New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill supports cementing the state’s sanctuary state policy into law — as it’s already written.
The Immigrant Trust Directive, commonly called a sanctuary policy, restricts state law enforcement from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Enshrining the policy into law would ensure future governors of either party could not unilaterally take it away. As of now, the directive could be undone with a flick of a pen.
Immigrant rights groups in New Jersey have pushedfor several years to make the policy permanent with a new law, a move they say is increasingly urgent amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, which has reverberated across the country. But those activists want to expand protections, which could clash with Sherrill’s approach.
“Gov. Sherrill supports a bill to codify the directive,” her spokesperson Sean Higgins said. “What she does not support is anything that undermines the ability to defend our protections in court, which puts people at risk.”
Sherrill has said making changes to the directive while making it law could invite lawsuits andrisk the whole policy, which was enacted during Trump’s first presidency and has survived federal judges appointed by both Trump and former President George W. Bush.
“New Jersey’s directive has already withstood judicial review — and that additional action, if not precise, could undo important protections which we cannot risk under the Trump administration,” Sherrill said during her primary campaign.
Higgins said those concerns “have not changed.”
Immigrant rights groups nearlyreached the finish line late last year after the state legislature passed a bill that included some of the changes they wanted to make.
But former Gov. Phil Murphy rejected the bill in his final hours in office. Like Sherrill, he said the policy could be in jeopardy if it changed and could invite lawsuits.
Amol Sinha, the executive director of ACLU New Jersey, disagrees.
The bill Murphy vetoed — which Democraticlawmakers have already signaled they will reintroduce in the new session—would remove an exception for law enforcement to work with federal immigration authorities on final orders of removal and prohibit law enforcement from providing money to federal immigration authorities.
Sinha and others who support the bill say those changes would be on solid legal ground. Since the courts previously found federal law does not preempt the state’s immigration policy, and the state has the right to determine where its resources go, he said, he believes Murphy’s veto was overly cautious.
“We cannot be in a situation where we’re constantly afraid of lawsuits and therefore we don’t pass any laws,” Sinha said. “There is legal risk to every law that passes in New Jersey. You’re going to get sued, and if you don’t want to get sued, then you shouldn’t be in government.”
Sherrill’s stance on the matter has, at times, been ambiguous.
After a general election debate in late September, she said she was “going to focus on following the law and the Constitution” when pressed by reporters on whether she would keep the directive in place. In October, she said she supported aspects of the policy but also suggested she wanted to revisit it.
During the primary contest, her spokesperson said Trump “is changing the rules rapidly” and Sherrill would “address the circumstances as they exist,” but she had also signaled support for keeping the policy.
Since taking office last week, Sherrill has taken other steps to try to shield the state from ICE. She announced Thursday that her administration plans to launch a state database for New Jerseyans to upload videos of ICE operations in the state after two fatal shootings in Minnesota.
But the pressure to work with legislators on making the sanctuary directive law remains.
Assemblymember Balvir Singh, a Burlington County Democrat and cosponsor of the bill Murphy rejected, said part of the urgency is concern over Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding from Democratic-led states over policy disagreements.
Even though Sherrill has kept the policy in place, a directive carries less weight than a statute backed by two branches of government.
“Our executive can be put under a tremendous amount of pressure where they have to figure out how they’re going to fund our social services systems that rely on federal funding,” Singh said.
Just last week, Trump directed federal government agencies to review funding for several Democratic states, including New Jersey, almost all of which were on a list of sanctuary jurisdictions produced by his administration.
The one exception was Virginia, where new DemocraticGov. Abigail Spanberger rescinded a directive that instructed law enforcement to work with ICE. The previous week, Trump said he planned to cut off federal funding for states with sanctuary cities.
Singh, whose district includes communities with large immigrant populations, said preserving the seven-year-old policy through law is “the very minimum.”
‘I take Gov. Sherrill at her word’
Sherrill declined to comment on the specifics of the bill that reached Murphy’s desk, and the question will be whether lawmakers are able to enact changes to the current directive or if she will only sign a carbon copy of what already exists.
The sanctuary bill was one of three pieces of legislation aimed at protecting immigrants that Murphy weighed in his final days in office. He signed one about creating model policies for safe spaces in the state and vetoed another aimed at limiting data collected by government agencies and health centers, citing a “drafting oversight.”
As she waited anxiously for Murphy’s decisions on the bills earlier this month, Nedia Morsy, the executive director of immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New Jersey, said that New Jersey should not “make policy based on fear” and that immigrants in the state were experiencing a “collective feeling of suffocation.”
She criticized Murphy’s vetoes, saying legal experts had already vetted the bills.
Sherrill has repeatedly promised to fight Trump and recently said that ICE agents are “occupying cities, inciting violence, and violating the Constitution” and need to be held accountable “for their lawless actions.”
Her comments have given some activists hope that she will be willing to work with them.
And while a single bill cannot stop ICE from sweeping New Jersey communities, Sinha said, the state can “put up safeguards and guardrails” through policies like the ones Murphy rejected.
“I take Gov. Sherrill at her word that she wants to push back against authoritarianism,” he added, “and to me, that means doing whatever we can to protect immigrants in our state.”
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said her administration will create an online database for people to upload videos they record of ICE.
“If you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out,” she urged New Jerseyans in an appearance on The Daily Show on Wednesday night with host Desi Lydic in New York City.
Sherrill, a Democrat and former member of Congress, said her administration will set up an online portal “so people can upload all their cell phone videos and alert people.”
Cell phone video from onlookers has been used to rebut the narrative of President Donald Trump’s administration after federal agents fatally shot Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
“They will pick people up, they will not tell us who they are … they’ll pick up American citizens. They picked up a 5-year-old child,” she said on the show. “We want documentation, and we are going to make sure we get it.”
The policy announcement was not featured in the television broadcast, but it was posted to YouTube shortly afterward by The Daily Show.
New Jersey residents routinely report ICE activity and arrests around the state, including recently in Bridgeton and Princeton. The Garden State is home to about the seventh-largest undocumented population in the country, an estimated 476,000 people, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
Amy Torres, executive director of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, said Sherrill needs to do more.
“We don’t need to see more evidence of what ICE is doing,” Torres said. “They’ve arrested a New Jersey mayor. They’ve gone after a sitting member of Congress. They’ve opened up a 1,000-bed facility in our state’s largest city and they’re ripping our families apart. New Jersey doesn’t need more evidence, we need leadership who is going to act.”
Sherrill, meanwhile, also said her administration plans to put out information to help New Jerseyans know their rights in the state. And she said she will not allow ICE raids “to be staged from state properties.”
Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, compared U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to secret police forces she observed in foreign nations during her service.
“I knew where this was headed when we started to see DHS people taking loyalty oaths to the president, not the Constitution,” she said. “We saw people in the street with masks and no insignia, so not accountable at all, hiding from the population.”
New Jersey has become a key state in the Trump administration’s plan to arrest and deport millions of immigrants, and has been slated for an expansion of ICE detention.
A facility in Elizabeth was for a time the only detention center in the state. But the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall in Newark was reopened for detention in May, and the administration recently announced plans to hold 1,000 to 3,000 detainees at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, which spans parts of Burlington and Ocean Counties.
In Wednesday night’s television appearance, Sherrill denounced the Minneapolis shootings, calling Good “a mother of three, who drops her 6-year-old off in her Honda Pilot and then gets shot and killed.”
And shenoted that Pretti worked at the Minneapolis VA as an ICU nurse.
“I saw his official photo, and I’ve seen a million of those … with the flag in the background, I know those guys,” Sherrill said.
Pretti was fatally shot by a Border Patrol agent, while Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. Both agencies fall under the Department of Homeland Security.
The new governor also said on The Daily Show that she called Trump to discuss his decision to freeze funding for the planned Gateway Tunnel in North Jersey, a project championed by Sherrill that would connect New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill does her best New Jersey “Oh!” and “C’mon!” impressions on The Daily Show with host Desi Lydic.
“I haven’t heard back from him yet to flag for him that this is about 100,000 jobs in the region, and by the way, his numbers aren’t looking so good in that area,” she said.
Sherrill said the president “should listen to me because I just won back all his voters,” citing her victory in November of more than 14 percentage points, outperforming her Democratic predecessors and reversing rightward shifts in 2024.
But she also said it is time to “rethink” the federal government’s relationship with states because of attacks from Trump.
“We need to start looking at expanding,” she said. “This is a time when I think we’re going to see a large expansion of state power, because the states are the rational actors in this space.”
Sherrill also played a game with Lydic where she picked which things were most New Jersey, choosing Tony Soprano over Snookie; hating New Yorkers over hating Pennsylvanians; diners over Wawa; and “C’mon!” over “Oh!”
All seven Democratic members of the U.S. House representing Pennsylvania cosigned a letter to Sens. John Fetterman and Dave McCormick on Tuesday calling on them to vote against funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and the Border Patrol.
The letter, which was first obtained by The Inquirer, comes a day after Fetterman, their Democratic colleague, said he would not vote against funding the agency, which could trigger a partial government shutdown.
“We urge you to stand with us in opposing any DHS funding bill that does not include critical reforms,” the lawmakers said in the letter, delivered Tuesday. “We look forward to working together to advance legislation that both keeps our nation secure and upholds our fundamental values.”
The effort was led by U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, whose Western Pennsylvania district includes parts of Allegheny County. Deluzio has been floated in Democratic circles as a potential primary challenger to Fetterman in 2028.
Deluzio was joined by Democratic U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle and Dwight Evans, who represent Philadelphia, as well as U.S. Reps. Madeleine Dean, Mary Gay Scanlon, and Chrissy Houlahan, whose districts include the Philadelphia suburbs. U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a progressive Democrat whose district includes Pittsburgh, also signed the letter.
Boyle, another potential contender for Fetterman’s seat and the dean of the delegation, said in a statement that “ICE is currently operating like a lawless, out-of-control agency.”
“We cannot send it another blank check,” he added.
Anti-ICE activists demonstrate outside U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office, Jan. 27, 2026, calling for the senator to vote against DHS funding.
The House Democrats urged the senators to vote against any bill that funds the department “without first securing meaningful, enforceable reforms to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and related DHS agency activity.”
Fetterman spoke out against ICE’s operation in Minneapolis and called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s firing on Tuesday but said he “will never vote to shut our government down, especially our Defense Department.” He said that allowing a partial shutdown would not defund ICE, since the agency was granted $178 billion in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he did not support.
“I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE,” Fetterman said Monday. “I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change.”
He said he wants “a conversation” about the DHS appropriations bill and supports taking it out of the spending package, but said “it is unlikely that will happen.”
McCormick, a Republican, affirmed his support for Border Patrol and ICE on Sunday while also calling for “a full investigation into the tragedy in Minneapolis.”
Only a handful of House Democrats — none of whom represent Pennsylvania — joined Republicans last week in passing a bill to fund DHS. It was sent to the Senate as a package with other appropriations bills.
“We voted against this bill last week and ask that you do the same,” the lawmakers say in the letter. “Funding without adequate reform risks endorsing current approaches that undermine public safety and due process, erode American liberties, and weaken public trust.”
After a second U.S. citizen was fatally shot by ICE in Minneapolis over the weekend, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Democrats would not vote for the forthcoming appropriations legislation if funding for DHS is part of it.
Democrats have pushed for provisions in the spending bill to increase training for ICE agents, to require warrants for immigration arrests, to require agents to identify themselves, and for Border Patrol to stay on the border instead of helping ICE elsewhere.
Upward of 150 protesters gathered in front of Fetterman’s Philadelphia office in the cold on Tuesday to urge him to vote against the funding. One protester held a sign saying “listen to your wife,” referencing Gisele Fetterman, who was undocumented as a child before becoming a citizen and posted on X for the first time in nearly a year on Sunday to speak against ICE.
“Sen. Fetterman, we’re here to remind you: You work for us in Philadelphia. We don’t want ICE in Pennsylvania,” Tiffany Chang, an Asian and Pacific Islander Political Alliance activist, said into a microphone.
“We want ICE out of the government spending bill,” Chang added. “So today, we need everyone listening to tell Sen. Fetterman: ‘Vote no on funding an agency that kills with impunity.’”
After the protest, participants said they did not feel that Fetterman was listening to his constituents.
“I thought a show of people in front of his building might actually get some attention,” said Stefanie Nicolosi, 39, a Phoenixville resident and member of Indivisible Chester County.
Sen. John Fetterman on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump “to immediately fire” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after federal agents killed two citizens in Minneapolis this month during an immigration enforcement operation.
“Americans have died,” Fetterman (D., Pa.) said in a statement. “She is betraying DHS’s core mission and trashing your border security legacy.”
The senator’s call for Noem’s firing comes after federal agents killed two Americans during the Minneapolis operation. On Saturday, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital. An ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, on Jan. 7.
Fetterman referenced Noem’s predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, who served under former President Joe Biden and faced impeachment by the Republican-led House in 2024 amid a backlash over increased border crossings under Biden.
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.), who also voted for Noem, joined the growing chorus of Democrats calling for Noem to step down on Tuesday. The South Jersey lawmaker has previously called the vote a mistake.
Fetterman’s plea to fire Noem comes a day after he called for the withdrawal of federal agents from Minneapolis. And it comes as the U.S. Senate is poised to vote this week on funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both ICE and the Border Patrol.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would vote against it, which could trigger a partial federal government shutdown.
About 150 protesters gathered outside Fetterman’s office in Philadelphia in the snow on Tuesday to urge him to join the effort, but the senator said on Monday that he will never vote to shut down the government. He also argued that doing so would not pull the $178 billion dedicated to DHS through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he did not support.
“I would like him to listen and actually represent us, because that’s his job,” said James Pierson, 42, an Exton resident attending the demonstration.
Fetterman suggested pulling the DHS bill from the package of bills under consideration by the Senate this week rather than another shutdown vote.
“I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE,” he said. “I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change.”
Mikie Sherrill’s inaugural ball was unconventional, but it was very Jersey.
She held it at the American Dream mega-mall in East Rutherford, amid open-for-business stores, an indoor ski resort, roller coasters, a water park, restaurants, and children’s attractions.
Sherrill’s party was held where there’s usually an ice skating rink — “Across from Nickelodeon," one event worker provided as instructions.
Guests in tuxedos and ball gowns roamed past pretzel shops, toy stores, and life-size versions of children’s characters – and even through a candy shop – while searching for the entry.
Sherrill joined New Jersey hip-hop group Naughty by Nature on stage, a Bollywood group performed, and hits from Lizzo and Earth, Wind & Fire, blasted. On their way out, partygoers could pick up “Taylor hams” or “pork rolls” from workers wearing “flight crew” T-shirts.
“May you always be able to have a great future for your kids and your family and get maybe a week at the Shore every year,” Sherrill said in a toast in front of the crowd.
Over the course of the night, about 2,500 people poured out of the dance floor and mingled in front of storefronts and a cell phone case booth. The Inquirer was there to talk with the new governor’s supporters. Here’s some of what they said.
What are you looking forward to in Sherrill’s administration?
John Currie
Passaic County Democratic Party chair
I'm looking for her to continue some of the things that Gov. Murphy has done.
John Walsh
Influencer
I'm looking forward to seeing how she differs herself from Phil Murphy in a positive way. I don't think Phil did a bad job, but I'd like to see a lot of things change.
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Catie McNulty
Special education teacher in Point Pleasant
I'm looking forward to Mikie moving our state in a direction that supports affordable housing for everybody. I work closely with groups with developmental disabilities, so focusing on improving Medicaid and ensuring that our members and our adults with developmental disabilities don't lose out on services due to cuts at the federal level.
Robert Speer
President, The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 827
I'm hoping that she will work with unions to bring good paying jobs to the state of New Jersey and contracts to the people in those union jobs. …. She, I believe, will represent the middle class very well, and I'm hoping she will.
Maritza Walton
Business owner in Bloomfield
I'm looking forward to her improving expenses for business owners, especially our utilities, and the different fees that business owners have to pay, especially small-business owners.
What is an obstacle she might face?
Amber Reed
Co-Executive director of AAPI New Jersey
New Jersey did not become more transparent or accountable after Murphy and change comes really slowly here. Even though she says she's committed to making government more transparent and accountable to the people, I can see her running against some entrenched culture around that in New Jersey.
Tara Buss
Mayor of Colts Neck
She is dealing with a variety of counties with a variety of needs. So I think she'll struggle with different counties and their different needs. We may have different needs in Colts Neck, New Jersey, than she may have in towns that she's from. So I think that's going to be a challenge.
Rhina Cavarez
Worked on Ras Baraka and Mikie Sherrill’s gubernatorial campaigns
She must face our own citizens … 1.4 million people voted for Jack. That means 1.4 million believe that Trump is doing the right thing, which is going to be a problem for the rest of us.
Falguni Pandya
New Jersey-India commissioner and AAPI commissioner
We do have high real estate taxes, some affordability issues, so I think she has to get the financial house in order first.
Kris Ramanathan
Entrepreneur
I think the obstacle she's going to face is the budget issue. I think it's going to be challenging, because there are so many things that we need in New Jersey, and with the Republicans not doing anything with the federal government, basically abdicating on any of their responsibilities, I think it's going to be a huge obstacle for her to find the money to do all the things that I know she wants to do.
What is something you know about Sherrill?
Kathy Bryant
Clinical data manager
I do know she's a humble person. I met her coming from the Democratic convention. We were on the same plane, and we just spoke casually, and she's very easy to speak to. … You could have a conversation with her, and she was really listening to you. So it was nice to be able to say, ‘Oh, you might be our future governor.’
John Walsh
Influencer
Her name is not Mikie. It's Rebecca, and a lot of people don't know that. And I have to out her on that. I told a couple people that today, and they had no idea … when she swore her name and gave the oath, I was like, I'm surprised she didn't say Rebecca.
Catie McNulty
Special education teacher in Point Pleasant, New Jersey
We know her as a very caring mom in our community, as well as an elected leader. She was one of the first electeds who showed up for us as Asian Americans during the pandemic when we were experiencing anti Asian hate, and she brought a lot of real human empathy to that moment.
Thomas Duch
Bergen County administrator and counsel
I just know that she was a very diligent congresswoman. I know that her office was known for constituent service, for constituent response. The state of New Jersey is not really known for constituent response. … so if she brings that mentality, that kind of a service mentality, to state government, by way of example, I think that it will be contagious, and it will help, and we will improve our customer service.
What is something you want to know about Sherrill?
Rhina Cavarez
Worked on Ras Baraka and Mikie Sherrill’s gubernatorial campaigns
Are you running for president in 2028?
John Walsh
Influencer
When she did Colbert and she (said she) gave birth in a taxi, that was shocking to me. And I did a lot of TikToks, I met her, and I was like, why did that not come out during the campaign? So I'm sure there's more minute stories like that that are waiting and I'm looking forward to hearing about them.
Pulkit Desai
Parsippany mayor
What kind of music she likes. What does she do to decompress?
Kris Ramanathan
Entrepreneur
How many G's she can handle in a helicopter, what pressure she's gotten to.
Kathy Bryant
Clinical data manager
I just want to see how she's going to move forward with ICE. Are we going to maintain [New Jersey’s] sanctuary state [policy]? Are we going to prohibit them from coming into our churches, into our schools? Are we going to continue to be our brother's keepers, which I believe she will be.
Falguni Pandya
New Jersey-India commissioner and AAPI commissioner
How she does it all, like what makes her so effective and so productive and so successful. If we were to look at her as a role model, what would she teach young people coming into politics, young people wanting to be in it, or not even young necessarily, but people who are actually wanting to follow her footsteps.
Staff Contributors
Reporting, Photography, and Digital Editing: Aliya Schneider
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill was so excited to fulfill her promise of declaring a state of emergency on utility bills on her first day in office, she did it before finishing her inauguration speech.
“I’ve heard you, New Jersey — we are facing an affordability crisis, and you want costs to come down,” she said during her speech that followed her swearing-in. “And you want that to begin today.”
The first freezes utility rates in New Jersey, which she is able to do by directing the state Board of Public Utilities to provide credits to bill payers for increases. The board made a similar move over the summer under former Gov. Phil Murphy after significant bill increases. Those credits were funded with money from clean energy programs.
The public utilities board, known as the BPU, is a regulatory authority that oversees private utility companies in New Jersey and works on clean energy programs in the state. It is funded in part through a charge on utility bills.
BPU President Christine Guhl-Sadovy said in a statement that the board “looks forward to supporting the governor’s agenda to lower utility costs for New Jersey ratepayers while encouraging the development of new energy resources here in the Garden State.”
Sherrill also directed the public utilities board to consider pausing or modifying the schedule for proceedings in which utility companies seek rate increases — as much as the law allows — and called for a study into modernizing the current electricity distribution business model. She also called for the board to revise the Clean Energy Program for the upcoming FY 2026 budget.
Sherrill also signed an executive order on stage to increase power generation in the state as part of her effort to lower costs.
“This is just the beginning,” she said on stage.
“Not of my speech, of my work,” she joked.
Her second order rolls out efforts to make it easier and faster for companies to generate power in the state, particularly via solar and battery sources. She directs state agencies to pursue permitting reforms that can help speed up processes to get new energy sources up and running as part of this order.
She also calls on the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to expedite permitting processes for existing gas plants to expand capacity, run more efficiently, and reduce emissions.
In another request of the public utilities board, she asks officials to require electric utility companies to report on how much energy data centers request to assess “ghost loads,” which are forecasts for how much energy large projects may require. These predictions impact how much energy the regional grid operator PJM anticipates needing to handle, which can increase prices.
Sherrill has blamed PJM for high utility costs, and the regional grid operator has argued that it has simply responded to supply and demand issues as energy usage has drastically increased in recent years in part to the increasing demand for artificial intelligence.
The order also creates a Nuclear Power Task Force to support nuclear power generation.
“I heard the people of New Jersey loud and clear – these rate hikes are unacceptable – and as your governor, I will not stop fighting to lower costs and make New Jersey a more affordable place to live, work, and raise a family,” Sherrill said in a statement.
NEWARK, N.J. — Mikie Sherrill was sworn in as New Jersey governor Tuesday, becoming the second woman to govern the state and the first from the Democratic Party.
Sherrill, who is also the first female veteran from either party to be elected to the office, broke tradition by opting to be inaugurated in her home county of Essex, in northern New Jersey, instead of the state’s capital city, Trenton.
She took the oath at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark in the morning. Joined onstage by her family and high-profile Democrats, Sherrill spoke about her love for New Jersey and denounced President Donald Trump in a speech on Tuesday.
She also gave two shout-outs to South Jersey, noting that she learned on the campaign trail that South Jerseyans say “pork roll” instead of “Taylor Ham.”
“I have heard you in South Jersey, where you want jobs, transportation investments, innovative businesses, and not to be forgotten or left behind,” she also said.
New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill waves as she arrives for her inauguration, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
She even referenced Philadelphia while talking about the founding of the United States — in a very Jersey way.
“In fact, not too far away, in the greater Camden metropolitan region, in a place called Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson wrote a declaration of our independence, marking the birth of this great nation,” she said.
“This entirely unique and revolutionary declaration claims human beings had universal rights to life, to liberty, to the pursuit of happiness, not because of who their parents were, but because every human being is endowed with these rights by their creator, not by a king,” she added, and was met by applause.
She drew parallels between England’s king at the founding of the United States and Trump, whom Democrats have criticized through “no kings” protests. Sherrill said Trump is “illegally usurping power, unconstitutionally enacting a tariff regime to make billions for himself and his family while everyone else sees their costs go higher.”
Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, former federal prosecutor, and mother of four, was elected to Congress in 2018 and stepped down in November after winning the election, defeating Jack Ciattarelli, who had won the endorsement of Trump.
Sherrill, whose closely watched candidacy drew significant national support, promised during her campaign that she would make New Jersey more affordable and would stand up to Trump.
White flowers lined the front of the stage, and large American and New Jersey flags served as a backdrop.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, Sherrill’s friend and former congressional colleague, was in attendance. Spanberger became Virginia’s first female governor on Saturday in a ceremony attended by Sherrill and other high-profile Democrats.
New Jersey and Virginia were the only states to hold gubernatorial races last year, and the Democratic victories were viewed as a positive sign for the party heading into the midterms with Trump in the White House.
Sherrill, who turned 54 on Monday, succeeds Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who served two terms. It’s the first time the same party has held the governor’s mansion for three consecutive terms since 1970.
After the ceremony, Sherrill was slated to head to Trenton to sign more executive orders before going back north for an inaugural ball Tuesday evening at the American Dream in East Rutherford.
Sherrill’s lieutenant governor, Dale Caldwell, 65, was also sworn in Tuesday. Caldwell, a Middlesex County-based Methodist pastor, most recently worked as the first Black president of Centenary University. He has worked for state government, started nonprofits, and led charter schools.
In his speech Tuesday, Caldwell said his father marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he and Sherrill both mentioned in their speeches.
“My father taught me that faith must be active, not passive. He taught me that justice is not an idea, it is a responsibility,” Caldwell said. “And he taught me that service is not optional, especially for those who have been blessed with opportunity.”
Her decision to be inaugurated up north was celebrated by Newark officials, but Trenton City Council member Jennifer Williams, a Republican, argued in an op-ed that it was an insult to Trenton.
Christine Todd Whitman, the first woman to serve as New Jersey governor, used the same venue as Sherrill when she was sworn in for her second term in 1998 while the war memorial in Trenton, the traditional site, was undergoing renovations.
Whitman served as a Republican from 1994 to 2001 before joining the Bush administration and has since left the Republican Party for the Forward Party. She endorsed Sherrill’s candidacy.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill speaks after taking the oath of office during an inauguration ceremony, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Newark, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
A day before taking the oath as New Jersey governor, Mikie Sherrill said in a visit to Camden on Monday that she willsteer resources to the city to commemorate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Sherrill visited Camden on Monday morning to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day by joining a community effort to shovel snow. In a short speech, she emphasized King’s historical connection to Camden and an incident he’s said to have cited as sparking his interest in becoming a civil rights leader.
“I’m going to work with the city of Camden to make sure we can better bring this history to light, that we bring resources to commemorate the real birth of this movement here in Camden, New Jersey,” she said.
Sherrill’s team told local officials last week that she would be announcing plans to commission a statue of King for Camden, but they backtracked minutes before her announcement to instead make a broader promise.
New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill shovels snow for a resident, as volunteers shovel snow at Fairview Village on Martin Luther King Jr. Day during a day of service Monday in Camden.
Her transition team later told The Inquirer that Sherrill “is excited about the chance to elevate the history of Martin Luther King Jr. in Camden, and will work with the community on different possibilities to do this, including with a statue.”
Sherrill’s decision to come to Camden on MLK Day — the eve of her swearing-in and also her 54th birthday — was significant to local officials. It showed that the diverse South Jersey city is at the top of her mind after it resoundingly voted for her in November and improved turnout compared to the last gubernatorial election.
Camden Mayor Victor Carstarphen said in an interview on Saturday — anticipating a statue announcement — that he would want King to be honored in a spot in Farnham Park that has sat empty since a statue of Christopher Columbus was removed in June 2020 amid a nationwide reckoning onracism after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd.
Camden released a statement at the time saying the statue’s removal was “long overdue.”
Carstarphen said the city has been wanting to replace that statue with one that’s more fitting for the community at some point. He said “it only makes just great sense” for King’s honor to be put there.
A headless statue of Christopher Columbus that was dismantled and then knocked off a trailer in Farnham Park in Camden on June 11, 2020.
State Sen. Nilsa Cruz-Perez, a Democrat who represents Camden, said in an interview on Friday that residents were surprised that Sherrill choseto come back to Camden so soon after being elected.
“It’s a good message for the South Jersey region that she is going to be available for South Jersey, that she’s someone who’s going to pay attention,” Cruz-Perez said.
City Council member Nohemi Soria-Pérez, who works as the chief of staff for Cruz-Pérez and two local assembly members, said Sherrill’s attention to Camden, and the possibility of a King statue, is “just such a positive step forward into what we see in the future.”
The (debated) significance of MLK to Camden
Sherrill said in her speech that she loves learning “so many neat things about our state that otherwise you just wouldn’t realize, even places you pass by every single day.”
“And I have to tell you, one of the coolest was hearing about Martin Luther King’s history in Camden, the fact that many scholars say he had his very first act of civil disobedience here in Camden,” she added.
She was referencing an incident in 1950 in which King and his friends reported that they were refused service at Mary’s Cafe, a tavern in Maple Shade Township in nearby Burlington County — not Camden — while attending Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania’s Delaware County.
New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (center left) hugs pastor Pastor Daniel Brown from Freedom Worship Assembly Church, as volunteers gather to shovel snow at Fairview Village on Martin Luther KingJr. Day during a day of service on Monday in Camden.
King often recounted the incident as an example that sparked his interest in the civil rights movement, according to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and reported in a 1976 Inquirer obituary of the tavern owner.
Widespread accounts of the incident indicate that the tavern owner shot his gun in the air, but Sherrill said in her speech that King had a gun “pointed at him.”
“I didn’t realize that he lived in Camden during his years as a student at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1948 to 1951,” she also said.
The belief that King lived in the home stems in part from the building’s then-owner and his daughter saying thecivil rights leaderlived there “on and off for two years.”
Regardless of the disputed details, King is widely understood to have a connection to Camden.
Civil rights icon and U. S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia (center) is surrounded by admirers during his visit to the Walnut Street property in 2016.
David Garrow, a historian and the author of the King biography Bearing the Cross, has previously said he believes King spent time in Camden and likely occasionally stayed at the Walnut Street house where he visited his friend.
The state-commissioned study noted that King “almost certainly” stayed there the night of the Mary’s Place incident described by Sherrill.
John Lewis, a civil rights leader and member of Congress who died in 2020, visited the building in 2016 and called it a “piece of historic real estate that must be saved for generations yet unborn.”
Local advocates have sought to rehabilitate the Walnut Street home — which sustained a fire in 2023. A 2017 grant of $229,000 was earmarked to renovate the building — which sat vacant and in disrepair even before the fire — but the money was diverted to the city’s fire department in 2018 without explanation.
Sherrill and running mate Dale Caldwell visited the city repeatedly in the weeks leading up to Election Day, and Caldwell was in Camden on Saturday. The city’s population is nearly 38% Black and more than 54% Latino, and Sherrill’s campaign had outreach teams specifically catered toward both groups.
Carstarphen said a statue of King would be “a daily reminder” to Camden’s residents that “our city matters.”
“It sends a powerful message to us that we’re not an afterthought,” he said ahead of Sherrill’s visit.
U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick accused some of his Republican colleagues of being “intellectually dishonest” about the Affordable Care Act, hours before he and other Republicans broke party lines to pass a bill to restore recently expired healthcare subsidies.
The Democratic-led bill passed the House by a vote of 230 to 196 after Fitzpatrick and eight other Republicans backed a discharge petition the previous day, in the latest rebuke of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.
Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican who represents purple Bucks County, was one of 17 Republicans to cross the aisle Thursday to back the legislation that will restore healthcare subsidies after insurance premiums spiked this month, following their expiration at the end of last year. The bill would extend the subsidies, enacted in 2021, for another three years.
He said some of the pushback “unfortunately, is ideological” as he explained frustration with other members of his party, including Johnson.
“I’ve made the point to them many times over,” he said. “You are entitled to criticize something, provided that you have a better alternative. … I’ve been hearing a lot of talk out of my colleagues for a long period of time without any concrete plans.”
He noted that the expiration of the subsidies could lead to a rate increase for everyone if fewer people have coverage as a result, not just the approximately 8-10% who qualify for the subsidy, for whom the credit is “everything,” he said.
The issue could be an important one in congressional races later this year if lawmakers don’t resolve the matter, which was also one of the main sticking points during last year’s government shutdown.
A fourth swing-district Republican in the state, U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, was among the legislation’s detractors.
Perry shared a video Wednesday to social media of President Donald Trump accusing Democrats of being “owned” by insurance companies.
“These companies are thriving, not hurting,” Perry said in a post accompanying the video. “Subsidies are direct cash transfers from the Treasury (YOU) to their bank accounts. But they’re worried that their money tree is going to be chopped down, so now they’re threatening to pass off higher costs to consumers to keep their profits high.”
Janelle Stelson, a Democrat who is seeking a rematch against Perry after narrowly losing to him in 2024, criticized the GOP incumbent’s opposition to the bill.
“Forcing Pennsylvanians to pay an average of 102% more on insurance premiums is unacceptable,” Stelson said, noting the average increase to plan costs on Pennie, the state’s insurance marketplace. “Some Republicans in Pennsylvania are working across party lines to try to help their constituents, but Congressman Perry is again refusing to do anything.”
About 90% of people who bought insurance through Pennie for 2025 qualified for some amount of tax credit, but with the expiration of the enhanced tax credits this year the cost of health insurance through Pennie and other ACA marketplaces has skyrocketed.
About 1,000 people a day are dropping their Pennie health plans, deciding the coverage is too expensive, according to Pennie administrators. A total of about 70,000 people who bought Pennie plans in 2025 have dropped their coverage as of the end of December, said Devon Trolley, Pennie’s executive director.
Philadelphia area residents are expected to pay, on average, more than twice as much in 2026. Philadelphia’s collar counties are seeing more moderate cost increases, ranging from an average 46% price hike in Chester County to a 70% average increase in Delaware County.
Fitzpatrick had released his own legislation last month, but he chose to support the Democratic bill after his proposal failed to get traction. He said he expects some of his ideas, including income caps and anti-fraud provisions, to be amended into the legislation in the Senate.
Fitzpatrick said he met with several Senate Republicans on Thursday who said that the successful discharge petition “really breathed new life into their negotiations” after the upper chamber failed on its own compromise attempts.
“They just said, short-term, try to rack the number up as high as you can get, because the more crossover votes we can get, the stronger message it’ll send to the Senate majority leader that they need to move something quickly,” he said.
Fitzpatrick warned that more discharge petitions could be coming in the House if Johnson doesn’t change his leadership approach.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s digital innovation office has been madeapermanent cabinet-level office in what appears to be the first move of its kind in the nation as the role of artificial intelligence increases in government.
Murphy created the New Jersey State Office of Innovation in 2018 to improve digital innovation in state government.
And now it’ll remain a fixture in New Jersey after he leaves office, following Murphy’s signing Monday of a bill that turns the office into an authority within the Treasury Department.
Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, will oversee the new authority. Sherrill supports the office, but even if she didn’t, the new law means a governor can’t just get rid of it.
Georgetown University’s Beeck Center, which tracks these efforts nationally, has identified 17 states with digital innovation offices, including Pennsylvania. But the university and Murphy’s office say New Jersey is the first to codify a cabinet-level position of its kind into law.
The new law also helps the office fund projects between departments more easily and opens up the possibility of revenue streams such as by selling its technology to other state governments or local governments within the state, said Dave Cole, a Haddonfield resident who leads the department. The law also requires a board of directors appointed by the governor.
The state innovation office has worked with almost every state agency to identify problems that can be fixed with technology in an effort to make government services more efficient, Cole said.
In one example, it helped the Department of Labor redesign emails for its unemployment program, which had used decades-old design technology and hard-to-understand legalese that was slowing down the claim process because it wasn’t user-friendly.
In another, the office used machine learning to identify 100,000 students eligible for summer food assistance who weren’t getting it.
The office has also modernized call centers and even created an internal AI chat bot for state employees that helps draft emails, summarize documents, and analyze public feedback — shaving days off the process of aggregating public comments.
Employees are told repeatedly that AI is a tool and that human review is still needed, Cole said.
“The person that’s using the AI needs to be accepting responsibility for the use of and any dissemination of information after they’ve reviewed it,” he said in an interview.
The office was awarded what it called a “first of its kind” grant last month to utilize AI in government.
Cole, 40, said his team’s approach to AI is to make bureaucratic processes more efficient, like summarizing fraud information, generating memos, and matching disparate data sets.
“Our purpose isn’t to solve an AI problem as much as it is to solve a resident problem, a business owner problem — sometimes, when we work with higher education, an institutional problem,” he said. “And often AI, more recently, emerges as a tool that can help us through that.”
The bill passed by 29-8 in the Senate with three members not voting on Dec. 22 and by 61-13 in the Assembly on Dec. 8, with four members not voting and two abstentions.
Sherrill said she will keep Cole in his position as she puts together her administration.
“I look forward to working with Dave as we modernize the way New Jerseyans access state government services and build a government that works for everyone,” Sherrill said in a statement.
Cole, a Rutgers grad, worked with data and analytics as an organizer for former President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign before developing the White House website and online petitions as part of the presidential administration.
That work was simpler than the projects he does now given the rapid development of AI — but reached the same goal of increased civic engagement, he said.
After his work there, Cole then pivoted to the private tech sector and made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in South Jersey in 2016 before joining the state’s innovation office in 2020 to help with pandemic vaccine distribution before eventually rising to chief innovation officer a year ago, replacing Beth Noveck, who now works as the chief AI strategist in the same office.
“Generally speaking, there’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of unsolved problems. There’s a lot of improvements that we need to see,” Cole said. “And so if we understand how to effectively leverage technology, we can do good there, but we have to be careful with anything like this.”
One project Cole is looking forward to this year is building the option for residents to use one online account for various government agencies and allowing for their data to be shared across departments to pre-populate forms.
Not only can that simplify processes for residents who choose to participate, but it can make it easier for government agencies to recommend different government programs by getting information about applicants it wouldn’t otherwise receive, he said.
“Having that information allows us to do really interesting things, like ‘You’re enrolled in this program, did you know you may also be eligible for this other program?’” he said. “This has been for a long time, I think, sort of a dream of folks who do this kind of digital technology work to recommend and automatically enroll people in benefits based on their eligibility.”
Working with Sherrill to cut through red tape
Sherrill campaigned on “cutting through that red tape and bureaucracy.” When asked to elaborate by The Inquirer at a mid-November campaign appearance in South Jersey, she said “a lot of it is just putting stuff online.”
She also said she wants to address redundancies for residents who need to go through different government organizations and find out they have more steps than they initially thought.
“I’ve heard too many stories of people who do the five steps they need to get a permit, and they go back and they go, ‘Well, here’s five more,’” she said in November. “So there’s not a lot of clarity, transparency, or accountability in getting through this process.”
That’s the kind of work the innovation office has been doing through business.nj.gov, a centralized website for starting and growing a business, and Cole looks forward to doing more of it in partnership with Sherrill.
New businesses that use the website launched an average of a couple of weeks sooner than those that didn’t, Cole said.
“It has many agencies, permits, and licenses integrated in it, but not all,” he said.
“And one of the challenges is that agencies have many priorities about the things that they need to work on at a given point in time, so I think the governor-elect’s focus on this could allow more clarity there,” he added.
This article has been updated to reflect the office is cabinet-level.
