On the last Friday before Election Day, amid Halloween ghouls and goblins in the streets, InsiderNJ bellied up to the bar with an insider terrified of the Trump agenda in New Jersey.

The source spoke of the fears of her community, especially with a new Democratic governor in office, tracing Project 2025 designs in the President’s agenda here. Trump continues to obediently follow orders, and they boiled down to this:

Upgrade the presence of men in masks with guns rounding up alleged undocumented workers. Dehumanize them by referring to “illegal aliens,” and “aliens.” Demonize people who disagree with you as communist bastards and leftist terrorists and insurgents. Raid. Intimidate. Create a place called Alligator Alley, where the government makes people disappear. Shut down the government. Freeze critical social safety net funds. Expedite the atmosphere of public familiarity with military troops in and among us. Fan the desperation of people lacking government funds. Blame their privation on wimpy Democrats. Train National Guard troops as another “crack” squad to go into American cities in the name of “protecting America’s families,” and “the Homeland,” in the words of Kristi Noem. Jump up and down on the divisions. Create a warzone between true Americans, that MAGA mob wrapped in Confederate flags, which desecrated the Capitol in 2021 and now, increasingly, stride the halls of power with authority - and those loser terrorists who refuse to kneel. And so on. And so on.

This is the world Mikie Sherrill steps into as New Jersey Governor. Barack Obama on the last Saturday of the contest identified NJ as the strong point of opposition to Trump and his tyrannical designs. That means she will assume power of a state that Trump will use as a target for all the ills of the country.

He will starve NJ of every bit of funding, every dollar, every enabling instrument. The Gateway Tunnel project represents the tip of the iceberg. He will not be satisfied until all the women who depend on SNAP benefits take to the streets and add to the mayhem.

In the words of the source, as humiliating as it is for Trump to absorb a loss, he never wanted Ciattarelli as governor of NJ. He would have had to have helped Ciattarelli manage the state in a more conventional and complex way. From the beginning, Trump wanted New Jersey as a place he can simply point to as a place of dysfunction, terror, communist sympathies, privation, lawlessness, and un-Americanism.

That way he can roll the tanks into the cities – and blame Mikie Sherrill.

That’s what the nightmare Governor-elect – former Navy helicopter pilot – flies into as she prepares to take office.