Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends. Here, they discuss the week’s political events with Opinion section editor Enrique Lavín.
Q: Elon Musk ignited another chaos bomb this week by demanding federal workers email what they were working on without taking into consideration many career public servants (intelligence and defense departments) handle sensitive national security information. President Trump backed Musk’s move threatening to fire anyone who didn’t respond. His cabinet secretaries pushed back.
An estimated 100,000 federal employees have already been laid off, some were rehired back because of their unique skills (look at the National Nuclear Security Administration). On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported the Social Security Administration was ordered to make plans to cut its staff by half. These firings are becoming unpopular even among Republicans who voted for Trump. Will this chainsaw approach backfire?
Mike: Most voters see that Trump is disrupting the federal bureaucracy and cutting spending, which they like. Even if some of the cuts are bad public policy, most voters don’t know what USAID is, nor do they think we need hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
This will only backfire when these cuts start hurting people locally, which may happen.
If federal bureaucrats are mad in Washington, that’s not impacting someone in Cumberland or Bergen County. If your mom’s Medicare gets cut, if your neighbor loses her research job at a university, if poor people in your town lose SNAP benefits (food stamps), then you will start to see a backlash.
Right now, these cuts haven’t hit communities. Or if we see weakened responses from FEMA in disasters, safety issues in the air or on the rails, or intelligence failures leading to tragedy within our borders, then people will get upset.
Right now, they are not.
Julie: The voters voted to send Trump to the White House and to have Republicans in charge of both Houses of Congress, so when your Social Security checks get delayed, when mom gets tossed out of her nursing home, when your kid gets the measles, or when your daughter loses her job, you know whom to call.
Enjoy watching Elon Musk get a massive tax break as your healthcare gets slashed and you pay more for groceries and other goods. Buyer’s remorse will be a hell of a motivating factor in 2026.
Q: House Speaker Mike Johnson, a MAGA Republican, claimed victory after the budget measure advancing President Trump’s legislative agenda narrowly passed the House by two votes. The bill seeks $2 trillion in spending cuts, which Democrats say will likely include slashing federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP food assistance — about a third of New Jerseyans rely on the health care benefits, for instance. It calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts, which largely goes to the richest Americans and big corporations. It also raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.
If the three New Jersey Republicans in the House — Chris Smith, Jeff Van Drew, and Tom Kean Jr. — voted against the eventual budget legislation it would go nowhere. Van Drew and Smith left the door open to vote against it if Medicaid cuts are included. What’s the likelihood they’ll stick to their guns if that happens — what’s the fallout, either way?
Mike: This is the beginning of the budget process, not the end. The budget will go through changes in the Senate and then come back to the House, where these legislators will have a final package to vote on. That’s when the ultimate decision will be made on these cuts, and I would highly doubt that Smith, Van Drew or Kean will vote for a budget that cuts Medicaid.
Van Drew and Smith have particular interest in protecting Medicare and Medicaid. Van Drew’s district has some of the poorest areas of the state highly reliant on Medicaid, and Smith’s district has the highest concentration of seniors in New Jersey. Neither will allow their constituents to suffer major cuts.
Julie: I wrote a column about this but here it is in a nutshell: Now is the time to hold House Republicans accountable for putting 72 million Americans at risk who rely on Medicaid.
Seniors, mothers, veterans, disabled people — all of them need to know that Smith, Van Drew and Kean voted to sacrifice their healthcare in order to give Elon Musk a tax break.
Are you part of the 34% of undergraduate students who rely on Pell Grants to afford college? Sorry. Smith, Van Drew and Kean voted to put your education at risk in order to give Elon Musk a tax break.
Are you one of the 42 million Americans who count on food assistance every month to feed your family? Sorry. Smith, Van Drew and Kean put that on the chopping block in order to give Elon Musk a tax break.
If they didn’t want this, they would not have voted for it.
She's a Dem. He's GOP. And they're friends
A note to readers: Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we prove it every week with this “Friendly Fire” conversation.
Mike and Julie are deeply engaged in politics and commercial advocacy in New Jersey, so both have connections to many players discussed in this column. DuHaime, the founder of MAD Global Strategy, has worked for Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and George W. Bush. Roginsky, a principal of Comprehensive Communications Group and author of the Salty Politics column in Substack, has served as senior advisor to campaigns of Cory Booker, Frank Lautenberg, and Phil Murphy.
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