The glittering pageantry of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night collided with the grim reality of his first year back in office, as New Jersey Democrats packed the House gallery with living, breathing rebuttals to the man behind the podium.
Forget the policy papers and the polite applause lines. For the delegation from a state the president loves to taunt, Tuesday night is about forcing a confrontation.
Congressman Al Green was ejected from the State of the Union for holding a sign that said, “Black people aren’t apes,” an apparent reaction to Trump’s recent social media video that featured racist presentations of former President Barack Obama and his wife as the fascist president was depicted as the title character from The Lion King.
They are not just bringing guests; they are bringing exhibits, showcasing the human wreckage they say is piling up at the doorstep of the Trump administration.
Leading the charge are the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, over a dozen of whom will stare down a president who once counted the disgraced financier as a friend.
While the White House has been tight-lipped about which files they’ll release and which names they’ll keep blacked out, the survivors will be sitting in plain view, a silent jury in the chamber where the president will speak.
Haley Robson, trafficked by Epstein at just 16, will be there as the guest of Rep. Ro Khanna. Dani Bensky, a ballerina who was 17 when she met Epstein, will sit with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
They are coming to watch a man they accuse of enabling a cover-up. They are proof that for all the talk of draining swamps, one of the most fetid pools in American history remains largely undisturbed.
Then there is the matter of the Gateway Tunnel. The president killed the funding. A federal judge resurrected it. But for the men who drive the drills and pour the concrete, the whiplash was nearly fatal to their bank accounts.
Derrick Healy, a union man from Ocean Township who was booted off the job site in Weehawken when Trump froze the checks, will be sitting with Rep. Frank Pallone.
Justin Fowler, a 20-year union veteran, will be watching from the seat of Rep. Nellie Pou.
They didn’t ask for a political fight. They asked for a paycheck. Instead, they got a lesson in how quickly the machinery of government can grind to a halt when a president decides to play hardball with commuters’ futures.
And in a state where immigration enforcement has turned into a viral video genre, Jocelyn Cabrera of Burlington Township will watch the speech as the guest of Rep. Herb Conaway. Her crime? Opening her door to masked ICE agents who, according to the congressman, had no warrant and no right to be there.
Her Ring doorbell footage became an anthem for the terrified, racking up millions of views and proving that in Trump’s America, the border feels like it follows you all the way to your suburban stoop.
While these New Jerseyans occupy the official seats, many of the state’s most prominent Democrats won’t be in the room at all. Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and LaMonica McIver are ditching the pageantry for the “People’s State of the Union” on the Mall, a rival rally for those who find the main event indigestible.
Grandstanding Sen. Cory Booker is skipping it entirely, preferring to chat with influencers and Don Lemon rather than sit through what one aide described as hours of “rhetoric, hatefulness, and pure lies.”
It is a remarkable display of contempt for a once-sacred civic ritual. But these are not normal times, and this is not a normal State of the Union.
For the New Jerseyans in the gallery, the speech is not a celebration of the state of the union. It is a cry for help, a demand for answers, and a chance to look the most powerful man in the world in the eye without blinking.