Dear Neighbor, Last week, Donald Trump launched an unprecedented attack on our nation’s children when he signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education – a reckless decision that will force millions of students and their families in New Jersey to bear the burden of Trump’s irresponsible and unlawful actions. If the Department of Education is dismantled and federal funds are unlawfully withheld, local school districts will face massive budget shortfalls leading to teacher layoffs, increased classroom sizes, and higher property taxes. This all comes not even a week after Education Secretary Linda McMahon (another out of touch billionaire) crippled the agency from within—effectively preventing it from carrying out its responsibilities. She tried to fire more than half of the Education Department’s workforce in flagrant violation of Congress’s clear instructions. She’s also trying to gut federal support for public schools, which could lead to job losses for nearly 300,000 teachers nationwide —including nearly 7,000 in New Jersey and 400 in our district alone. All of this as Donald Trump and his billionaire cabinet cheer her on from the sidelines. We cannot let them get away with it. Every student deserves a teacher who believes in them — not a billionaire who wants to balance the budget on their backs. Public education is the best tool we have to take care of our children and prepare them for the future. I’m leading the fight to protect public education for New Jersey students. This week, I led a letter with every Democrat in New Jersey’s Congressional Delegation to Secretary McMahon, calling on the Trump Administration to reverse course and preserve funding for New Jersey’s public schools. You can read our full letter here. Signalgate: Trump Officials Leak Highly Sensitive War Plans in Unclassified and Unsecure Group Chat The incompetency of the Trump Administration was on full display this week. High-level national security officials, including the Vice President and Secretary of Defense, accidently added a journalist to an unsecure and unclassified group chat where they leaked highly sensitive classified war plans. This information may have gotten into the hands of our adversaries, like Iran or Russia, and if they had acted upon it, the consequences could have been deadly. Their carelessness threatened our national security and risked the lives of American servicemembers. Most disturbingly the Trump Administration refuses to accept responsibility and acknowledge the severity of this breach. This is a clear violation of the Espionage Act. We need a full investigation to understand how this happened and to determine which laws were broken. The American people deserve full transparency and accountability. NJ Energy Costs are Outrageous At a hearing this week in my Energy and Commerce Committee, I blasted PJM, the organization that manages New Jersey’s electric grid, for raising electricity bills in the state. Last year, prices in the PJM region exploded from $29 to $270 per megawatt-day. These price increases aren’t abstract – they are directly responsible for a roughly $25 per month increase in New Jersey power bills that people in Central Jersey will start feeling this summer. When Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, we included incentives to avoid these increases and build electricity capacity throughout the country. These incentives were carefully designed to improve the reliability and affordability of electricity, but now Republicans are threatening to repeal these investments and raise energy costs nationwide. Repealing billions of dollars in technology funding for all types of new energy is not the way to address the increasing demand for energy. It also ignores the fact that President Trump is attempting to put tariffs on electricity imports from Canada, which could seriously drive-up energy costs for people in the Northeast. Watch my full remarks here: