U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has more cash on hand than any other GOP incumbent in a swing district nationwide as the party prepares for a tough election.
The Bucks County lawmakerraised about $4.3 million in the most recent cycle, more than any other House candidate in the state and the 21st most of all the candidates running for the 435-member House in 2026. He ended 2024 with nearly $4.4 million when removing debt and had more than $7.3 million cash on hand as of Dec. 31. That haul makes him the best-funded of the 16 candidates on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Patriots program, a group of vulnerable incumbents in key swing districts, according to Federal Election Commission data.
“Brian Fitzpatrick has years of electoral success under his belt and will continue to be unbeatable in Bucks County because Pennsylvanians know he’ll always put them first in Washington … this race was over before it began,” NRCC spokesperson Reilly Richardson said in a statement.
But Fitzpatrick’s district is one of four in Pennsylvania that could determine the control of the U.S. House and has long been coveted by Democrats because of its purple electorate. It is one of nine GOP-held districts in the country that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024.
Bob Harvie, a Democrat who chairs the Bucks County commissioners, has emerged as the front-runner to face Fitzpatrick in the 2026 election.
Harvie, who would need to win the May primary to face Fitzpatrick,raised nearly $930,000 last year and has more than $400,000 cash on hand. He surpassed $1 million after getting $100,000 in the first few weeks of the year, according to his campaign.
“Based on the outpouring of support we are receiving, it’s clear voters agree and are fired up to be a part of this campaign,” Harvie said Wednesday in a news release about his fundraising.
Harvie made history flipping the Bucks County board six years ago, has strong name recognition in the district, and has the backing of national Democrats. But Fitzpatrick ended the year with nearly 20 times more cash on hand.
Fitzpatrick received more money from each of New York and Florida than from in-state donors in 2025, according to FEC data. Harvie received the vast majority of his money from Pennsylvania.
Fitzpatrick could be less vulnerable than other swing-state Republicans
He recently joined Democrats and two other swing-district Republicans in the state to vote to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Republicans quashed. Fitzpatrick criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and called some of his Republican colleagues “intellectually dishonest.” But Democrats have argued that Fitzpatrick has not been critical enough of the president, whom he often avoids naming when challenging his policies.
Jim Worthington, a GOP mega-donor in Pennsylvania and owner of the Newtown Athletic Club, said that Fitzpatrick’s approach makes him “the perfect representative for a purple county.”
“Everybody that’s moderate and people that are independents, they love him because he votes to what best represents his constituents, and by the way, sometimes he takes some votes that make me cringe a little bit, but I understand why he does it,” Worthington said.
Heather Roberts, a spokesperson for Fitzpatrick’s campaign, attributed the incumbent’s fundraising success to his ability to break the partisan mold.
“Strong fundraising follows strong leadership — and Congressman Fitzpatrick has built a broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents who are rejecting the extremes and backing two-party, patriotic, common-sense solutions,” Roberts said in a statement.
Fitzpatrick “is no maverick and no John McCain — he is a doormat for Trump’s worst instincts and a greenlight for D.C. Republicans’ dangerous agenda that is hurting our community,” Harvie said Wednesday in a statement to The Inquirer.
“Pennsylvanians deserve a Congressman who will stand up to Trump and actually do something to lower prices — but Fitzpatrick is weak and caves to his own party when it matters most,” said Eli Cousin, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a statement.
Harvie has less cash on hand than the other Democratic front-runners in the state’s swing districts.
Janelle Stelson, a second-time challenger to Perry, ended 2025 with about $1.5 million cash on hand. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, who is challenging Bresnahan, ended the year with a little more than $800,000 cash on hand. Former federal prosecutor Ryan Croswell, Mackenzie’s Democratic challenger with the most cash, has $612,000 for the Lehigh Valley race.
Does name recognition make Harvie a ‘formidable’ challenger?
Harvie’s campaign is confident that he can cash in on name recognition, having won two countywide commissioner races in the last seven years that could help raise his profile among voters in the 1st Congressional District, which includes all of Bucks County and a sliver of Montgomery County.
Provided he wins the primary, Harvie would be the first Democratic challenger to Fitzpatrick’s seat who has held countywide elected office.
But will that help Harvie’s chances?
“The starting point that Bob Harvie has with his name ID as a commissioner is just a much better starting point,” said Brittany Crampsie, a Democratic consultant in Pennsylvania, noting that he would not need to spend as much money introducing himself to voters in an expensive Philadelphia-area media market.
“He has a lot of advantages going into this race, not the least of which is his name ID, but he would be probably the most formidable matchup we’ve seen against Fitzpatrick in his tenure,” she added.
“Maybe,” GOP consultant Christopher Nicholas said as to whether Harvie has valuable name recognition, adding that “among hardcore Democrats his name ID is decent because they’re hardcore Democrats.”
“But if you stood out on the streets of Tullytown or Riegelsville or Dublin and said, ‘Who are your county commissioners?’,” residents may be unfamiliar, Nicholas said.
As of October 2025, 43% of respondents to an internal Harvie campaign survey conducted by Public Policy Polling could identify Harvie, with 26% giving him a favorable rating and 17% an unfavorable. That poll had the commissioner and Fitzpatrick tied at 41%.
This article has been updated to include a comment from Fitzpatrick’s campaign received after publication.
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker has raised more than $30 million for his reelection campaign, outdoing the vast majority of candidates running for either chamber ofCongress in 2026.
The New Jersey Democrat has raised the second-largest amount of money for the 2026 elections for U.S. House and Senateas of the end of last year, behind only Sen. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.),according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Booker is widely considered a potential presidential contender for 2028, after unsuccessfully seeking the office in 2020.
The lawmaker has no serious challengers at this point for his Senate seat, and he could leave this cycle with extra money he could use for a presidential run.
His campaign has nearly $22 million cash on hand and no debt. He has been adding to his coffers since he began his most recent term in 2021.
More than 200,000 people donated to Booker in 2025, and roughly 80% of the donations were $25 or less, according to Booker’s campaign.
“Cory is backed by a grassroots movement that recognizes the importance of strong, principled leadership that stands up in this moment,“ his campaign manager, Adam Silverstein, said in a statement. ”We are grateful for this incredible outpouring of support and will keep building the infrastructure we need to win in 2026 and elect Democrats at every level.”
The New Jersey Democrat saw a fundraising spike when he delivered a record-breaking 25-hour speech on the Senate floor last year. He raised nearly $9.7 million in the second quarter of 2025, the period that included his speech, far more than any other quarter last year.
Booker criticized President Donald Trump on a host of issues in the speech and held up a pocket Constitution. He also acknowledged his own party’s failure to prevent Trump’s return to office.
“I confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue,” he said in his speech. “I confess we all must look in the mirror and say, ‘We will do better.’”
Laura Matos, a New Jersey Democratic operative, said Booker was already a “known entity,” and his speech came at a time when Democrats across the country were looking for someone to stand up to Trump.
“For 25 hours, his people could constantly churn out, like every hour, ‘He’s still on the Senate floor, show him you support him,’” said Matos, a partner at lobbying and public affairs firm MAD Global Strategy Group. “The way that fundraising works, you can really build upon things like that. He was prolific before that, and then that just kind of skyrocketed it.”
Ossoff, the 2026 federal candidate who reported more than Booker, has raised nearly $64 million and faces a more competitive race in a key swing state.
He began serving as mayor of Newark in 2006 untilhe was elected to the U.S. Senate in a 2013 special election.
Booker is also heading into a national tour to promote Stand, his new book, set to publish next month.
The book combines Booker’s personal reflections with stories of American leaders from President George Washington to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and “offers a hopeful and practical path forward,” according to his publisher, Macmillan.
Most of Booker’s money comes from outside New Jersey.
According to FEC data, from January through September 2025, he received the most money from California, followed by New York.
While Booker is raking in money, he’s also spending it. He spent the fourthmost out of all 2026 Senate candidates, reporting $14 million in spending since 2021.
One of his biggest expenses was in April, when his campaign spent $1.2 million on an email list acquisition.
The only other candidate who has reporting fundraising for the New Jersey Senate race so far is Justin Murphy, a Republican from the Pinelands, who reported a little over $3,500.
Several other Republicans have expressed interest in running in the primary, and county parties will hold conventions in the coming weeks to endorse candidates.
Luke Ferrante, the executive director of New Jersey GOP, said the party is planning “a robust effort statewide” to unseat Booker.
“New Jerseyans across the state are eager to elect a statewide representative that is focused on delivering for its residents, not their greater Washington ambitions,” Ferrante said.
Democrat Janelle Stelson outraised U.S. Rep. Scott Perry for the second quarter in a row in her bid to flip the Central Pennsylvania district, which could determine control of the House in November.
Stelson, who lost by a little more than 1 percentage point to Perry in 2024, has raised more than $2.2 million since launching her rematch campaign in July. She has outraised Perry in both quarters since her kickoff and has more cash on hand than the incumbent Republican when taking his campaign debt into consideration.
Perry, a close ally of President Donald Trump, appears to be in the toughest fight of his political career. The seven-term lawmaker continues to be a Trump loyalist even as other swing-district Republicans in the state increasingly look to distance themselves from the president.
“I think the story of Scott Perry just keeps getting worse,” Stelson, 65, said in an interview. “He’s somebody who I covered for years on the news, and people have just really had enough. After more than a decade in Washington, he’s caused a lot of problems.”
Perry, 63, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, voted last month against a Democratic-led bill to restore recently expired healthcare subsidies amid a national spike in insurancepremiums, a vote Stelson has seized upon. Three other Pennsylvania Republicans who represent swing districts — U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Rob Bresnahan, and Ryan Mackenzie — voted for the measure.
Stelson would need to win the Democratic primaryin May to set up the November rematch. She is facingDauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas, a progressive pastor,who has raised under $85,000 this year. Perry also has his first primary challenge, from Karen Dalton, a retired attorney for Harrisburg Republicans, who reported raising a little more than $11,000 since launching her campaign.
Perry raised more than $2.9 million in 2025, and Stelson has raised $2.2 million since she launched her campaign in July. Stelson raised more than $946,000 from October through December,beating Perry’s haul for the quarter of $780,031.
Stelson ended the year with $1.52 million cash on hand, while Perry had $1.66 million. But Perry’s campaign also has nearly $280,000 in debt, which would put Stelson ahead when factored into the totals.
FILE – U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., speaks during a campaign event in front of employees at an insurance marketing firm, Oct. 17, 2024, in Harrisburg, Pa.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rated the district as a toss-up alongside Mackenzie’s Lehigh Valley district, marking them as among the most competitive races in the country.
Perry campaign spokesperson Matt Beynon said Perry’s fundraising last quarter was “incredibly strong” and pointed to how he outraised fellow swing district Republicans Bresnahan and Mackenzie during that stretch.
Beynon said Perry is in a better position to ward off a Democratic challenge this year because his district has emerged as a priority for national Republicans, landing on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s Patriots Program — a list of priority races that he was not on in 2024.
“Seeing the results last go-around, and seeing how hard we fought to make sure that the congressman was reelected, I think did open some eyes, and the congressman has been able to make the case that he needs support, too,” Beynon said in an interview.
He said it has been “a learning experience for folks to understand” that the district has become increasingly blue in recent years. The 10th Congressional Districtincludes Dauphin County and parts of York and Cumberland Counties, and is home to Harrisburg and Hershey.
Perry declined to be interviewed for this article.
Stelson said Republican voters in the district who have historically voted along party lines are “really waking up” and are beginning to view Perry as more of an “extremist” than a Republican.
She criticized Perry for urging his colleagues to throw out Pennsylvania’s votes hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. She also pointed to his vote against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Policeofficers, as well as his support for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which made cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in order to help fund Trump’s tax cuts and immigration crackdown.
“He’s always putting his far-right politics ahead of the needs of people in this area,” Stelson said. “They can’t pay their bills. … His defeat actually would be a defeat for extremism in our politics.”
Democrats are optimistic that having Gov. Josh Shapiro, who won the district in 2022, at the top of the ticket will boost Stelson’s chances and build on last year’s momentum in local races.
Perry’s campaign has called Stelson a “carpetbagger,” since she lived outside district lines in nearby Lancaster last time she ran. Stelson has argued that she knows the district well because of her decades-long career as a local journalist, and that she used to live in it.
Stelson campaign spokesperson Alma Baker confirmed Stelson now rents a home in the district in Camp Hill while still owning her Lancaster residence, noting she lives in the district full-time.
Stelson pointed to what she described as “national problems” when asked about unique issues in the district, such as the economy. Her campaign soon after unveiled an agenda aimed at supporting farmers and other rural residents.
Beynon said that Perry will speak about his support for provisions in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act like ending tax on tips and extending tax benefits for overtime. He will also point to his long-held position sponsoring a bill to ban stock trading in Congress, on which he has collaborated with Democrats.
Both candidates plan to talk about affordability, which has emerged as a successful message for both sides of the aisle.
“It’s just getting worse when you have to worry about whether you’re going to put groceries on the table or pay your skyrocketing utility premiums, that’s a real problem,” Stelson said. “You can’t send kids to school without something in their tummies, otherwise they’re going to be thinking about that all day instead of learning.”
As a broadcast journalist for decades, the second-time candidate said, she listened to and highlighted concerns from people in the district.
“And I feel like now they can teach me what I need to be doing in Congress when I carry their voices there,” she added.
The U.S. Senate passeda bill late Friday to fund the federal government, but a short-term shutdown still went into effect Saturday.
Senate Democratic leadership struck a deal earlier this week with President Donald Trump to separate Department of Homeland Security funding from the budget for other federal agencies after a national backlash to the ongoing ICE operation in Minnesota.
The agreement with the White House emerged late Thursday after every Democrat, including Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and several Republicans voted down the original package.
Fetterman was among 23 Democrats to cross the aisle to vote for the compromise bill. With their support, the bill passed 71-29, despite five GOP defections.
Here’s how the senators from the Philadelphia area voted:
Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.): Yes.
Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.): Yes.
Sen. Andy Kim (D., N.J.): No.
Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.): No.
Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.): Yes.
Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester: (D., Del.): No.
Even with the Senate passage, a partial government shutdown took effect Saturday because the bill still needs to pass the House, which is not expected to take up the legislation until Monday.
It’s the second shutdown to begin since October when the federal government entered a 43-day shutdown, the longest in its history.
Democrats took issue with funding in the earlier bill for DHS, the department that oversees the two agencies involved in fatal shootings of civilians this month in Minnesota.
The Senate worked late Fridayas some Republicans objected to the deal. McCormick, the lone Republican senator in the region, voted for the measure as expected.
“I’m just not in favor of shutting down the government or stopping funding the government, and that’s the position that I’ve had through the last shutdown,” McCormick said Tuesday.
The affected departments include the Departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Education, Labor, Treasury, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development, in addition to DHS.
The deal struck with the White House would provide two weeks of funding for DHS, but funds the rest of the departments through September.
Democrats on Thursday halted the original package that would have provided long-term funding for DHS, which oversees ICE and the Border Patrol.
Fetterman had called for the DHS funding to be separated from the other departments as a compromise, which is ultimately what happened.
The DHS funding dispute came after the national furor over the killings of Renee Good, a poet and mother, and Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked at a VA hospital, both of whom protested the ongoing operation in Minnesota and were fatally shot by federal agents.
Democrats pushed for provisions to curb ICE’s immigration enforcement operations in order to fund DHS. Their demands include increased training for ICE agents, requiring warrants for immigration arrests and for agents to identify themselves, and for the Border Patrol to stay on the border instead of helping ICE elsewhere.
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.
