Surprises And Standouts: How NJ’s Congress Members Spent Their Summer

WASHINGTON — Federalized soldiers in camouflage uniforms with hip-mounted sidearms greeted lawmakers after they returned from summer recess, a time New Jersey members used to take trips abroad, hold town halls, run for elected office and criticized, or defended, the immense new budget law Republicans hammered through Congress in July.

Democrats spent the break tearing into the provisions of that law — it is projected to shift financial assets to the wealthiest 10% of households and take from the poorest 10% — while Republicans defended it, focusing on its tax incentives for individuals, which are temporary.

“This law is a direct attack on Medicare and Medicaid,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th) said at the start of the recess, during a Piscataway event in late July focused on seniors.

The law cuts more than $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal health option for the poor and people with disabilities, and if Congress does not act this year, health insurance costs under the Affordable Care Act will sharply increase.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th), who voted for the new budget law, said after a tour of local businesses in Philipsburg that it would help small businesses.

Gone from Washington for about a month, a window that has generated a swollen backlog of pressing national work, lawmakers filled their days with public meetings with constituents, bill introductions, town-hall meetings and foreign travel.

Pallone and Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11th) met in Perth Amboy with the president of Planned Parenthood’s national organization about how cuts brought on by the new law will affect abortion access in states like New Jersey, where abortion is legal under state law. The law will reduce access for “tens of thousands” of patients in the state, Pallone predicted. “It blocks people from getting birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing just because of where they go for care,” he said, alluding to how the law blocks Planned Parenthood patients from more than abortion services.

Campaigning, traveling

The Democratic nominee for governor, Sherrill spent the recess campaigning, criticizing her Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli and gathering endorsements.

While Sherrill was traveling in-state, Pallone and Sen. Andy Kim, New Jersey’s junior senator, went to Asia on congressionally organized trips known as “congressional delegations” or CODELs. Kim went to South Korea and Japan.

Tasked with responsibilities to NATO, the transatlantic military alliance, Rep. Donald Norcross (D-1st) went to Britain, he said by email.

“As a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I spent some time abroad, including in the United Kingdom, meeting with our allies to ensure our relationships with them remain strong,” Norcross said.

Beyond constituent meetings and town halls — Norcross said he’s hosted 111 during his time in Congress since 2014 — he also took it easier after his health scare this year from sepsis. “I also spent some time with my family, which was much-needed after my near-death experience earlier this year.”

Reps. Herb Conaway (D-3rd) and Nellie Pou (D-9th) were in Israel from Aug. 6 to 14 paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, a group linked with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobby.

“This trip allowed me to learn more about the horrific events of October 7th and the State of Israel’s and Gaza conflict that has been all over the news,” Pou wrote in a mandated disclosure about the trip for a congressional ethics committee. “Some of the meetings and events that I attended were seminars regarding Oct 7 hostages, meeting with families of these hostages, learning about humanitarian aid as well as being briefed on the events in Gaza, meeting with Israeli officials and many more briefings about the conflicts in the middle east [sic].”

Over the break, Pou was involved in 20 public events, spokesman Mark Greenbaum said, including parades in Paterson and Passaic, visits to senior centers and community centers and a visit to the pipe rupture in Paterson, where a series of water pipes broke this August.

Different views of Medicaid cuts

Conaway “did go to Israel where he heard directly from Israelis, Arab Israelis, Palestinians, and peace activists. He spoke about meaningful, long-term solutions that could one day bring this conflict to an end,” his spokesman Chris Garcia said by email.

Garcia said Conaway held a town hall in Hamilton, where the Israel trip came up. Like many other Democrats nationwide, Conaway, a medical doctor, held a “roundtable” meeting about Medicaid cuts and how they will affect New Jersey, Garcia said.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-5th) went to Israel on a separate trip, with Republicans and Democrats from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), who has insisted cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, the nation’s largest food-aid network, will not affect those in need, held one virtual town hall to which residents called in, said spokeswoman Paxton Antonucci, adding that Van Drew stayed in South Jersey during the congressional break.

“He was everywhere from county fairs to national and community nights out to church festivals, firehouse cookouts, and backyard barbecues,” Antonucci said in an emailed statement. “He also visited senior centers, toured small businesses, met with constituents, and fielded questions from local business, labor, and community leaders from every corner of our district — which is actually larger geographically than the entire state of Delaware.”

Spokespeople for Kean and Reps. Chris Smith (R-4th) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th) did not respond to requests for comment about their recess activities.

Escaping ‘craziness’ of Washington

“It’s always great to be in-district,” Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-10th) said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “Especially when we have so much craziness going on in Washington, D.C.”

“We had our back-to-school family resource fair, which was wonderful,” McIver said. Her office also hosted a public meeting on school lunch access, she said.

McIver’s office and the office of Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th) also held joint meetings in Jersey City and Newark to discuss the impact of the budget law and “the work they are doing to stand up to the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on democracy,” said McIver spokeswoman Hanna Rumsey.

Republicans have the votes to pass a spending bill out of the House on their own. But they will need seven Democrats minimum in the Senate to clear that chamber.

Beyond the joint talks with McIver, Menendez went on an oversight visit to the Elizabeth Detention Center, one of two immigrant detention sites federal authorities run in New Jersey, said spokesman Nathaniel McCarthy. He also joined “a roundtable discussion on helicopter noise led by Hudson County Executive Craig Guy with local elected officials and advocates,” McCarthy said.

County officials have pushed to limit helicopter flights in the region after a deadly helicopter crash in April that killed five passengers and the pilot.

With Congress out of town, President Donald Trump ordered National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., saying he was doing so to bring peace to the city, where crime is at a 30-year low, and warning he may send troops into other large U.S. cities. These troops are a common sight around the city, in particular at subway stations and transit hubs like Union Station.

Also in August, the White House fired the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. moved to restrict access to COVID-19 vaccines. The Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to rescind a 2009 policy known as the “endangerment finding” that gives the agency the legal authority to regulate the gases that are warming Earth to a dangerous degree. Trump flirted with firing the head of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, a move economic experts say would unravel global financial markets. Trump welcomed Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to American soil, meeting him on the tarmac of an airport in Alaska. And Trump tried to cancel about $5 billion in foreign aid — money Congress had already greenlit — in what a federal judge ruled last week was illegal.

Epstein, new rules

With recess over, tension continues to percolate within Republican ranks in Congress about how to handle the Epstein files — an issue that has hounded the GOP for months.

Back on Capitol Hill, members have taken up the annual defense policy bill required to authorize the Pentagon, and Republicans in the Senate are drawing up plans to rewrite procedure for that chamber, allowing them to confirm nominees to federal positions in bunches, rather than one by one.

But their central task is to fund the federal government, which could run out of money to fund its day-to-day operations at the end of the month.

Neither the House nor the Senate is close to finishing their drafts of the annual spending bill to fund the government, and with Congress scheduled to be gone for its Rosh Hashanah break in late September, members will almost certainly pass a short-term bill to fund the government before attempting to pass something more substantial this fall or winter.

Republicans have the votes to pass a spending bill out of the House on their own. But they will need seven Democrats minimum in the Senate to clear that chamber.

“If Republicans want to keep the government open, they have to work with Democrats in a bipartisan way. That’s the only way to get it done,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader, said. “Time is short.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota criticized “Democrat obstruction” over Trump’s nominees, saying that was gumming up the funding talks.

“I hope,” Thune said, “that our Democrat colleagues will resist the calls from within for a shutdown and work with us to fund the government.”

As it often does, the Senate, where Thune sets the agenda, adjourned around 4 p.m. Thursday until Monday afternoon.

— Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional information about U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez’s activities.