HUNDREDS OF ANGRY NEW JERSEYANS RALLY AGAINST TRUMP-MUSK CUTS

Citizen Action, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Andy Kim fill town halls in GOP districts

Amid raucous cheers and chants of “Cutback? Fight back!”, a capacity crowd of more than 500 people descended on the Bridgewater Marriott on Sunday to hear a roster of activists, union leaders, and Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman demand a halt to President Trump’s reckless budget cuts and dismantling of federal agencies.

“We do not fear Donald Trump!” Watson Coleman told the gathering, which was sponsored by New Jersey Citizen Action. Coleman, who joined a similar town hall event in south Jersey a few days before, said that she’s been in contact with New Jersey’s three Republican members of Congress, none of whom so far has been willing to oppose the Trump-Musk axis. “We need to start working to replace those people!” she said, to a standing ovation from the crowd.

Earlier, the crowd – gathered in Representative Tom Kean, Jr.’s, GOP-held 7th congressional district – heard from the Solidarity Singers, who drew laughter, and applause, with a sing-a-long:

Tom Kean Jr. grow a spine

Tom Kean Jr. you’re a swine

Tom Kean Jr. please resign.

“We’ve gone from a moment to a movement,” said Watson Coleman. “People are showing up.”

A wide range of organizations co-sponsored or spoke at this week’s series of town halls across the state in Republican congressional districts, including 1199 SEIU, American Federation of Government Employees, NJEA, AFT, Health Professionals and Allied Employees, Make the Road NJ, the Working Families Party, NJ for the Many, Food and Water Watch, and others.

“All we need is to have three brave Republicans to vote against Medicaid cuts,” said Rhina Molina, executive VP of 1199 SEIU, to loud cheers from the Bridgewater crowd. “This is about our lives!”

The outpouring of anger and demands for change have erupted and grown in recent weeks, in New Jersey and across the country. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a pair of Democratic superstars traveling together in red and purple states, have drawn massive crowds: 3,200 in Las Vegas, 15,000 in Tempe, AZ, 11,300 in Greeley, CO, 34,000 in Denver, and 23,000 in Tucson, AZ. Meanwhile, despite Trump’s unhinged promises that he’ll use antiterrorism laws against Tesla protesters and send them to a prison in El Salvador, protests at Tesla dealerships continue to build across 28 states. (There’ll be another one in Springfield, NJ, on Saturday, March 29.)

“It was a very interested group of people, a very informed group of people,” said Watson Coleman, in an interview with The New Jersey Democrat, speaking about the energy in the room. “You see organic demonstrations popping up around an issue all over the country. People are responding quickly to these [executive orders] from the president.”

She added, “By holding them in red states, and when you see some of the town halls held by Republican members of Congress, where they’ve gotten pushback, I think you’ll see that they will fear more the people that can vote them out of office than the folks who are promising to primary them if they don't do what Donald Trump wants.” She said that the idea of Democrats organizing events in GOP-held districts was “unprecedented.”

Also last week, a trio of New Jersey Indivisible groups, Cape May, Atlantic City and Cooper River Indivisible, put together a town hall, headlined by Watson Coleman, in Pleasantville outside Atlantic City, drawing more than 500 people – in a congressional district where Republicans are a majority. But invited local Republican Congressman, Jeff Van Drew, did not show up. “He is clearly hiding from his constituents,” Cassandra Gatelein, one of the organizers, told The New Jersey Democrat. Many of those attending voted for Van Drew when he was a Democrat and now “many people feel incredibly betrayed and appalled about his party switch [from Democrat to Republican in 2020] and his pledge of undying support to Trump.”

“I think he can be beaten, from what I’ve seen,” Watson Coleman said. “We had 500 people and they were pretty upset. And we’re looking to go into other parts of his district,” mentioning Vineland and Bridgeton. “He’s got a lot of minority constituents, he’s got poor people, Native Americans, he’s got a Latino population, and he’s not addressing any of their needs. We’re gonna take this show on the road.”

Hundreds also turned out to hear Senator Andy Kim, elected in 2024, at three town halls in the three New Jersey congressional districts held by Republicans. “New Jerseyans are seeing Donald Trump and Elon Musk trying to take away their Medicaid, funding for their child’s education, and other programs they rely on, to pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” Kim told a crowd in Wall Township, part of C.D. 4 now represented by Republican Chris Smith. (According to Citizen Action, there are 147,000 Medicaid recipients in Smith’s district.) “I’ve never seen anything like it, especially in the deepest Republican part of New Jersey,” Kim told PoliticoNJ.

In the Q&A session in Bridgewater, Marci Bandelli, an activist, a psychologist, and a leader of Westfield 2020, a group that organized to help oust Republican Representative Leonard Lance in 2018, when he lost to Democrat Tom Malinowski, asked Watson Coleman whether she thought Trump was a “sociopath.”

Trump, answered the congresswoman, “is batshit crazy.”