Mikie Sherrill, the new Governor of New Jersey, saw the November elections as a referendum on a virtual monarchy, she said in her inauguration speech this week. Comparing President Donald Trump to the English monarch the American revolutionaries threw off, Sherrill compared the election that put her in office to the original American Declaration of Independence.
Then as now, Gov. Sherrill contends, Americans — those in New Jersey in particular — are resisting a leader who refused to “assent to laws,” who “obstructed the administration of justice,” and who “kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.”
The Declaration of Independence “denounced tyranny,” Sherrill said, claiming that the “election proved that the people of New Jersey recognize the parallels. That we see a president illegally usurping power.”
Sherrill: Our Declaration denounced tyranny, and listed those attacks on our rights committed by England’s king:
The list of grievances in our Declaration of Independence included these charges against the king:
He has refused his assent to laws.
He has obstructed… pic.twitter.com/XuiwQ2pcI8
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 20, 2026
Sherrill won a resounding victory over her Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli, defeating the Trump-backed GOP candidate by 14%. Rather than move away from attacking Trump as a threat to democracy — a move many Democratic advisers recommend — Sherrill instead doubled down on that position in her first gubernatorial address, adding details that attempt to give teeth to what Dems have lamented as an “abstract” criticism of Trump.
Some Democrats have moved away from the purely anti-Trump stance, preferring to focus on things like “affordability.” But Sherrill links affordability and instability to Trump’s autocratic maneuvering.
More than one commenter found her position compelling, with an AI-generated response (not by Grok) contended on X that “Sherrill’s Declaration parallel hits bullseye: Trump’s tariffs are King George’s ‘taxation without consent’ reloaded.”
MAGA respondents generally expressed the belief that Sherrill’s parallels were exaggerated or illegitimate.
[NOTE: Trump has claimed a mandate after his victory in 2024, where he beat Kamala Harris with 49.8 percent of the vote to Harris’s 48.3 percent. Sherill won nearly 65% of the NJ vote.]