the lies coming from this administration, the only common denominator across the list of banned countries is that they are home to people who are not white,” Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) said. “There is no consistency with regard to national security threats, domestic instability, or immigration volume. The only through-line is race.”
The pro-firefighter cancer lobby is going to hate this
Before his death at age 87 last year, Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) was one of Congress’s leading advocates for firefighters, passing a rare bipartisan bill with Rep. Kean to reauthorize a number of firefighter-related grants that was signed into law under Joe Biden.
His successor, Rep. Nellie Pou (D-North Haledon), is now taking up the fight for herself. In a letter sent to House appropriators, signed by a bipartisan set of 82 of her colleagues (Kean among them), Pou is demanding that Congress increase funding for the National Firefighter Cancer Registry in this year’s funding package.
“Based on current CDC projections, providing $7.344 million in funding for the National Firefighter Registry in FY26 is necessary to increase the number of registrations and begin to link participants to state cancer registries,” the letter states. “We urge you to consider the safety of our brave firefighters across the nation as you formulate [FY2026 funding bills].”
Just a couple of months ago, the entire cancer registry had seemingly been shut down following layoffs. Under questioning from Senator Kim at a committee hearing, however, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he “[didn’t] know about that,” and hours later the cancer registry’s website was back up.
DeRemer visits de carpenters
Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer this week became the second Trump administration Cabinet secretary to pay an official visit to New Jersey, touring Edison’s Northeast Carpenters Training Center alongside Rep. Kean.
“From construction and manufacturing to transportation infrastructure, everything built in New Jersey is built by the hands of dedicated tradesmen and women,” Kean said. “[The] visit to the Northeast Carpenters Training Center, alongside Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, was an incredible opportunity to see the next generation of skilled laborers in action… As we invest in infrastructure, innovation, and nationwide projects, New Jersey will continue to lead the way due to its strong and skilled workforce.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, meanwhile, is registered to vote in New Jersey and has had a relatively regular presence in the state since the beginning of the Trump administration. Duffy has observed sinkholes in Morris County with Kean and Gov. Phil Murphy; celebrated the reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration with Rep. Van Drew; and, just this week, announced the ahead-of-schedule reopening of a runway at Newark Airport.
Vaxxed and not relaxed
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won confirmation to his role atop the Health and Human Services Department in part by saying he would allow much of the country’s existing vaccine infrastructure to remain in place, but his department’s recent moves have seemingly begun to stray from that promise.
In response, Rep. Pallone and Washington congresswoman Kim Schrier are proposing a new bill, the Family Vaccine Protection Act, that would codify existing vaccine policies and prevent the HHS secretary from making unilateral decisions on vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
“Secretary Kennedy is governing by conspiracy theory and putting the health of our children at risk,” Pallone said. “Enough is enough – it’s time to take politics out of medicine and ensure all families have access to affordable life-saving vaccines. Dr. Schrier and I are introducing this legislation to keep Secretary Kennedy’s conspiracy theories out of the doctor’s office and to protect moms and their kids.”
Other Garden State plots
• As the Trump administration proposes new restrictions on international college students, Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) called for “enhanced vetting and significant limits” after two Chinese researchers allegedly smuggled a dangerous fungus into the country.
“The Department of Homeland Security should quickly act to implement additional screening measures and other safeguards to prevent a similar incident,” Smith said. “Secretary Rubio has already initiated a serious review of student visas – especially and including those for students from China. We must also look to cancel any existing visas held by any CCP members currently in the United States. We cannot allow the CCP to exploit our visa system to conduct activities that threaten the safety and well-being of American citizens.”
• Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) led an effort late last week advocating for the FY2026 budget to include more funding to protect Jewish and other faith-based institutions from hate crimes and other attacks.
“At a time when hate and violence against the Jewish community is at historic levels, it is imperative that the federal government take the necessary steps to increase funding for enhanced security measures,” Gottheimer and a large group of his colleagues wrote in a letter to Trump.

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