4/17/2019 STATE LAUNCHES REVIEW OF HUMAN SERVICES PAYMENT REFORM
New Jersey has improved the way it reimburses community-based organizations that help people with behavioral-health and other issues. Advocates say there is still huge unmet need for services
The way community-based organizations are paid by the state to support hundreds of thousands of low-income individuals with behavioral-health and other needs is changing. And although New Jersey has made strides in how the organizations are reimbursed, advocates say still more money is required to deal with a huge unmet need for services — since many of those needing help for substance abuse don’t get the care they need. Read more
4/17/2019 OP-ED: NJ RESIDENTS DESERVE AFFORDABLE ACCESS TO THEIR PRESCRIPTIONS
Out-of-pocket costs for critical drugs can often swing wildly, leaving patients and their caregivers with few good options
My daughter was 21 when she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Like most moms, I wanted to make sure she got the help she needed and the best care available. We did all we could to make sure that happened.
In 2017, her doctor prescribed Latuda, a once-a-day prescription that’s approved to treat bipolar depression in adults. This new medication was working and, originally, our co-pay for this medication was just $25 a month. At the time, my daughter was doing well on the treatment, so we kept her on it. Read more
4/16/2019 NEWARK NIMBY ON STATE PLAN TO BUILD JUVENILE JUSTICE FACILITY IN BRICK CITY
Social justice advocates argue money earmarked for incarceration would be better spent on rehabilitation
The closing of New Jersey’s main youth detention facility is still years away, but social justice advocates are pushing back on a proposal to build a new juvenile justice facility in the state’s largest city.
In one of his last acts as governor, Chris Christie announced in January 2018 that the state would close the New Jersey Training School at Jamesburg, along with a smaller women’s facility. The plan was to replace them with smaller centers in the north, central, and southern parts of the state. Gov. Phil Murphy last October issued an executive order creating a task force to recommend reforms to the state’s juvenile justice system, including plans for shutting down and establishing new youth rehabilitation centers. Read more
Donald Trump and Republicans loudly proclaim themselves to be champions of veterans, but time and time again, they underfund veterans’ care and implement policies that undercut their public statements. Now the Trump administration is seeking to implement a particularly boneheaded policy of monitoring the social media of citizens who receive disability payments from the government. In short, if you are a veteran and you post a photo of yourself enjoying life, the government can then determine you do not need to receive disability payments for things like post-traumatic stress disorder. Read more
4/15/2019 UPDATE: So Washington State just passed a Public Option while no one was watching…
Back in January, 2nd-term Washington Governor and Democratic Presidential candidate Jay Inslee jumped fully onboard the Public Option train:
Inslee proposes ‘public option’ health-insurance plan for Washington
The proposal, which Inslee said is the first step toward universal health care, is geared in part to help stabilize the exchange, which has wrestled with double-digit premium increases and attempts by Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Read more
4/15/2019 2019 is shaping up to be a very bad year for measles
Measles was eliminated in the US in 2000. And yet progress against the disease has been unraveling to a startling degree, especially this year.
According to the latest measles numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between January 1 and April 11 there were 555 reported measles cases in 20 states. In the past week alone, the CDC has received reports of 90 new cases, mainly in New York state.
That means there have already been more measles cases in 2019 than any year in the last five years. And given that it’s only April, we’re well on track to set a record for the highest number of cases in the US since the disease was eliminated here two decades ago. Read more
4/15/2019 Mueller report to be released Thursday
Attorney General William Barr is set to release on Thursday morning a redacted version of the report special counsel Robert Mueller submitted at the conclusion of his two-year Russia probe.
At that time, the report — which appears destined to cast a long shadow over President Donald Trump’s reelection bid regardless of its content — will be made available to Congress and the public, a Justice Department spokeswoman said Monday. Read more
4/14/2019 Trump Sees an Obstacle to Getting His Way on Immigration: His Own Officials
WASHINGTON — Stephen Miller was furious — again.
The architect of President Trump’s immigration agenda, Mr. Miller was presiding last month over a meeting in the White House Situation Room when he demanded to know why the administration officials gathered there were taking so long to carry out his plans.
A regulation to deny welfare benefits to legal immigrants — a change Mr. Miller repeatedly predicted would be “transformative” — was still plodding through the approval process after more than two years, he complained. So were the new rules that would overturn court-ordered protections for migrant children. They were still not finished, he added, berating Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Read more
4/3/2019 The time for playing games on Medicare For All is over
Millions of Americans need insulin to survive. The researchers (Frederick Banting, Charles Best and James Collip) who developed insulin in the 1920s knew this and wanted to ensure the medication would remain affordable and safe. They assigned the patent to the University of Toronto for a nominal amount. When asked why they’d done that, Dr. Banting reportedly said “Insulin belongs to the world, not to me.” Read more
4/2/2019 Dems seek to put GOP on record on Trump border closure
House Democratic leaders are considering a vote to condemn President Donald Trump’s calls to shut down the southern border, in a clear attempt to force Republicans into a difficult political spot, according to several lawmakers.
Top Democrats discussed the measure at a meeting in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office Tuesday evening. It‘s not clear when the measure — which would formally reject the White House’s repeated threat to halt all traffic along the U.S.-Mexico border — might be brought to the floor. Read more
4/2/2019 MENENDEZ LEADS RALLY AGAINST TRUMP-BACKED BID TO OVERTURN ACA
Senator says that ‘Trumpcare has always meant no care’ despite president’s ‘campaign promises about better, cheaper healthcare’
People who depend on the Affordable Care Act for health coverage rallied Monday to support it after President Donald Trump last week, again, declared war on the ACA. The president backs a federal lawsuit in Texas that seeks to overturn the ACA (or Obamacare).
“We’re coming together, once again, to call out Donald Trump for trying to take us backward,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) at the rally in Jersey City. “Trump’s latest decision literally jeopardizes quality, affordable healthcare for hundreds of millions of Americans. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not.” Read more
4/2/2019 Trump Retreats on Health Care, Saying Republican Plan Will Appear After the 2020 Election
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced that Republicans would not present a health care overhaul proposal until after the 2020 election, punting on coming up with a replacement for the Affordable Care Act, which the administration is currently fighting in court to invalidate. The issue now will dominate presidential campaigns in the months leading up to the 2020 election. Read more
4/1/2019 Trump budget cut turns out to be a boon for the Special Olympics
The Trump administration’s now-abandoned plan to eliminate $17.6 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics is looking like a boon for the nonprofit.
Rather than cutting off the Special Olympics from all federal money, lawmakers are weighing a possible increase for the fifth year in a row as high-profile advocates rally behind the organization and its programs in thousands of schools. The social media outcry over the threat to its funding stream is boosting the Special Olympics’ message — and private donations are expected to surge. It also shows the political risk for the Trump administration when it targets an educational program beloved by Democrats and Republicans alike. Read more
4/1/2019 Trump administration planning to make 750,000 people go hungry with food stamp changes
The Trump administration is looking at yet another way to make Americans go hungry—750,000 of them, this time. Team Trump is planning to tighten work requirements on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Currently, there’s a three-month limit on able-bodied adults without dependents getting SNAP, unless they’re working, volunteering, or in job training for 20 hours a week. But states can waive that limit in areas where work is scarce, because it’s vicious nonsense to penalize people for not working if there are not jobs available. That’s the vicious nonsense the Trump administration is embracing, planning to make it more difficult for states to waive the requirements. Read more
4/1/2019 Trump punts health care until after 2020
Just last week the president had seemed to go all in on a new effort to wipe out Obamacare.
President Donald Trump signaled Monday that congressional Republicans would wait until after the 2020 elections to vote on a GOP replacement for Obamacare — putting off a presumably savage legislative battle on a hot-button campaign issue until after his re-election bid. Read more
People who have received mental health care know how difficult it is to get insurance to cover it.
A bill that passed both houses of the state Legislature last week would eliminate some of the obstacles that force many people to forgo care or go broke paying the bills, according to mental health advocates in New Jersey. Read more
Donald Trump basically called the vast majority of Americans “crazed” Monday when he applied the term to Democrats for pursuing a vote to subpoena Robert Mueller’s full Russia report from Attorney General William Barr.
“No matter what information is given to the crazed Democrats from the No Collusion Mueller Report, it will never be good enough,” Trump tweeted after stories surfaced of the House Judiciary Committee’s effort to obtain the full report. Read more
4/1/2019 Trumpcare is back, whether Republicans want it or not
Donald Trump’s decision to tell a federal court to abolish the Affordable Care Act has forced Senate Republicans to do the very last thing they want to do before the 2020 election: talk about health care again. Mitch McConnell is saying thanks, but no thanks: He isn’t going to be dealing with it again. And yet Trump and some Republicans persist.
For example, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who may or may not be the Trump point man on it. Word is, Trump named Scott along with two others—Sens. John Barrasso from Wyoming and Bill Cassidy from Louisiana—to “come up with something really spectacular.” Scott went on Face the Nation Sunday to denounce Medicare for all, saying “it’s going to ruin Medicare.” He didn’t really get into the part about how he’s coming up with a new plan. But Scott does have a great track record in ruining Medicare. He’s the guy who, in a previous life, perpetrated the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. Which makes him perfect for this Trump job. Read more
4/1/2019 McConnell shuts down the Pelosi agenda
House Democrats are eager to boast about all they’re doing with their new majority. The only problem? Most of it’s headed for Mitch McConnell’s dustbin.
From a sweeping health care package to ambitious proposals on gun safety, climate change and voting reforms, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her sprawling class of freshmen are quickly following through on the campaign promises that won them the House. But after they pass their proposals, that’s as far as they’ll go — a frustrating dynamic that lawmakers begrudgingly acknowledge. Read more
Will Marsh spent his early school years in Rahway, N.J., frustrated and in pain at times.
“Why am I so stupid?” the boy would tearfully ask his mother.
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Things got better after he was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade and began getting support. Despite his diagnosis, Marsh couldn’t get all the accommodations he sought when it came time for him to take his college entrance exam, the SAT.
So he was particularly “perturbed” to learn some children who don’t have disabilities were approved for accommodations — such as extra time to take the test — because their wealthy parents allegedly made up their disabilities as part of an elaborate college-admissions bribery scheme unveiled by federal prosecutors earlier this month. Read more
3/29/2019 Trump threatens to close the U.S.-Mexico border next week: ‘I’m not playing games’
President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to close the U.S-Mexico border next week if Mexico does not stop undocumented immigrants from coming into the United States, later adding that he’s “not playing games” with his warning.
But a senior administration official undermined the president’s threat, saying the Department of Homeland Security has no plans to close the border next week. Read more
3/29/2019 Trump claims Special Olympics cuts are news to him, throws his people under the bus
Donald Trump reversed course on Thursday, saying that “I just told my people I want to fund the Special Olympics and I just authorized a funding of the Special Olympics. I’ve been to the Special Olympics. I think it’s incredible and I just authorized a funding.” Trump, whose last three budgets eliminated Special Olympics funding right up until too many people noticed and it caused a scandal, tossed his aides, especially Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, right under a bus, saying, “I heard about it this morning. I have overridden my people.” Read more
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has once again been garnering terrible headlines for the Trump administration. The billionaire heiress, whose family were some of Donald Trump’s largest donors during the 2016 campaign, sat before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee to defend slashing $18 million from Special Olympics funding, as well as other significant cuts to other special-needs education funds. Read more
3/28/2019 McConnell to Trump: Health care’s all yours
Mitch McConnell has no intention of leading President Donald Trump’s campaign to transform the GOP into the “party of health care.”
“I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker,” McConnell said in a brief interview Thursday, adding, “I am focusing on stopping the ‘Democrats’ Medicare for none’ scheme.” Read more
3/28/2019 Trump administration suffers another Obamacare blow in court
The Trump administration has lost another Obamacare legal battle — its second this week — just as the president has revived his drive to destroy and replace the 2010 health law.
A federal judge ruled late Thursday in Washington that the administration’s efforts to expand the availability of health plans that don’t meet the coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act is a deliberate and illegal “end run“ around the federal health care law. The ruling addressed insurance known as “Association Health Plans,” which cost less than many Obamacare plans but can also provide fewer health benefits. Read more
3/28/2019 Trump backs off proposed cuts to Special Olympics: ‘I have overridden my people’
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the federal government will not slash $17.6 million in funding for the Special Olympics — overriding his administration’s proposed cuts after they sparked a bipartisan uproar.
“The Special Olympics will be funded, I just told my people, ‘I want to fund the Special Olympics,'” the president told reporters outside of the White House ahead of his trip to Michigan. “I have overridden my people.” Read more
3/28/2019 Betsy Devos is still struggling to explain cuts to Special Olympics funding
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is struggling to defend the Trump administration’s proposal to cut funding for the Special Olympics from the federal budget — an idea that triggered a ferocious backlash this week among Democrats, celebrities, and sports personalities. Many Republicans have refrained from weighing in, though one GOP senator reassured the public that the cuts wouldn’t be approved.
“The world needs more [Special Olympics],” Julie Foudy, a retired soccer player and now an ESPN host, said on Twitter. “The joy these athletes pass on is absolutely contagious.” Read more
3/28/2019 STATE SEEKS TO FIX CRITICAL ISSUES THAT HAVE HINDERED INTEGRATED CARE
Eventually could lead to ‘major shift’ in delivery of healthcare, with behavioral and physical medical care addressed by interconnected team
Efforts to better integrate behavioral and physical medical care have already led to some major systemic reforms in New Jersey, with the state twice reshuffling how it oversees these elements of care in recent years. Behavioral and medical providers also are forming unique partnerships to better coordinate service. Read more
3/27/2019 Murphy’s case for state-based health care marketplace gets boost
President Donald Trump’s push this week for the Affordable Care Act to be repealed and deemed unconstitutional in its entirety could help Gov. Phil Murphy’s case for a state-based health insurance marketplace.
Murphy announced last week that New Jersey intends to transition to a state-based health insurance marketplace, citing the ACA’s uncertain future at the federal level. But how that marketplace will sustain itself, and how it is set up within a short timespan remains to be seen.
The Murphy administration provided an explainer to health insurance industry officials that committed to mirroring the protections in the Affordable Care Act, which would provide the stability the industry craves and help maintain low premium increases. Read more
3/27/2019 DeVos angrily defends cutting off funds to Special Olympics under Trump’s new budget
On Tuesday, Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos confirmed that under Donald Trump’s new proposed budget her department would be making substantial cuts to programs aimed at helping children with autism and developmental disabilities, including eliminating education funding for the Special Olympics outright. Overall, her budget would be slashed 12 percent, even as executive salaries within the department are boosted 15.6 percent.
As per usual with anyone and anything in the Trump administration, DeVos has now issued a blustering statement condemning Congress and the media for pointing this out. Mind you, she’s not disputing that her budget eliminates $17.6 million in funding for the Special Olympics. She just wants you to know that those kids have it pretty good and can take this one for the team. Read more
3/27/2019 House Democrats make new push for 10 years of Trump’s financial records
The House Oversight and Reform Committee is seeking 10 years of President Donald Trump’s financial records from an accounting firm, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.
The Democrat-led committee asked Mazars USA, a tax and accounting firm, for documents this month related to Trump’s personal finances, with a particular focus on his failed bid to purchase the Buffalo Bills before he became president.
It reflects an effort by the committee, under Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), to corroborate aspects of former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony before the panel last month. Read more
3/27/2019 House fails to override Trump veto on border emergency
The House failed on Tuesday to override President Donald Trump’s veto of legislation blocking his national emergency declaration at the border, capping off a months-long congressional battle over the president’s signature issue.
Fourteen Republicans joined all Democrats on the 248-181 vote, far short of the two-thirds majority needed to overturn the first veto of Trump’s presidency.
Now the fight over Trump’s unilateral move to build a border wall will fall to the courts, where its fate is uncertain. Read more
3/27/2019 House Armed Services chair rejects Pentagon bid to shift $1B toward border wall
House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith on Tuesday rejected a Pentagon move to shift $1 billion in funding for more Southern border barriers, and warned Pentagon leaders of stiff budget consequences if it unilaterally shifts the money.
“The committee denies this request,” Smith wrote in a letter. “The committee does not approve the proposed use of Department of Defense funds to construct additional physical barriers and road or install lighting in the vicinity of the United States border.” Read more
3/27/2019 KEAN SPEARHEADS, SENATE OKS NJ TAX WRITE-OFF FOR CHARITABLE GIVING
Move was given impetus by federal tax changes. Supporters say it would help food banks, shelters, other nonprofits but Assembly has yet to act
Amid concerns that federal tax changes may be limiting charitable giving in New Jersey, the state Senate voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favor of legislation that would establish a state income-tax write-off to encourage more donating.
The proposed state deduction is not as open-ended as the existing federal write-off for charitable giving; it would provide the state tax break only for contributions made to “qualified New Jersey-based” groups. Read more
3/27/2019 Trump: Republicans will be ‘the party of health care’
President Donald Trump declared Tuesday that his Republican Party “will soon be known as the party of health care,” doubling down on his administration’s most recent legal efforts to undo the Affordable Care Act.
“Let me tell you exactly what my message is: The Republican party will soon be known as the party of health care,” the president told reporters on Capitol Hill ahead of his meeting with Senate Republicans. “You watch.” Read more
3/26/2019 ‘He’s doing a victory lap’: Rejuvenated Trump pushes aggressive agenda post-Mueller
The president appeared to move past intraparty squabbles at a private lunch with Republican senators.
President Donald Trump is acting like he just hit the lottery.
In a private lunch with Senate Republicans on Tuesday, a rejuvenated Trump laid out an ambitious legislative agenda and put past intraparty conflicts behind him as he reveled in apparent vindication after special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations that the president colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Read more
3/26/2019 Trump administration asks court to demolish Affordable Care Act
The Trump Justice Department has shifted its position on the Affordable Care Act, now asking a federal court to strike down the law entirely. Last year, Justice argued in briefs filed in a federal court in Texas that certain provisions of the law, including those protecting people with pre-existing conditions, should be invalidated. In December, the “intensely political” Judge Reed O’Connor went further, invalidating the entire law. Read more
3/26/2019 Trump’s wall to get $1 billion in ‘theft from other readiness needs of our Armed Forces’
Donald Trump is getting his first $1 billion of wall from money the Defense Department was supposed to use for other things. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to go ahead with using that money to build 57 miles of “18-foot-high pedestrian fencing, constructing and improving roads, and installing lighting within the Yuma and El Paso Sectors of the border,” he wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Read more
3/26/2019 DOES NEW JERSEY NEED TO AUGMENT END-OF-LIFE CARE?
Experts at NJ Spotlight roundtable answer in the affirmative, note benefits of aid-in-dying laws
People need to talk to their families and loved ones about their end-of-life wishes long before they approach death — something that is not happening enough, according to experts. They also said these goals need to be more effectively documented and shared with healthcare providers. Read more
As it becomes clear that the eventual Democratic nominee will run on Medicare For All, we can expect the policy to be attacked by the concentrated interests who benefit from our current, broken system. The NYT is right there to lend a hand, with a news (not opinion) piece carrying a scary title: Read more
3/25/2019 New Jersey lawmakers approve aid-in-dying bill; Murphy says he’ll sign it
TRENTON — New Jersey lawmakers on Monday narrowly approved a controversial bill that would allow terminally ill patients to choose to end their own lives with the help of a physician, and Gov. Phil Murphy indicated he would sign it into law.
The “Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act,” NJ A1504 (18R), passed the Assembly, 41-33, with four abstentions, and the Senate 21-16. The bill passed both chambers with the minimum number of votes needed. Read more
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute have released the 2019 County Health Rankings Key Findings Report. The County Health Rankings show how widespread the burden of severe housing cost is across the nation. Hundreds and thousands of families and communities face the burden of severe housing cost and this has important implications for our health. Read more
3/25/2019 Mueller’s moves doom impeachment in Senate
The prospect of a Republican Senate removing President Donald Trump from office is now further away than ever. Just ask Susan Collins.
With special counsel Robert Mueller clearing the president of collusion with Russia and the Justice Department dismissing questions of obstruction of justice, the moderate Maine Republican sees no need for even a discussion of whether to convict the president should he be impeached by the Democratic House.
“He has been exonerated on the issue of conspiracy or coordination with the Russians,” Collins said in an interview, adding that she wants to read the full Mueller report and get a classified briefing on the obstruction of justice issue. Read more
3/25/2019 MURPHY ANNOUNCES STATE TO TAKE CONTROL OF OBAMACARE EXCHANGE
Governor says move would allow more New Jerseyans get access to better, affordable ACA health insurance
Hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents and small business owners could have far easier access to better quality, affordable health insurance and millions more could benefit from additional health policy protections under a new proposal from Gov. Phil Murphy.
Murphy, a Democrat, plans for the state to claim full control of its health insurance exchange by 2021. The exchange, now embodied in the federal website healthcare.gov, is an online sales marketplace for lower-cost policies that was created as part of the Affordable Care Act. Read more
3/25/2019 LAWMAKER WANTS TO HALT AUTOMATIC MINIMUM WAGE INCREASES IF ECONOMY DIPS
Assemblyman Roy Freiman wants ‘off-ramp’ that would temporarily suspend wage hikes if unemployment rose or state revenues declined
Although the first scheduled ramp-up to a $15 minimum wage in New Jersey is set for July 1, even legislators that supported the new law are looking at ways to address concerns raised by the state’s business community. These include fears the $15 minimum wage could harm the economy and small businesses.
One lawmaker, Assemblyman Roy Freiman (D-Somerset), wants to revisit an idea that came up as the minimum-wage legislation took form earlier this year — passing an “off-ramp” law that could temporarily suspend the schedule of phased-in annual wage increases if the New Jersey economy sours. Read more
3/24/2019 Has The President Been Exonertated?
Attorney General William Barr’s summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report is already being interpreted in conflicting ways. In a letter to Congress on Sunday afternoon, Barr conveyed that Mueller “did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia” in the 2016 election. According to Barr, on the question of whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the special counsel’s report neither concludes that the president committed a crime, nor exonerates him. But Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded themselves, based on Mueller’s report, that there is not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction. By Sunday evening, the president and his fans were celebrating. “No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!” tweeted @realDonaldTrump. But many of his critics argued that it is impossible to say whether Trump is wholly innocent without seeing the underlying information in Mueller’s report—not to mention that other investigations into Trump’s dealings are ongoing. Read more
3/24/2019 What just happened? The questions behind the Mueller report
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings have finally been made public — sort of — handing President Donald Trump and his White House a partial victory: no Russia collusion, but questions on obstruction.
But that’s hardly the end of it.
Only the most bare-bone details from the special counsel’s work were released on Sunday, in the form of a four-page summary from Attorney General William Barr. Now comes a heated battle with Congress that’s likely headed to court over just how much of Mueller’s investigation can be handed over to lawmakers, who have their own oversight duties that still could lead to Trump’s impeachment. Read more
3/23/2019 Congress waits another day for Mueller findings
The public and members of Congress will be in the dark for at least one more day on special counsel Robert Mueller’s central conclusions about contacts between associates of President Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign.
The Justice Department informed Congress on Saturday afternoon that Attorney General William Barr would not provide findings to lawmakers until at least Sunday, officials at Justice and on Capitol Hill confirmed, prolonging rampant speculation about what might be in Mueller’s report and fueling Democrats’ increasingly. Read more
3/22/2019 Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is officially complete
Special counsel Robert Mueller has concluded his investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election — marking the end of a probe that has gripped the nation for two years and loomed over Donald Trump’s entire presidency.
A Justice Department official said the special counsel had submitted a report of his findings to Attorney General William Barr on Friday. Now, Barr and his team will begin the process of reviewing the report and creating a summary document that will be sent to Congress — and perhaps publicly released. Read more
3/22/2019 STATE REVENUE SHORTFALL COULD ROIL MURPHY’S BUDGET
Rating agency says income-tax receipts need to rise by 17 percent to match projections; is ‘uncertain’ state will get there
The revenue New Jersey collects from April income-tax returns is always crucial for the state budget, but a new report from a top Wall Street credit-rating agency suggests the stakes are even higher for Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration this year. Read more
3/22/2019 IMPACT OF HOUSING STRUGGLES A BIG FACTOR IN COUNTY HEALTH RANKINGS
Many Garden State households spend so much on housing that there isn’t enough money for good food and medicine
Nearly one in five New Jersey households spend more than half their income on housing costs, leaving little money available for quality food, medications and other items that impact the health of the families involved.
That’s just one of the sobering findings in the 2019 County Health Rankings for New Jersey, part of a national annual report that compares counties in each state using data on outcomes like birth weight, wellness and mortality. The findings, which include multiple tables that break down the numbers by geography and demographics, also highlight significant racial disparities in many areas, including that black residents of any age die prematurely at nearly twice the rate of white ones. Read more
The federal government has been detaining unaccompanied migrant children in “secret shelters” that have remained unknown even to their attorneys, Reveal reports. Even the exact number of locations is unknown, but Reveal’s Auro Bogado and Patrick Michels write there’s “at least five in Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia, holding at least 16 boys and girls for the refugee agency, some as young as 9 years old”:
Minors being held at the clandestine facilities initially were placed at known shelters around the country but later were transferred to these off-the-books facilities that specialize in providing for youth with mental health and behavioral challenges.
But these “off-the-books facilities” are coming with disturbing baggage of their own. One Ada, Oklahoma, facility detaining at least one child is mired in “allegations of sexual harassment and physical abuse.” Earlier this year, The Oklahoman reported that “a federal inspection report from May 2017 showed the hospital had no training for nurses about signs that patients’ conditions could be taking a turn for the worse.” Read more
3/20/2019 Lawmaker introduces bill to establish ranked-choice voting in New Jersey
The push for ranked-choice voting, an idea that’s growing across the country, has reached New Jersey.
Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker (D-Somerset) has introduced a bill, NJ A5205, that would establish the new voting system for all state-level and federal elections in New Jersey, from state Assembly to president.
If adopted, ranked-choice voting would be a radical departure from New Jersey’s current electoral system, in which the candidate who receives the most votes wins on the first ballot, and represent a potential challenge to the state’s notorious boss-driven political culture. Read more
3/20/2019 TRUMP BUDGET WOULD HIT NJ HARD, BUT THAT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN
The real power in the federal budgetary process lies with the appropriation committees. And it’s a good bet that Democrats and Republicans will find a way to compromise
The recently released Trump budget would do great damage to New Jersey. But the federal budget process is long and complicated and, in the end, the real power brokers — the appropriation committees in Congress — will assume control and there will be little reduction in federal assistance to New Jersey.
The budget proposed by Gov. Phil Murphy for fiscal year 2020 assumes the state receives $15.6 billion in federal assistance. The budget submitted to Congress by President Donald Trump proposes significant reductions to almost every program for which New Jersey and all states receive funds. Read more
3/19/2019 PALLONE PROMOTES GENERIC DRUGS TO CURB RISING COST OF PRESCRIPTION MEDS
Proposals are aimed at easing development of generic medications, reducing protection of brand-name patents, and improving transparency of drug development process
Spending on pharmaceuticals is on the rise in New Jersey, a scenario that has forced hospitals here to more than double their budgets for medications over the past decade. The rising cost of drugs also contributes to an estimated four in 10 older residents not filling their prescriptions as recommended.
And while lower-cost generic drugs make up the majority of those dispensed nationwide, spending on brand-name formulations absorbs more than three-quarters of the total cost, according to industry reports. Read more
Washington-You may have heard a lot about the Green New Deal, which would set the U.S. on a course to eliminate the emissions contributing to climate change.
You also may have heard discussions about Medicare for All, which could replace private health insurance with a government-run plan. Read more
3/18/2019 COMPROMISE PLAN TO BOOST OVERSIGHT OF PUBLIC-WORKER HEALTH BENEFITS
Appointment of independent monitor would allow for ongoing, regular auditing of billions that state pays annually for claims — Sen. Sarlo
New Jersey would hire an auditor to conduct regular and ongoing reviews of all medical claims generated by public workers under a bill lawmakers approved last week, which supporters said could lead to significant taxpayer savings.
The legislation, which still must pass the Assembly, seeks to ensure that the state is not overpaying for visits to doctors, hospital charges, and other healthcare expenses for more than 800,000 state, local and school employees and retirees. It would also provide the state access to depersonalized medical data for these individuals, which policymakers hope to use to identify future opportunities to improve care and better control costs. Read more
3/16/2019 Jury may hear claim that Costco managers ignored disability harassment
• In reviving a Costco employee’s lawsuit, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled for the first time that a hostile work environment claim can be made under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (Fox v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 17-0936-cv (2nd Cir. March 6, 2019)).
• The court was considering an appeal from Christopher Fox, an individual with Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He had sued Costco, alleging that he was mocked by co-workers and that managers knew about the harassment and sometimes participated. A lower court dismissed his claims but, on appeal, the 2nd Circuit said Fox had produced enough evidence to send the case to a jury to determine “whether the frequency and severity of the mockery rose to the level of an objectively hostile work environment.” Read more
3/15/2019 Trump issues first veto of his presidency
The resolution against his emergency declaration was a stunning bipartisan rebuke to Trump, but lawmakers currently do not have the votes to overturn his veto.
Donald Trump issued the first veto of his presidency Friday afternoon, rejecting a congressional resolution that would have blocked him from funding his border wall without congressional approval.
“As president, the protection of the nation is my highest duty. Yesterday congress passed a dangerous resolution that if signed into law would put countless Americans in danger, very grave danger,” Trump said. “Therefore, to defend the safety and security of all Americans, I will be signing a veto of this reckless resolution.” Read more
3/15/2019 STATE BUDGET FOR 2020: NOW IT’S THE PUBLIC’S TURN TO WEIGH IN
Four legislative hearings on Gov. Phil Murphy’s $38.6B spending plan for the coming fiscal year will be held over the next two weeks
Even as he unveiled it last week, Gov. Phil Murphy conceded his spending plan for fiscal 2020 would likely undergo changes. Then legislative leaders foreshadowed their own views by bristling at Murphy’s renewed call for an expanded millionaire’s tax as they also suggested that New Jersey Transit needs more funding.
Now it’s time for New Jersey residents to have their say. State lawmakers are planning to hold four public hearings starting next week as they begin the formal process of scrutinizing Murphy’s budget for the coming fiscal year. Read more
3/15/2019 SWEENEY, MURPHY DEAL TO END SHOWDOWN OVER HOMELESS AID
Accord paves way for needy New Jerseyans to get additional emergency housing assistance, and spares governor a veto override
Needy New Jerseyans may get additional emergency housing aid after all, and Gov. Phil Murphy appears to have sidestepped a potentially embarrassing veto override, as the state Senate on Thursday passed two anti-homelessness measures as part of a compromise with the governor.
The passage of S-3586 by a bipartisan 34-0 vote meets a deadline imposed last month by Sen. President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) after Murphy vetoed his bill to allow most recipients of cash public assistance, formerly called welfare, to be eligible for aid to avert homelessness once every seven years. Currently, they can get only one 12-to-18-month block of emergency payments over a lifetime. Read more
3/14/2019 The most reprehensible part of the admissions scandal: faking disability accommodations
In the first paragraph of the affidavit explaining the college fraud scandal that broke Tuesday, one sentence in particular stood out to me. Of the 33 parents, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, who were accused of engaging in elaborate bribery schemes to get their kids into elite schools, several of the parents allegedly “extended time for their children on college entrance exams … including by having the children purport to have learning disabilities in order to obtain the [necessary] medical documentation.” Read more
3/14/2019 12 Senate Republicans just helped Democrats block Trump’s border wall national emergency
A staggering 12 Senate Republicans have officially voted to block President Donald Trump’s declaration of national emergency, highlighting a marked split between GOP lawmakers and the White House on the president’s attempt to obtain more funding for his border wall.
Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Mike Lee, Lamar Alexander, Jerry Moran, Pat Toomey, Rob Portman, Roger Wicker, Roy Blunt, and Marco Rubio ultimately joined with Democrats to vote for a resolution terminating the president’s national emergency. As many as 10 Republicans were reportedly considering breaking with Trump on the subject, and even more wound up actually doing so, leading to a final 59-41 vote. Read more
3/14/2019 MENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION STARTING IN KINDERGARTEN?
State lawmakers to vote today on measures that would require school curriculum to include age-appropriate lessons on mental health
New Jersey could join a small but growing handful of states that require public schools — in some cases starting in kindergarten and running through high school — to include mental health education as part of the curriculum, under proposals up for a vote today.
The state Senate is poised to vote on two pieces of legislation that would make school districts include age-appropriate lessons on mental health and psychological wellbeing as part of the health and physical education curriculum. One measure calls specifically for the inclusion of suicide prevention instruction; it also suggests the need to discuss the impact of substance use on mental health and provide students with connections to support. Read more
3/13/2019 NJ official says state disabilities system in ‘considerable disrepair’
TRENTON – Patients left abandoned in hospitals. Reports of aggression and self-injury. Repeat calls to 911. Fruitless visits to emergency departments. Underpaid staff and low reimbursement rates.
State lawmakers this week heard from families, healthcare providers, nonprofits and a state ombudsman who asked them to overhaul a system seemingly unable to help New Jerseyans affected by disabilities and severe challenging behaviors. Read more
3/13/2019 Congress just got one step closer to blocking Trump’s national emergency
The House just voted in favor of blocking Trump’s national emergency.
The Democratic-controlled lower chamber voted 245-182 to approve a resolution that would terminate the national emergency, sending the measure over to the Senate, where its fate remains uncertain. Both the House and the Senate will need to approve the resolution by a simple majority for it to ultimately pass.
The measure was backed Tuesday by an overwhelming number of House Democrats as well as 13 Republicans, though not enough to reach the lower chamber’s veto-proof 290-vote threshold. Read more
President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget breaks one of his biggest campaign promises to voters: that he would leave Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare untouched.
“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.
Over the next 10 years, Trump’s 2020 budget proposal aims to spend $1.5 trillion less on Medicaid — instead allocating $1.2 trillion in a block-grant program to states — $25 billion less on Social Security, and $845 billion less on Medicare (some of that is reclassified to a different department). Their intentions are to cut benefits under Medicaid and Social Security. The impact on Medicare is more complicated, which I’ll get into a bit later. Read more
3/12/2019 Trump Wants to Use Facebook to Spy on the Disabled
In their ongoing War On Humans, the Trump administration is now looking at using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to spy on people receiving Social Security disability benefits. That’s right, the party who’s guiding principle is to keep the government from intruding on people’s lives wants to implement a Big Brother-like policy of surveillance on people who are in need.
The idea, of course, is to crack down on what they claim to be massive fraud in the system. It’s the same justification Republicans use all the time to cut benefits for the poor and those who can’t fight back. But how much fraud is there in the SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) system? According to a Forbes Magazine article by disability advocate Denise Brody, there are 10 million SSDI recipients receiving a total of $11 billion per month. Read more
3/12/2019 LAWMAKERS SEEK TO IMPROVE CARE OF DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED
Assembly committee approves ‘bill of rights’ for family members and a study of how caregivers and emergency personnel respond during a crisis
Family members of people with developmental disabilities would have a legal right to information regarding treatment of their loved one — and to get prompt, clear and respectful responses from public agencies and care providers — under a “bill of rights” proposal that advanced Monday.
The Assembly Human Services committee voted unanimously in favor of both this bill and another measure designed to improve emergency care for some of the Garden State’s most vulnerable residents. Advocacy organizations also offered their support for the measures. Read more
3/11/2019 Public transit is failing NJ’s seniors and disabled, advocates testify
Gina Marie Williams wept with frustration, struggling to tell Transportation Committee members what it feels like to be disabled by a brain injury and stranded alone and scared in a dark parking lot when your ride is an hour late.
“I not maybe have all the right words to be tell you how important this is to get us proper, complete transportation service so we able to have freedom for our lives,” she said.
She talked about how drivers sometimes treat her.
“That I’m not even human, because some of the folks are not polite, they’re not cordial. I’m still me. I’m still me, I just happened to survive accident that gave me brain injury. So please help because I want to stay healthy, and I want to get out and I want to live. Thank you much,” said Williams .Read more
3/11/2019 Court ruling: Trump administration must take responsibility for all children it separated
A federal judge has declared that the Trump administration is legally responsible for all children who were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border and placed with relatives or other sponsors after July 1, 2017 — which could amount to “thousands” beyond the 2,800 separations already acknowledged as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of 2017 and 2018. Read more
3/11/2019 Nancy Pelosi is right. And SO much smarter than you think.
So, Nancy Pelosi won’t allow formal impeachment hearings in the House unless she is sure that the Democrats can drag along at least enough of those pesky Republicans to make for a “Who shot JR?” style finale in the Senate, huh? because it’s so, like divisive. Well, hell! Where are the tar and feathers when you really need them?!? This is what you get for putting a crazy old lady from California in charge! Read more
3/11/2019 STABLE STATE FUNDING, BUT NEW REQUIREMENTS FOR NJ HOSPITALS
While their stream of state money will remain steady, hospitals will have to instigate policy reforms focused on improving patient care
New Jersey’s proposed spending plan for the coming year includes stable levels of funding for hospitals, along with several new requirements that tie these public resources to policy reforms designed to improve patient care.
In the budget he introduced last Tuesday, Gov. Phil Murphy included nearly $740 million in direct funding — a mix of state and federal dollars — for New Jersey’s 71 acute-care hospitals; this includes $262 million for the charity-care program, which reimburses these facilities for a portion of what they spend treating patients who don’t have sufficient insurance. Read more
After an extended post-midterm-elections tantrum shut down parts of government for over a month, Donald Trump eventually squeezed about $1.4 billion out of Congress to construct new border fencing between the United States and Mexico. An unsatisfied Trump then declared that asylum-seeking families were now a “national emergency”, announcing he’d be yanking over $6.7 billion from other federal programs using “emergency” powers to bypass Congress; the Senate will be voting in upcoming days on whether or not to rescind that emergency declaration, though their decision can itself be vetoed by the ever-agitated Dear Leader.
So now Trump has gotten not just the $5 billion he originally demanded for his obsessed-upon border wall, but over $8 billion, much of it taken from military pensions, military housing construction and repairs, and drug interdiction efforts. $8 billion is a lot of federal cash, especially for a vanity project that experts resoundingly condemn as unnecessary. Read more
3/9/2019 Trump to seek $8.6 billion to finish border wall before 2020 election
President Donald Trump will ask Congress for another $8.6 billion to complete a 722-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Sunday, part of a cost-cutting opening budget offer that will dismiss hopes for a grand budget deal and likely stoke fresh fears of another government shutdown.
The president will make the request on Monday in his broader proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which ends just one month before the 2020 presidential election. The sum — billions of dollars higher than the $5.7 billion border-security demand that sparked the 35-day government shutdown — will surely divide spending negotiators again this year, likely resulting in static funding levels for much of the rest of the government or another lapse. Read more
3/8/2019 THE CHALLENGE OF IMPROVING LIFE IN NJ FOR ADULTS WITH DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES
As more intellectually and developmentally disabled adults live into their senior years, how ready is New Jersey to offer them the support they need?
This is the second report in a four-part NJTV News series, “Aging and the Unknown: Adults with Developmental Disabilities.”
At age 57, Ellen Warshaw is finally living her dream. She’s preparing to move into a new home for aging adults called the Michael Och House at JESPY, a South Orange-based nonprofit dedicated to individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities.
“There’s going to be eight other people plus me. And I get to pick out my room, and I’m excited because I have my own bathroom and I don’t have to share,” Warshaw said. Read more
New Jersey’s Democratic state Senate president, who is steadfastly opposed to the Democratic governor’s call to hike taxes on the wealthy, said Thursday that the Garden State is in a “fiscal death spiral” that can’t be repaired by raising taxes.
State Senate President Stephen Sweeney’s opposition to Gov. Phil Murphy’s plan to generate an estimated $447 million in new tax dollars through a millionaires tax complicates upcoming state budget negotiations, to say the least. Read more
3/8/2019 MURPHY’S BUDGET PLAN GIVES MASSIVE BOOST TO COMMUNITY-BASED SERVICES
Advocates praise governor’s proposal to increase ‘long overdue’ funding to improve services for people with disabilities
Additional funds for a number of community-based healthcare initiatives that have long been priorities for advocates and lawmakers are included in Gov. Phil Murphy’s $38.4 billion state budget plan for fiscal year 2020.
Murphy’s proposed spending plan for FY2020, which begins in July, allots $800 million to programs and services that benefit individuals with developmental disabilities, state officials said, including many who receive healthcare benefits through Medicaid. Read more
3/8/2019 House passes sweeping election reform bill
The House on Thursday passed a massive voting rights, campaign finance and ethics reform package — a centerpiece of the new Democratic majority’s agenda.
The bill, known as H.R. 1 and dubbed the “For the People Act” by Democrats, was approved on a party-line 234-193 vote.
The measure makes far-reaching changes to the country’s electoral and campaign finance system, along with ethic reforms that targeted President Donald Trump and his administration.
“H.R. 1 restores the people’s faith that government works for the public interest, the people’s interests, not the special interests,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a press conference before the vote. Read more
3/8/2019 SWEENEY ON MURPHY BUDGET: HE’D LIKE MORE SAVINGS, NO MILLIONAIRE’S TAX
Senate president also presses governor to quadruple planned subsidy for New Jersey Transit, to $100 million
This year’s state budget discussions seem to be off to a better start than last year, but that doesn’t mean Senate President Steve Sweeney is happy with everything that Gov. Phil Murphy proposed earlier this week in his budget message.
While Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and other top lawmakers are praising Murphy, a first-term Democrat, for incorporating several savings initiatives into his overall $38.6 billion spending plan for the 2020 fiscal year, Sweeney said he will be pushing for more cuts as the budget season plays out over the next few months. Read more
3/7/2019 DEMENTIA IN ADULTS WITH DOWN SYNDROME CAUSING CAREGIVER CRISIS
Caregivers form support group. ‘The medical profession, even now, isn’t helpful,’ said one organizer of the group
Craig Cambeis is losing words and memories by the day. The 59-year-old, who has Down syndrome, has been diagnosed with dementia. For his sister Adele Barlow, who is his sole caregiver, making sure they share meaningful moments, even as Craig becomes a stranger to the present, is part of the daily struggle.
During the mid-1960s, the average life expectancy for a person born with Down syndrome was about 21 years. Today, life expectancy has tripled, according to the National Institutes of Health, with many living much longer. But so too, has the prevalence of dementia increased. Research from the NIH shows that up to 55 percent of adults with Down syndrome aged 40- to 49-years-old will be clinically diagnosed with dementia. Read more
3/6/2019 Plastic bag ban is good for the planet but bad for low income families, some argue
Make no mistake, Maplewood Township is set on banning single-use plastic bags at retail establishments.
It only makes sense, since they decompose slowly and pollute water ways. Township committee members, however, will have to revamp an ordinance that was designed to steer people to use reusable bags by charging them 5 cents for paper bags.
“That’s quite an issue for a person who is on a fixed income,” said Marcos Rodriguez, human resources director for Extra Supermarket.
Senior citizens, age 65 and older, would be exempt from the fee with proof of age. Customers receiving federal assistance wouldn’t have to pay, either, but they would have to verify their status.
But Rodriguez and Extra co-owner Albert Mendez said that stipulation singles out seniors and their customers, many of whom are low income and receive federal aid. Both men said having to ask a customer about their benefits gives away their right to privacy. Read more
3/6/2019 MURPHY HITS BRAKES ON DIVERSION OF FUNDS FROM HOUSING, ENERGY PROGRAMS
Siphoning of realty-transfer fees had cost affordable housing effort $300 million over last decade.. Gov. Phil Murphy pledged to end the practice of diverting funds from state affordable-housing and clean-energy programs, a budget tactic embraced by previous governors that he had continued, albeit not as aggressively as his predecessors.
His proposed budget for fiscal year 2020 ends the diversion of nearly $60 million in realty-transfer fees from affordable housing programs to other items in the state budget. Over the last decade, those housing programs had endured a loss of more than $300 million in funds supposedly dedicated for that cause. Read more
3/6/2019 Democrats have united around a plan to dramatically cut child poverty
The American Family Act, one of Democrats’ biggest policy initiatives of 2019, explained
Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) on Wednesday unveiled the latest version of their American Family Act — in my view, likely to be the single most important bill of the 116th Congress for the country’s poorest residents.
The bill, whose House counterpart is sponsored by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA), almost certainly won’t pass this session. It comes from the Democratic Senate minority and might not get any Republican support. But if enacted, the bill would slash child poverty in the United States by over a third in a single stroke. Passing it would enact a child allowance in the United States, bringing us in line with our peers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and most of the rich world in guaranteeing a basic payment for the care of children. Read more
3/6/2019 HEALTH BENEFIT SAVINGS PLAY BIG ROLE IN MURPHY’S PROPOSAL
Governor says 2020 budget projects $1.1 billion in savings, largely from spending on employee healthcare
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is leaning heavily on projected savings from public employee health benefit plans to balance the $38.6 billion state budget he proposed for the fiscal year that begins in July.
The 2020 spending plan Murphy outlined Tuesday in Trenton includes $1.1 billion in savings predicted for the coming year, with $800 million tied to lower spending on healthcare for public workers. Another $200 million is projected to come from savings and efficiencies within various departments, officials said.. Read more
3/5/2019 NJ CONGRESS MEMBERS TRANSLATE PLEDGES FOR ACA PROTECTION INTO PLANS
Among action items, bills that would safeguard consumers against ‘junk’ insurance plans, dedicate $10 billion for state reinsurance programs N
Members of New Jersey’s Democratic congressional delegation are translating their pledges to aggressively defend the Affordable Care Act into action. They’re ready with legislative proposals to expand federal support for its implementation and block Trump administration initiatives they believe will undermine the law’s benefits. Read more
3/4/2019 FIVE THINGS TO WATCH FOR IN GOVERNOR’S BUDGET ADDRESS TOMORROW
How will Gov. Phil Murphy navigate the big-ticket items that have caused conflict with many of his fellow Democrats in the Legislature?
Gov. Phil Murphy will put forward his budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 tomorrow during a joint session of the state Assembly and Senate in Trenton, marking his second time to give lawmakers a fiscal-year spending proposal. Last year, there was almost a government shutdown as Murphy, a Democrat, had trouble convincing fellow Democrats who control the Legislature to enact a series of new policies ranging from new taxes to increased aid for community-college students. Read more
3/4/2019 Senate Has Votes to Overturn Trump’s Emergency Declaration
The Senate is poised to rebuke President Trump’s national emergency declaration at the southwestern border. The only question: how big the Senate margin will be.
With Senator Rand Paul’s decision to support a resolution to block President Trump’s emergency declaration, Congress appears ready to deliver a stern rebuke to the president over his border wall and a clear statement that it will defend its ability to control federal spending.
Senator Paul, a libertarian-minded Kentuckian, said he will join fellow Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, giving proponents of the resolution of disapproval the 51 votes they need, if Democrats remain united in their support. Read more
3/4/2019 Senate Democrats have enough Republican support to terminate Trump’s national emergency
Trump is expected to veto the resolution, but congressional approval would still send a strong rebuke
It looks like Senate Democrats now have the votes they need to pass a resolution that would block President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration to fund his border wall.
Four Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul — have said they plan to vote in favor of terminating the national emergency, giving Democrats the 51-vote majority they need to approve the resolution in the upper chamber. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged just as much during a Monday press appearance, though he emphasized that Congress wouldn’t have the votes to override a presidential veto, which Trump is expected to use, CBS News’s Mark Knoller reports.
Read more
3/2/2019 11 kids dead at N.J. nursing facility. 36 infected. Feds fine Wanaque Center $600K.
The rehab facility at the center of the viral outbreak that left 11 children dead will have to pay a $600,000 fine after federal inspectors found systems failures “directly contributed” to the rapid spread of the virus, according to NorthJersey.com. Read more
2/27/2019 This Cohen hearing fight was everything wrong with how America talks about “racism
Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday generally did not reflect well on the character of President Donald Trump. He accused Trump of committing crimes while in office; lying to the public about his business dealings in Russia and tacitly encouraging Cohen to do the same; and ordering Cohen to bully Trump’s alma maters out of releasing his school records.
But the most contentious moments between Democrats and Republicans on the committee were about racism — or rather, whether it was appropriate to use the word “racist” to describe first Trump himself, and then Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). Read more
2/27/2019 Republicans can’t defend Trump against the substance of Cohen’s attacks
Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday morning has been damning — both for President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.
Cohen has testified that Trump knew about illegal hush money paid to Stormy Daniels during the campaign, knew about Wikileaks’ dump of Hillary Clinton’s emails before they happened, and repeatedly said racist things in private. He has painted a picture of the president as a greedy, untrustworthy, cruel man who cares nothing for the country that he leads. Read more
2/27/2019 House Democrats weigh rules change after GOP floor victory
Democratic leaders are considering changing House rules to make it harder for Republicans to spring surprise procedural votes on the majority after several embarrassing incidents on the floor in recent weeks.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and other top Democrats are weighing revising the House rules to require Republicans give them more notice on specific procedural votes, known as a “motion to recommit,” a wonky tactic that the GOP has used to force Democrats to vote on a range of controversial issues since January. Read more
2/26/2019 House votes to block Trump’s national emergency declaration
The House voted Tuesday to overturn President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, delivering a harsh rebuke to the president’s attempt to go around Congress to fund a border wall.
Every Democrat voted in favor, along with 13 Republicans. The Senate, which needs just four GOP votes to approve it and send it to the president’s desk for his first veto, will vote on there solution in the coming weeks.
The unprecedented vote to block Trump’s emergency order is the first piece of Democrats’ multipronged attempt to halt the president’s unilateral attempt to spend billions of dollars without Congress’ approval, which both parties acknowledge is likely to land in the Supreme Court. Read more
2/26/2019 Missing from Trump’s wall war: What immigration hawks really want
President Donald Trump sees his border wall crusade as a base-pleasing 2020 campaign asset, proof that he is the ultimate immigration hard-liner.
But his wall might not be built for years, if ever. In the meantime, Trump has yet to deliver on several other campaign promises that immigration hawks call far more important — a failure that could cost the president among conservatives demanding results on border security going into his reelection bid. Read more
2/20/2019 Pelosi: House moving ‘swiftly’ to block Trump’s emergency declaration
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is throwing her muscle behind a legislative effort to block President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, the first formal step to counter Trump and squeeze Republicans on the border wall.
Democrats will introduce legislation Friday to terminate the emergency proclamation and Pelosi is urging House colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support the resolution, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO on Wednesday. Read more
2/15/2019 “New math”: the Congressional tipping point to end T***p’s presidency just got closer
Years ago—two, but it seems like many more—I thought, “At some point Republicans in Congress are going to realize they are hooked to the most toxic piece of sludge that ever disgraced the Oval Office and it will destroy their party if they don’t throw it under the bus.”
Not for the sake of any principles or values, of course—they couldn’t care less about inequality of income (except in their mission to increase it), poverty, infrastructure breakdown, racism, sexism, sexual predation, racist law enforcement, climate change, gun carnage or doing anything decent and good—just to maintain their own power and positions come next election. Read more
2/15/2019 Donald Trump prepares to declare a national emergency, no matter how much harm it brings
At the end of a week in which Democratic and Republican legislators did exactly what American pundits keep saying that the public wants them to do—sit down at a table and pound out a compromise solution—all of their efforts are about to be made into a pointless sideshow through an action that uses “compromise” in a very different way. As in, Donald Trump is about to compromise the American system of government. Which seems oddly appropriate, since what legislators were attempting to resolve was not an issue of border security in the first place, but a crisis created by Trump. Trump is the problem. And it’s about to get worse. Read more
2/15/2019 Dems Won This Fight On The Border. What About the Next One?
After a 35-day government shutdown, weeks of congressional negotiations to avoid a second shutdown and a widespread consensus among voters that the White House was to blame for it all, President Trump ended up with $1.375 billion for border fencing—less money than he would’ve received had he avoided it all by signing the bipartisan spending bill in December.
It is clear to almost every political observer who has watched the events of the last few days unfold that on this fight, Democrats won and Trump lost. Read more
2/15/2019 Why Trump’s Going to Win on the National Emergency
All through the 2016 campaign Donald Trump warned about the menace of immigration by reciting the lyrics of a song called “The Snake,” about a kind woman who takes a snake into her home, only to die when he bites her. The snake tells the woman, “You knew I was a snake before you took me in.”
It is now clear that, consciously or not, Trump was delivering a warning to the Republican Party about what he was going to do to it. Two years into his administration, Trump has recognized that the institutional power of the Republican Party has all the effectiveness of the Maginot Line. He can ignore its leaders, scorn them, or just smash through them with no lasting political damage. Read more
2/15/2019 Trump declares national emergency to unlock border wall funds
Trump declares national emergency to unlock border wall funds
President Donald Trump on Friday declared a state of emergency on the southern border and immediately direct $8 billion to construct or repair as many as 234 miles of a border barrier.
The move — which is sure to invite vigorous legal challenges from activists and government officials — comes after Trump failed to get the $5.7 billion he was seeking from lawmakers. Instead, Trump agreed to sign a deal that included just $1.375 for border security. Read more
2/15/2019 Can Trump Spin a Wall From Nothing
President Donald Trump on Friday signed a deal for far less money than he wanted to start to put up a tiny fraction of some slat-fence variety of the long-promised border wall he says he’s been building but hasn’t. It was clearly a loss. He still called it a win.
“Nobody’s done the job that we’ve done on the border,” Trump said in the midst of his meandering Rose Garden remarks. No matter the money, we’re getting it done. “Whether it’s $8 billion or $2 billion or 1½ billion, it’s going to build a lot of wall. We’re getting it done.” Read more
2/14/2019 Trump shocks GOP with emergency declaration
The surprise announcement Thursday that President Donald Trump will use his emergency powers to try and build his border wall blindsided some Republicans, confused others and sent the Senate GOP into a general state of shock.
The news, delivered by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor, came after weeks of warnings from his own party not to declare a national emergency at the border.
Trump has decided to challenge Republicans’ resolve anyway — but he may not like the outcome. Aides privately predicted Trump will lose a vote on the Senate floor once the Democratic House passes a resolution of disapproval to block the move.
Meanwhile, the GOP Senate majority was casting about for answers. Read more
2/14/2019 McConnell says Trump will sign spending bill and declare national emergency
update, 3:16 p.m.: President Donald Trump plans to sign a bipartisan spending deal and then declare a national emergency to fund his border wall, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday.
The move will avert a government shutdown Friday while immediately fueling a fierce battle in the courts.
“He is prepared to sign the bill,” McConnell said. “He will also be issuing a national emergency declaration at the same time.” Read more
2/14/2019 NJ MUST REDUCE IMPACT OF FEDERAL CUTS ON CHARITY CARE
Substantial reductions in funding, scheduled to take effect this October, could be devastating for the state’s safety-net hospitals. We need to protect them
Healthcare in America continues to be one of the most hotly debated issues of our generation. Rightly so, as our health is so vitally important and personal to each of us. There is general agreement on two basic healthcare propositions. First, the more people who have health insurance coverage, the better. And second, health insurance coverage is worthless without access to actual healthcare. Read more
2/13/2019 Congress rushes to avert shutdown amid hopeful signs from Trump
Congressional negotiators finalized a massive funding package just before midnight Wednesday, confident they’ll have enough support to deliver it to President Trump’s desk in time to avert a shutdown.
The Senate plans to move quickly to approve the funding accord Thursday, sending it to the House, where it’s also expected to have large bipartisan backing. The bill will then be sent to Trump, where even top lawmakers are still holding their breath that he’ll sign it and avert a second shutdown. Read more
2/13/2019 Push for Medicare buy-in picks up with ’50 and over’ bill
House and Senate Democrats unveiled a plan Wednesday that would allow anyone over age 50 to buy into Medicare — an incremental step to expand health coverage beyond Obamacare’s gains that offers an alternative to the ambitious restructuring progressives envision in their push for Medicare for All.
“I have always supported universal health care but we are not there yet,” said Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), one of the co-sponsors. “Medicare at 50 is a very bold step in the right direction.” Read more
2/13/2019 Why Democrats aren’t taking up a bill to neutralize Obamacare’s latest legal threat
House Democrats promised in the 2018 campaign that they would beat back the Trump administration’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act, and they are ready to begin their counteroffensive. They are narrowly focused for now — and there’s good reason for that.
The influential Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on four bills to undo recent actions by the administration that undermine the health care law. The bills are tightly targeted — reversing Trump-issued regulations and restoring funding for enrollment outreach cut by the Trump administration — but they still represent the first legislation to shore up the ACA to get a hearing in the new Democratic majority. They are starting with limited yet broadly popular ideas. Read more
2/13/2019 House Democrats’ plan to start protecting the Affordable Care Act, explained
House Democrats promised in the 2018 campaign that they would beat back the Trump administration’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act, and they are ready to begin their counteroffensive. They are narrowly focused for now — and there’s good reason for that.
The influential Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday on four bills to undo recent actions by the administration that undermine the health care law. The bills are tightly targeted — reversing Trump-issued regulations and restoring funding for enrollment outreach cut by the Trump administration — but they still represent the first legislation to shore up the ACA to get a hearing in the new Democratic majority. They are starting with limited yet broadly popular ideas. Read more
2/11/2019 Democratic governors pulling hundreds of National Guard troops from border
Two newly sworn-in Democratic governors are refusing to play along with Donald Trump’s border stunt, announcing that in the weeks to come they’ll be withdrawing hundreds of National Guard troops from their states’ border with Mexico.
In this week’s State of the State address, California Gov. Gavin Newsom will announce that he will withdraw more than 300 troops from the region. Troops will instead be reassigned to assist with fire preparation and drug task force efforts. “The border ‘emergency’ is a manufactured crisis,” he will reportedly say during the speech, “and California will not be part of this political theater.” Read more
2/11/2019 BIG PUSH TO MAKE MEDICAID IN NEW JERSEY MORE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT
State officials, policy experts and philanthropists team up to make changes that have been under discussion for a long time
Experts largely agree on steps New Jersey should take to create a more effective and efficient Medicaid system and reform plans have already been drafted for some changes, like reforming how doctors are paid for their care and improving services for those with complex needs. Read more
Prospects for another government shutdown seemed to grow over the weekend, with Donald Trump beginning another push to blame a shutdown on Democrats and Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the committee negotiating a government funding bill, saying that “the talks are stalled right now.” Friday is the deadline to avert another shutdown, which would leave 800,000 federal workers without paychecks again, and “I’m not confident we’re going to get there,” Shelby said Sunday. Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, sounded a similar note Sunday, saying that he “absolutely cannot” guarantee the government will stay open. Read more
2/11/2019 Congress makes last-gasp try for border deal as shutdown looms
Democratic and Republican negotiators will meet on Monday afternoon in a last-ditch effort to salvage faltering government funding talks amid a raging debate over immigration policy, according to three sources familiar with the meeting.
The confab carries with it significant urgency: Negotiators have hoped to post compromise legislation that funds the government and gives President Donald Trump new money for border security by Monday evening to meet the House Democratic majority’s new rules and allow passage of the legislation through the Senate by Friday evening, the new shutdown deadline. Read more
2/8/2019 Despite talk of national emergencies or a second shutdown, Trump is likely to fold
The bipartisan committee looking for a resolution on immigration issues in order to avoid another government shutdown hasn’t come back with its proposal, but almost before they began their negotiations, Donald Trump began acting as if they were going to fail. Trump declared the odds of reaching an agreement at “less than fifty-fifty” and called the conference itself “waste of time.” Since then, he’s made a show of preparing to declare a national emergency, frequently bringing up the threat and adding it to his shambling State of the Union address. With the admission of many on the committee that the brief time in which they have to work limits the potential scope of the discussion and statements from Trump pushing back against any kind of “broad” agreement, it may seem that the committee is doomed. The interlude since Trump’s fold on the shutdown seems like just that … an interlude, after which either Trump will misuse the national emergency act or throw the government and the economy back into free fall. Read more
2/8/2019 AID-IN-DYING LEGISLATION ADVANCES AFTER PASSIONATE TESTIMONY PRO AND CON
Strong disagreement over measure that would allow physicians in New Jersey to prescribe lethal doses of medication to certain patients with less than six months to live
All seem to agree it is a worthy goal to ease the suffering of patients with deadly diseases who are reaching the end of their lives.
But there remain sharp divisions in New Jersey among healthcare providers, patient advocates and individuals with disabilities and their supporters over the role doctors should play in enabling those with terminal illness to take their own life. Read more
2/7/2019 Aid-in-dying bill advances after emotional testimony and committee substitutions
TRENTON — After more than an hour of contentious and emotional testimony, a key Senate committee voted Thursday to advance a bill that would give terminally ill patients the right to access medication that would end their life.
But the prospects for a vote before the full Senate remain in question.
“I don’t expect there to be more than 21, if we get to 21. … We’re close, I can say that,” Senate President Steve Sweeney said, referring to the minimum number of votes the bill would need to pass in the upper house. But, he added, “Close doesn’t get anything done.” Read more
2/7/2019 Measles is spreading in Washington state. Medical misinformation continues to spread too.
When I came to the United States for medical training after going to medical school in Pakistan, there were certain diseases I was sure I would never see surface here again. Measles was on top of that list. Even though Pakistan is one of only three countries where a vaccine-preventable disease like polio is endemic, measles is very uncommon, especially in high-income countries. Yet today, measles outbreaks are popping up in America — from Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City to Washington state, where a state of emergency has just been declared as officials scramble to keep the outbreak from spreading. Countries across Europe, too, are witnessing the reemergence of a disease that should have been eradicated with vaccination. Read more
2/7/2019 How to Break the Shutdown Fever
No foreign adversary is capable of shutting down our government, but President Donald Trump and Congress managed to carry out this detrimental and senseless feat for a record-breaking 35 days in total disregard for the public good, our national standing and our nation’s civil servants. Read more
2/7/2019 Trump cornered on border wall
The president doesn’t have GOP support to go through another shutdown or declare a national emergency — pressuring him to back whatever deal Congress makes.
Inside the White House, the Trump team is increasingly aware that the president is trapped. Read more
2/7/2019 ‘Too hot to handle’: Pelosi predicts GOP won’t trigger another shutdown
The House speaker discusses Trump’s border wall, impeachment and the 2020 presidential campaign in an exclusive interview with POLITICO.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is vowing that the federal government will not shut down again, even as President Donald Trump ratchets up pressure for his border wall ahead of a fast-approaching deadline.
“There will not be another shutdown,” Pelosi confidently asserted during a half-hour interview Wednesday in her Capitol office. “No, it’s not going to happen.” Read more
Though individuals with disabilities are not usually terminally ill, the terminally ill are almost always disabled or will become so as their condition progresses. For this reason and others, the point of view of someone who has severe disabilities may offer meaningful insight into this complicated matter. As founder and president of The Climb Organization, one of our goals is to educate the world on issues of those living with disabilities and demonstrate to that individuals with disabilities can have a full, successful, and meaningful lives. Read more
2/6/2019 Trump to make last-ditch wall pitch on U.S.-Mexico border
President Donald Trump kept a relatively low profile the day after his State of the Union address, staying silent on Twitter and remaining in Washington on a day when many past presidents have hit the road to amplify their annual speeches.
But White House officials and close advisers say that Trump is gearing up to redouble his case for a U.S.-Mexico border wall, including with a planned trip to El Paso next week, where he will make a final case for the $5.7 billion project before parts of the federal government run out of funding again on Feb. 16. Read more
2/6/2019 Why Trump’s zigzagging speech made perfect sense
The State of the Union address was designed to revive and strengthen the connection between Trump the president and Trump the candidate.
President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, as it unfolded, was a dizzying and even disorienting experience, a cascade of rhetorical passages that seemed to contradict each other every few moments.
Appeals for unity and bipartisanship jostled with ideological and cultural scab-picking. Theatrics used by all modern presidents to swell the heart or moisten the eye — We are joined in the gallery tonight by … — were followed by the honking boasts of a MAGA rally. Read more
2/6/2019 CONNECTING THE DOTS AMONG POVERTY, CHRONIC DISEASES, ER VISITS
Analyzing data from more than 3 million emergency room visits, group confirms most troubling concerns about New Jersey healthcare
Common wisdom has it that New Jersey residents with chronic health conditions who live in poor communities where jobs are scarce are more likely to visit the hospital emergency room than better-heeled residents with similar medical challenges. Read more
2/5/2019 Websites need to be more accessible for disabled people
Beyoncé got an unwelcome New Year’s present in January: a lawsuit from a blind woman who says her website is inaccessible because it’s presented as a “purely visual interface” that makes it impossible for blind and low-vision people to use. According to the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), these kinds of barriers to access are a violation of civil rights, limiting communication and participation in society. Read more
2/5/2019 Fact check: What Trump got right and wrong in his State of the Union address
The annual State of the Union address is a chance for the president to deliver his vision and policy priorities — and sometimes exaggerate or outright misstate his accomplishments and the reasons for taking policy actions.
Here’s a look at what President Trump got right and what he got wrong Tuesday night. Read more
Tension between President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on full display Tuesday as he delivered the State of the Union in a Democratic-controlled House for the first time.
Though it was Trump at the lectern, many eyes in the chamber and on screens nationwide were looking over his left shoulder at the San Francisco Democrat, who has become his toughest domestic rival. Read more
2/5/2019 Trump calls for unity — on his terms
President Donald Trump came to the House chamber on Tuesday night pushing a message of unity, but the deep divisions that have ripped this city apart over the last two years were on vivid display throughout the night.
The Democrats in the audience — many of whom wore white, the color of the suffragettes, in protest of Trump — spent much of the speech on their hands, shaking their heads and even groaning aloud. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) was caught sighing and rolling her eyes — and immediately pounced on the moment to raise money for her presidential campaign. Read more
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra warned in a national televised address Tuesday that he is prepared to take President Trump to court if he declares a national emergency to fund a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border while cutting federal funds to fire-damaged communities in this state.
Becerra delivered the remarks as part of the Democrats’ Spanish-language response to Trump’s State of the Union address. Speaking of his own upbringing as the son of Mexican immigrants, he denounced the president’s characterization of immigration, and the partial government shutdown over the construction of the wall. Read more
2/5/2019 Stacey Abrams bashes Trump for shutdown ‘stunt’ in SOTU response
Democrat Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia, bashed President Donald Trump for the recent government shutdown as she delivered her party’s response to the State of the Union Tuesday night.
In her rebuttal to Trump’s speech, Abrams shared her family’s history and her experiences as the state House minority leader in Georgia, and she strongly criticized the president for trying to gut Obamacare and warned about voter suppression in America. Read more
2/5/2019 Senate Ethics Committee closes case against Menendez
The Senate Ethics Committee has closed its file on Sen. Bob Menendez, putting a formal end to the ethics controversies that had dogged the New Jersey Democrat for more than six years.
The committee last spring admonished Menendez over gifts he had received — but had not initially disclosed or repaid — from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, a close personal friend who is now serving a lengthy prison sentence for Medicare fraud. Read more
2/4/2019 Everything you need to know about the 2019 State of the Union
When and what time is Trump delivering the 2019 State of the Union?
President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear before a joint session of the 116th Congress in the chamber of the House of Representatives to deliver the 2019 State of the Union address on Feb. 5, at 9 p.m. Read more
2/4/2019 Murphy signs bill to boost New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15
Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation Monday that will gradually raise New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour for most workers by 2024, making it the fourth state to approve a policy that not long ago was considered a pipe dream in Democratic circles.
“It is a great day to make history for New Jersey’s working families,” Murphy said in an auditorium in Elizabeth that was bursting with supporters and had the feel of a pep rally. “We’ve talked long enough about putting New Jersey on a responsible path to raising the minimum wage. Today we start on this path.” Read more
2/4/2019 Pelosi has Trump’s number, and he knows it
It’s clear that Donald Trump is not used to being thwarted, and he’s really not used to being stood up to by a woman. He seems utterly baffled by and not a little terrified of Nancy Pelosi. His reticence to really take her on, to come up with the kind of vitriolic nastiness he shows to anyone else who challenges him is clear. That was shown again in his Sunday Face the Nation interview. Given the opportunity to lash out with his trademark braggadocio and name-calling, Trump was reserved. Read more
2/4/2019 DAY 1: BOOKER TAKES DIFFERENT TACK FROM NJ PREDECESSORS IN HIS CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT
Compare and contrast: The fourth New Jerseyan since 2000 to try for the Oval Office has an uncommon style and message
With his announcement last Friday, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker became the fourth New Jerseyan to run for president this century. Partly due to changing times, but also due to his uncommon style and message, Booker’s announcement was very different from those of the men who preceded him.
“I grew up knowing that the only way we can make change is when people come together,” the Democrat said when announcing his candidacy via a tweet that linked to a video which includes baby pictures, graffitied buildings and a Newark high school marching band. “In America, courage is contagious,” he said. Read more
They weren’t supposed to be on the same flight.
15 year old Clara Daly was with her family, who were returning to their Calabasas, Ca home from Boston, when their nonstop flight was canceled.
And they were placed on a flight with a stop-over in Portland.
Tim Cook has lived at Brookdale Senior Living Center in Gresham, Oregon since, as an adult, a degenerative disease took both his sight and his hearing.
He was visiting his sister in Boston.
“Helen Keller said deaf and blind people are the loneliest people in the world,” Tim relayed. “When I heard that I started crying.”
“I’m isolated so much.” Read more
2/1/2019 New Jersey becomes second state in nation to require that schools teach LGBT history
New Jersey has become the second state in the nation after California to adopt a law that requires schools to teach about LGBT history in a move hailed by civil rights groups as a step toward inclusion and fairness.
Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who promised to promote equality for gay and transgender people during his campaign, signed the bill Thursday. Among those celebrating the news was Jaime Bruesehoff, of Vernon, whose 12-year-old transgender child Rebekah spoke in support of the bill in Trenton in December. Read More
2/1/2019 Booker holds court in Newark — and breaks with Harris, Sanders
NEWARK, N.J. — Cory Booker distanced himself Friday from the rhetoric and policy of a pair of his Senate colleagues and addressed two of his potential vulnerabilities.
Speaking to reporters outside his home here on his first day as a presidential candidate, Booker distinguished himself from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a potential primary opponent who explicitly called President Donald Trump “a racist” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He also broke with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who embraced eliminating private health insurance during a CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday. Read more
2/1/2019 Cory Booker launches bid for president
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) announced Friday he’s running for president, becoming the second African-American and fourth senator to join the burgeoning Democratic field.
Booker — a Yale Law School graduate and Rhodes scholar who became nationally known as the hands-on mayor of Newark, New Jersey — has made no secret of his White House ambitions. The 49-year-old Democrat has been setting the stage to run for more than a year, courting influential African-American surrogates and hiring campaign personnel in crucial early primary states. Read more
2/1/ 2019 SURPRISE, ANGER OVER GOVERNOR’S VETO ON EMERGENCY AID
Citing budgetary concerns, Murphy vetoes measure that would have provided additional emergency aid to some in danger of becoming homeless
t:tan/flic
On a day when temperatures dipped below zero in New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed a bill providing additional emergency aid for some public-assistance recipients in danger of becoming homeless, a move that was both unexpected and served to further aggravate his feud with Sen. President Steve Sweeney. Read more
1/31/2019 Legislature passes $15 minimum wage bill; Murphy says he’ll sign it Monday
TRENTON — New Jersey lawmakers on Thursday passed and sent to Gov. Phil Murphy a long-awaited bill to gradually raise New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, legislation that has been in the works for more than a year and achieves a major legislative victory for Democrats.
The Senate approved the bill, NJ A15 (18R), 23-16. Earlier in the day, the Assembly passed it, 52-25. Read more
1/31/2019 US expected to announce treaty withdrawal as soon as Friday
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is poised to announce Friday that it is withdrawing from a treaty that has been a centerpiece of superpower arms control since the Cold War and whose demise some analysts worry could fuel a new arms race.
An American withdrawal, which has been expected for months, would follow years of unresolved dispute over Russian compliance with the pact, known as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, treaty. It was the first arms control measure to ban an entire class of weapons: ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 kilometers (310 miles) and 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles). Russia denies that it has been in violation. Read more
1/31/2019 A looming shutdown deadline hasn’t changed the central conflict: the wall
President Donald Trump appears keen to kill any border security compromise before it even gets off the ground.
On Thursday, he insisted that any deal on border security would have to include funding for a “wall,” and not just “physical barriers,” digging in his heels mere hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that wall money in a final agreement was a nonstarter. Read more
1/31/2019 Trump, in Interview, Calls Wall Talks ‘Waste of Time’ and Dismisses Investigations
WASHINGTON — A defiant President Trump declared on Thursday that he has all but given up on negotiating with Congress over his border wall and will build it on his own even as he dismissed any suggestions of wrongdoing in the investigations that have ensnared his associates.
In an interview in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump called the talks “a waste of time” and indicated he will most likely take action on his own when they officially end in two weeks. At the same time, he expressed optimism about reaching a trade deal with China and denied being at odds with his intelligence chiefs. Read more
President Donald Trump wants you to believe his administration is already building a wall along the southern border, even if Congress refuses to give him any money for it. But he’s also demanding Congress give him money so he can build the wall.
Trump pushed these incoherent talking points repeatedly throughout the day on Thursday. Read more
1/31/2019 Pelosi: ‘There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi minced no words in her Thursday morning press conference about the status of border security negotiations in Congress. “There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation,” she told reporters.
“The President just doesn’t seem to have the attention span or the desire to hear what the intelligence community has been telling him,” she said. And what the intelligence community has been telling him is that there is no border emergency. Read more
1/31/2019 Trump demands ‘WALL!’ but steers clear of Hill talks
The president is pushing for his border wall on Twitter and in the Oval Office, but isn’t intervening directly in conference committee negotiations.
President Donald Trump is tweeting up a storm about whether lawmakers will deliver a bipartisan deal providing border security money. But he’s largely butting out of the private talks, at least so far. Read more
1/31/2019 Elizabeth Warren is right. And she’s scaring the GOP silly.
*Sigh* No, I am not endorsing Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primaries. I have too many other people I want to hear from, like Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, and Sherrod Brown. But I can still listen to the early birds, and chime in when I notice something.
Elizabeth Warren, and her fellow quick starter, Kamala Harris, learned something from Trump. When you come out early with something, you can control the news cycle. Warren quickly came out with her proposed “wealth tax,” and along with Harris’s eliminate private insurance company healthcare, is dominating cycle after cycle. And as a result can feast on the blowback. Read more
1/30/2019 A time to remember, and to reconsider, NJ’s homeless
Last week, they counted the homeless.
Last week, as America‘s well-heeled leaders in Washington barbed back and forth about the relatives virtues of a “border wall,” scores of unsung volunteers fanned out across the land to take an accounting of those on the other end.
Those for whom the matter of a working government is of little significance. Those for whom bread is not cheap, and for whom winter is never mild.
In New Jersey, volunteers did all they could to find them. And they did.
They found them only to record their existence on this Earth; to give them a reckoning at this point in time; to pass along toiletries, coats and maybe a warm smile. Read more
At a meeting with GOP chairmen on Wednesday, the Senate majority leader had a lighthearted message for his negotiators trying to avoid another shutdown, according to attendees: “We’re praying for you. Get this done.” Read more
1/30/2019 Get this done’: McConnell moves to avoid new shutdown
The Senate majority leader is coming out strongly against another shutdown — making it harder for Trump to close the government again.
Mitch McConnell is willing to go big, go small or anything in between to avoid another government shutdown. He’s even willing to appeal to a higher power. Read more
1/30/2019 OVER COFFEE, MURPHY AND DEM LEADERS TOAST WAGE ACCORD
Democratic governor and legislative leaders, often at odds with each other, share rare kumbaya moment
Gov. Phil Murphy, Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, the often battling leaders of the Democratic Party in New Jersey, shared a cup of coffee Tuesday morning at the Ocean Bay Diner in South Amboy.
In two days the Legislature is expected to pass the minimum wage bill they negotiated. Read more
1/30/2019 : Voters oppose another shutdown, emergency declaration
Voters have little appetite for another government shutdown if Congress does not approve money to build President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult.
But Trump’s apparent fallback position — declaring a “national emergency” to divert money to the project — is also unpopular, leaving the embattled president again stuck between a base that wants him to build the wall at all costs, and the majority that wants him to fund the government and move on. Read more
1/30/2019 LAWMAKERS MULL ‘UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES’ OF MINIMUM WAGE HIKE
Raising the wage floor to $15 an hour could make some workers and families ineligible for state and federal assistance programs
Credit: NPR.org
New Jersey Democrats’ push to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 by 2024 could wind up hurting some of the people they are trying to help if boosting salaries makes workers too well off to receive free or subsidized services such as child care and preschool. Read more
1/29/2019 The debate around putting an end to all government shutdowns, explained
With another government shutdown deadline looming just weeks away, more and more members of Congress are considering bills that could make sure shutdowns never happen again.
Three such bills have been floated in the Senate, along with two others in the House, and while each of them would address the issue slightly differently, several would “automatically” maintain funding for the government if lawmakers are unable to reach an agreement on spending bills. By doing so, such measures would ensure that the government stays open — and federal workers keep getting paid — even if Congress doesn’t secure a spending deal by the necessary deadline. Read more
1/29/2019 Lawyer seeks protections for undocumented immigrants who worked at Trump National
An attorney who represents undocumented immigrants who have worked at President Donald Trump’s golf courses in New Jersey and New York said Tuesday that he is seeking deportation protection for his clients so they can share allegations of harassment, abuse and immigration fraud that they said they witnessed and experienced at work. Read more
1/29/2019 ‘Whatever works’: Lawmakers negotiate to avert another shutdown absent signal from Trump
Republicans intent on averting another government shutdown sought Tuesday to expand border security talks to dealing with U.S. debt and other issues as lawmakers operated with no clear signal from President Trump on what he would accept.
The latest idea to tack on an increase in the nation’s borrowing limit to discussions over Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a U.S.-Mexico border wall divided Republicans and was immediately rejected by Democrats, a less-than-promising development on the eve of congressional negotiators’ first meeting. Read more
1/29/2019 There is a crisis at the border. It’s just not what Trump says it is.
Congress has three weeks — the deadline until President Donald Trump has threatened to shut down the government again, declare a national emergency, or both — to come to a deal on border security.
B Bit if they’re letting Trump set the terms of the debate, they risk missing the crisis on the US-Mexico border.
Make no mistake — there is a border crisis. The US is seeing something genuinely unprecedented: large numbers of children and families, often in large groups, crossing the border without papers to turn themselves in to US authorities. The immigration enforcement system, not particularly well-equipped to handle vulnerable migrants without papers at all, is cracking under the strain. The gap between what’s happening and the government’s ability to deal with it is, by most definitions, a policy crisis. Read more
1/29/2019 BERGEN COUNTY HOSPITAL PICKED FOR NATIONAL PROGRAM TO REDUCE HEALTH DISPARITIES
Holy Name Medical Center will tackle lower rate of cancer screening among Asian-Americans
While higher income and education levels are frequently connected with better health outcomes, there are exceptions among some individuals or groups — like Asian-Americans, who earn and learn more than most, statistically speaking, but are also more likely to die of cancer.
Holy Name Medical Center is now looking to address one aspect of this racial gap with an initiative designed to increase screening for colorectal cancer among Asian-American residents in the region. Read more
1/28/2019 Trump undercuts negotiations, sets stage for shutdown, part 2
After backing down and accepting the same deal that Democrats offered before he put the nation through a month-long shutdown that damaged the economy, shook faith in the ability of the government to provide basic services, fractured national security, and left hundreds of thousands of federal workers on the job without pay, Donald Trump was back over the weekend … to give up on negotiations. As the Wall Street Journal detailed, Trump is going into the three-week period in which the government is trying to recover from the blow he just delivered fully expecting to generate a fresh national crisis come Valentine’s Day. Read more
Former New Jersey governor, member of the Trump transition team, and bridge lover Chris Christie has written a “memoir,” and one of the things he found memorable is how Donald Trump thought ditching his national security adviser Michael Flynn would be the “end of the Russia thing.” Read more
1/28/2019 GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS BEHIND MIDTERM BLUE WAVE IN NJ SAY THEY’RE NOT GOING AWAY
Most groups are still active. Some are keeping their focus on the U.S. Congress, some on state and local politics. A few are retooling
It would be easy to imagine that the grassroots political groups that were instrumental in creating a blue wave in New Jersey last November would have closed shop and moved on after their victories in the midterm elections. On the contrary, many have become active at the state and local levels, plan to serve as watchdogs to elected officials, and continue to build their organizations in advance of 2020. Read more
Donald Trump is a deeply stupid man. That he has been able to convince many in the media that he is a smart businessman says much about them, and nothing about him. His number of bankruptcies speaks for itself. So does the fact that if he had merely invested his inheritance in index funds, he’d be wealthier today than he currently is. Read more
1/25/2019 She’s not one to bluff’: How Pelosi won the shutdown battle
Pelosi’s victory will help define her over the next two years as she clashes with Trump.
Two months ago, Nancy Pelosi was battling an internal Democratic rebellion trying to bar her from the speakership.
Pelosi faced doubts over whether she was the right person to lead the new Democratic majority, despite shepherding her party to victory on Election Day, and some colleagues demanded she step down after 16 years in power. Read more
1/25/2019 How Trump could use a national emergency to get his border wall, explained
Nearly five weeks after it began, President Donald Trump on Friday announced that he has struck a deal to end the partial government shutdown. But that doesn’t mean he’s giving up on his border wall entirely — including if that means declaring a national emergency to get it.
When announcing the agreement at the White House, Trump said that if Congress doesn’t reach a “fair deal” with him for border wall funding by February 15, the government will either shut down again or “I will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the Constitution of the United States to address this emergency.” Read more
1/25/2019 Longest shutdown in history ends after Trump relents on wall
Congress quickly passed legislation to end the shutdown, but it’s unclear if lawmakers can reach an agreement by Feb. 15.
The longest government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end Friday after President Donald Trump and Congress agreed to temporarily reopen shuttered federal agencies without providing any money for the president’s border wall. Read more
1/24/2019 Senate rejects dueling proposals to end the shutdown
The Senate blocked two proposal on Thursday to reopen the government, but amid the ongoing stalemate, there’s some hope that Washington might be inching closer toward ending a shutdown now on its 34th day.
In a 52-44 vote, the Senate rejected House-backed legislation that would fund the government through February 8. The Senate, in an 50-47 vote, blocked legislation endorsed by President Donald Trump that provided $5.7 billion for his border wall and granted temporary protection for some undocumented immigrants.
The bills were expected to fail. Read more
1/24/2019 WHAT IS DARK MONEY AND WHY IS IT SUCH A PROBLEM?
Groups unfettered by campaign finance regulations are wielding more and more influence on elections. New Jersey legislators are taking steps to regulate their activities
New Jersey lawmakers have taken the first step toward shining light onto so-called dark money that seems to have greater and greater influence on elections each year. Spending by groups that are not governed by campaign finance laws is an issue that has been looming over federal elections for more than a decade, and become more prominent in state elections, as well. Read more
1/24/2019 Senate rejects Trump plan to fund border wall and end shutdown
The Senate blocked President Donald Trump’s proposal to provide $5.7 billion in border wall money and grant temporary protections for some undocumented immigrants in return for reopening the government.
The bill failed, 51-47, and needed to reach a 60 vote threshold. The Senate will soon vote on a Democrat-backed bill to fund the government through Feb. 8 that doesn’t provide money for Trump’s border wall. Read more
1/23/2019 $15 an Hour? New Jersey Minimum-Wage Workers Say It’s About Time
TRENTON — [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]
Every weekday, from the time when the sun starts to sink over the bridge that reads “Trenton Makes The World Takes” until long after the bustling downtown of New Jersey’s capital city has grown dark and empty, Rosy Herera scrubs floors, shines sinks and polishes sticky stains off conference tables. She is a custodian and a minimum wage worker. Read more
1/23/2019 Senate set to reject government funding plan it once embraced
Competing bills in the Senate will likely fail, which some senators hope will jumpstart talks.
The Senate will take its first votes in more than a month on reopening government. But both a clean spending bill and President Donald Trump’s proposal appear on course to fail.
Though a short-term spending bill giving the president no new border funding bill passed the Senate with no dissent in December, it’s poised to fail on the Senate floor on Thursday. Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the Nos. 3 and 4 GOP leaders, both said Wednesday that the “continuing resolution” cannot pass the Senate. Read more
1/17/2019 NJ CONSUMERS SHOULDN’T BE LEFT IN THE DARK ON HEALTHCARE COSTS
You wouldn’t shop for a new car without knowing the price, so why is it acceptable that healthcare costs remain hidden from patients?
On January 1, New Jersey hospitals responded to guidelines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) and posted healthcare pricing information on their websites for consumers to access. While this mandate is well-intentioned, a hospital’s pricing information alone is woefully insufficient for a consumer to make an educated decision. Simply put, the price a hospital charges is meaningless to most patients if they do not know how much their insurer will pay. Read more
1/16/2019 Cryan, Sweeney introduce bills to aid furloughed federal workers
Senate President Steve Sweeney and State Sen. Joe Cryan are pushing a pair of bills, introduced Tuesday, to aid federal workers furloughed by the ongoing shutdown of the federal government.
“The lives and livelihoods of our federal workers have been disrupted by a shutdown that is cutting off the paychecks they need to support themselves and their families,” Cryan said. “President Trump’s senseless crusade to build a wall along our border with Mexico is victimizing federal workers, including those who are working without pay, those forced to stay home and the contract workers employed by businesses with federal contracts.” Read more
1/16/2019 9 key questions about the longest government shutdown in history, answered
What are federal employees rights? Does this happen in other countries? And other frequently asked questions.
It costs money to run the government, and it’s Congress’s job to manage the purse strings.
With the government now in the midst of its third shutdown under President Donald Trump’s leadership — the longest in US history — there’s no sugarcoating it: One of the legislative branch’s most basic functions has broken down.
Congress has let funding for federal agencies lapse again because the president is demanding funding for a southern border wall, a pet project that doesn’t have enough support in Congress to pass. Read more
1/16/2019 Pelosi asks Trump to reschedule SOTU because of the shutdown
The House speaker is citing security concerns, but Democrats also don’t want to give Trump a platform to blame them for the shutdown.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday asked President Donald Trump to reschedule his State of the Union address. Read more
1/16/2019 IN ANSWER TO GOVERNOR, FELLOW DEMOCRATS HOLD BACK BUT REPUBLICANS DON’T
Nevertheless, members of governor’s party signal resistance to his critical evaluation of the state’s tax-incentive programs for business
Year One of Gov. Phil Murphy’s time in office was marked by a list of promises, but also a fractious relationship with legislative leaders from his own party that may have prevented the governor from notching more wins.
Judging from the reaction to his first State of the State address yesterday, Year Two may be starting out much the same for Murphy. Read more
President Donald Trump tried a new strategy to get his border wall by going around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Politico reported. He failed spectacularly.
On Tuesday, Trump invited moderate House Democrats to join him at the White House for lunch to talk about his wall and the shutdown. He used a similar strategy when Paul Ryan controlled the House, going around the speaker to negotiate with the far-right Freedom Caucus. But unlike Republicans, no Democrats attended the lunch meeting, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. Read more
1/15/2019 Trump suddenly decides there might not be a national emergency at the border after all
After days of stoking fears about a “crisis” to get his border wall built, Trump has changed his mind.
After days of publicly toying with the idea of declaring a national emergency in order to get his border wall built, President Donald Trump has backed away from the idea, seemingly deciding the situation isn’t so dire after all.
The president spent much of last week discussing the possibility of using a national emergency declaration to cobble together the funds he needs for a wall at the US-Mexico border. The federal government has been partially shut down for more than three weeks amid a funding impasse between Congress and Trump, who is demanding $5 billion for the construction of about 200 miles of barrier at the border. It looked as though Trump might use a national emergency to get out of the shutdown, but now he appears to have changed course. Read more
1/15/2019 MURPHY’S FIRST STATE OF STATE ADDRESS COMES AT PIVOTAL TIME FOR NJ AND FOR HIM
Hopes were high among progressives when governor came into office, but tension between him and fellow Democrats has impeded his agendadit: Edwin J. Torres/NJ Governor’s Office
Gov. Phil Murphy is set to deliver his first State of the State address today and in many ways it could not be coming at a more pivotal time for his administration.
When Murphy, a Democrat, took office this time last year, there were high expectations that legislative leaders from his own party would be able to act swiftly with him to enact a host of top priorities, including a $15 minimum wage and legalized marijuana. Read more
1/15/2019 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IS AFFECTING FOOD INSPECTIONS
U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer asks for state and county health officials to fill the gap caused by furlough of many FDA inspectors
With 41 percent of the Food and Drug Administration’s food inspectors furloughed due to the ongoing partial government shutdown, the FDA has narrowed its mission.
The FDA is “focusing on following up on emergencies, responding to recalls and outbreaks and also looking at high-risk facilities,” said Sarah Sorscher, Deputy Director of Regulatory Affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “In general, high-risk foods that FDA is focusing on include cheeses … include produce, they include seafood, generally the kind of foods a consumer might think to put in their refrigerator because they’re perishable.” Read more
1/14/2019 Stop Complaining About Trump’s Emergency Powers, Congress
President Donald Trump said Monday that he is not currently “looking to” end the longest government shutdown in history by declaring a national emergency, a move that would allow him to reallocate money from military construction and disaster relief programs toward building a border wall. But even if Trump decides against an emergency declaration—and he might well change his mind at any moment—the national freakout over his threats exposes serious problems with the way presidents can wield emergency powers. And as a co-equal and independent branch of government, Congress has nobody to blame but itself for this situation. Read more
1/14/2019 All of Congress’s ideas for bringing down prescription drug prices, explained
Americans have been saying for years that they’re frustrated with the price of medicine and it should be near the top of lawmakers’ to-do list. Now congressional Democrats are starting to put together an extensive menu of ideas for reducing prescription drug costs .Read more
1/14/2019 What’s open — and closed — during a partial government shutdown
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are set to keep functioning.
It’s officially day 24 of the longest government shutdown ever — and its effects are becoming increasingly apparent.
The December 21 deadline for funding a portion of the government, including the State Department, the Justice Department, the Transportation Department, the Agriculture Department, and the Department of the Interior, has long come and gone — and lawmakers are still trying to figure out some kind of deal. (Other agencies have already been fully funded, including the Department of Health and Human Services.) Read more
1/14/2019 McConnell allows the Trump shutdown to become the longest ever at 24 days
The Russian asset in the White House is off to have another campaign event in Louisiana today, but couldn’t leave without some unhinged tweets about Russia, about the fake news, and of course about the shutdown, now in its 24th day, making it the longest U.S. government shutdown ever.
“Nancy and Cryin’ Chuck can end the Shutdown in 15 minutes,” he declared. “At this point it has become their, and the Democrats, fault!” Within a few hours, though, he was telling reporters he personally rejected a plan from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to open the government for three weeks, which would give more time for negotiations. Read more
1/13/2019 The human costs of the Trump shutdown will affect all of us
Make no mistake: Donald Trump’s decision to throw temper tantrums and keep the government shut down until he gets his $5.7 billion border wall is hurting people. And the shutdown is going to hurt a lot more people before it’s over.
The worst-off, of course, are those employees who won’t get paid and are genuinely fearful about their ability to make a rent or mortgage payment. They’re worried about how they’ll afford groceries in the coming weeks to feed their families. They wonder where they’ll find the money for school fees. Whether those nearly 800,000 people are furloughed or forced to work without pay, it’s all the same—there won’t be money for necessities. There are stories about workers starting GoFundMe pages to pay rent. At least the Coast Guard was embarrassed enough to take down its online tip sheet suggesting that employees hold yard sales or babysit to make ends meet. Read more
1/13/2019 Democratic governors steer party to left for universal health care
Democrats at the state level, especially those eyeing 2020, are unlikely to abandon their more sweeping ‘Medicare for All’ goals anytime soon.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wants California to be the first state to offer Medicaid to undocumented adults. Gov. Jared Polis wants Colorado to pioneer a multi-state single-payer system. And in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz wants residents to be able to buy into Medicaid.
These radical moves by newly elected liberal governors reveal a new movement among Democrats on health care in advance of the 2020 presidential campaign to see just how far the party will go in pushing universal health care. Read more
1/12/2019 Trump’s promised extended shutdown would create ‘economic hellscape,’ say experts
Once Donald Trump was elected, it was only a matter of time before the phrase “economic hellscape” made its first straight news appearance. It took two years, but yep: he managed it.
The country would face an economic hellscape if the government shutdown lasts “months or even years,” as the president has suggested it might, experts tell NBC News. Read more
1/11/2019 NJ HOUSE DEMOCRATS PLOT OUT MULTIFRONT DEFENSE OF OBAMACARE
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone emerges as leader in battle with GOP over fate of ACA, now imperiled by ruling of federal judge in Texas
A new strategy to defend the federal Affordable Care Act is taking shape in Congress, led in part by New Jersey Democrats, many of whom rode to victory in November on a so-called blue wave fueled largely by anger over Republican efforts to dismantle the law.
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, (D-NJ), who now leads a committee with a critical role in regulating healthcare, has introduced a measure enabling the House of Representatives to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by a collection of Republican-led states challenging the ACA, which the administration of President Donald Trump declined to defend. Read more
As Trump continues to hold out the threat of declaring a national emergency to abscond with the funds he wants to build his nonsensical wall, there’s one factor that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention: As soon as Trump declares an emergency, Nancy Pelosi can force a vote over whether or not that emergency continues. Read more
1/11/2019 Trump’s Risking Financial Disaster for America
President Donald Trump’s Iran policy has been reckless as regards Iran—it all but invites Tehran to return to an unconstrained nuclear program, and it reduces U.S. credibility to bargain on other contentious issues. But it has been far more reckless on the far more consequential matter of America’s relationships with allies and partners and especially the U.S.’s central role in the world financial system. Iran can be a problem, but it is not worth gambling the economic and political benefits the U.S. receives as the world’s banker. Read more
We’re number one! The ongoing partial government shutdown is tied for the longest government shutdown ever, and will be uncontested champion on Saturday. Until now, the record-holder has been the 21-day shutdown from December 1995 to January 1996, when a Republican Congress was trying to show President Bill Clinton who was boss.
Donald Trump continues to demand more than $5 billion in funding for a border wall, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up House-passed legislation that’s virtually identical to what the Senate unanimously passed in December. A handful of House Republicans have been joining Democrats in voting to re-open the government. Read more
1/11/2019 NJ HOUSE DEMOCRATS PLOT OUT MULTIFRONT DEFENSE OF OBAMACARE
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone emerges as leader in battle with GOP over fate of ACA, now imperiled by ruling of federal judge in Texas
A new strategy to defend the federal Affordable Care Act is taking shape in Congress, led in part by New Jersey Democrats, many of whom rode to victory in November on a so-called blue wave fueled largely by anger over Republican efforts to dismantle the law.
U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, (D-NJ), who now leads a committee with a critical role in regulating healthcare, has introduced a measure enabling the House of Representatives to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by a collection of Republican-led states challenging the ACA, which the administration of President Donald Trump declined to defend. Read more
1/11/2019 FEDERAL AID TO NEW JERSEY IS NEGATIVE — BUT NOT BECAUSE OF THE SHUTDOWN
The Garden State perennially pays significantly more to the federal government in taxes than it gets back and that’s not about to change anytime soon. The current federal shutdown is negatively affecting millions of people across the country, including many of us in New Jersey. But the impact on the Garden State is much less severe than elsewhere — and that’s because we already suffer from a lack of federal investment. Read more
1/10/2019 The biggest war on plastic is in New Jersey and bags, straws may not survive
The global push to ban everyday plastic products that litter oceans and waterways has no greater fight in the U.S. in 2019 than in New Jersey where the most far-reaching set of plastics regulations in the nation is slowly making its way through Trenton.
Manufacturers and retailers are gearing up to defeat a bill that would ban plastic bags, foam containers and plastic straws, fearing passage in New Jersey could prompt other states to adopt similar regulations.
“No state or major city has taken on all three so the stakes are high,” said John Weber, Mid-Atlantic manager of the Surfrider Foundation, a clean ocean and beach advocacy group. “A lot of other states are taking note because it would be the most comprehensive plastics legislation in the country.” Read more
1/10/2019 Pelosi to McConnell: ‘Do you take an oath to the Constitution or an oath to Donald Trump?’
Today is the 20th day of the Trump government shutdown, the day after the very stable genius stormed out of a negotiating meeting with congressional leaders when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told him he still couldn’t have his wall. It also marks the 20th day of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acting as Trump’s toady and refusing to do his constitutional duty. Read more
1/10/2019 Trump prepares to declare a unitary government, as Republicans cheer him on
On Thursday, Donald Trump moved closer to declaring a national emergency and seizing the funds to build his wall, despite failure to secure the support of Congress. As he did, Republicans in the Senate made it clear that they would not object to Trump turning the executive into the sole branch of government and conducting a not-quite-bloodless coup. Read more
1/10/2019 NJ LAGS NATION FOR DISABLED RESIDENTS IN COMMUNITY SETTINGS
State officials reply to findings of new report saying positive change is already
New Jersey has more residents with disabilities living in large public institutions than all but a handful of states, and far fewer of them are engaged in meaningful daily jobs than the national average, according to an annual report from advocates. Read more
1/10/2019 MURPHY-SWEENEY FEUD COULD LEAD TO LAWS SHINING MORE LIGHT ON DARK MONEY
As issue-advocacy group tied to Murphy goes back on promise to disclose donors, Sweeney fast-tracks legislation that has been sidelined for years. The continuing feud between New Jersey’s two most powerful Democrats could lead to the state finally enacting contribution-disclosure laws for dark-money groups that New Jersey’s campaign watchdog and good government activists have been seeking for years. Read more
1/9/2019 Trump got his shutdown wish. Why doesn’t he look more proud? Maybe because of this?
President Donald Trump stepped up, put his big-boy pants on, and took the mantle of leadership. “I’ll take responsibility for shutting it down, I won’t blame you for it,” he famously told Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office. “I’ll be proud to do it.” Not much space for misinterpretation there, is there?
And Trump got his wish. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 51% of Americans now hold Trump personally responsible for the 19 day shutdown of the government, while only 32% hold the Democrats in congress responsible. As detective Joe Friday used to say on “Dragnet,” “Just the facts ma’am, just the facts.” Read more
1/9/2019 STATE QUESTIONS FEDS’ LOWER SUBSIDY FOR NJ’S HEALTHCARE REINSURANCE PROGRAM
Federal provision for covering costliest medical claims is well short of what New Jersey officials had expected. DOBI Commissioner Marlene Caride asks for explanation
Federal officials have agreed to provide an estimated $180 million this year to support New Jersey’s new healthcare reinsurance program. The program is set up to help offset the costliest medical claims, starting with those generated in 2019. But that’s $38 million less than state insurance officials anticipated for 2019, based on their own calculations, and Department of Banking and Insurance Commissioner Marlene Caride wants to better understand the discrepancy. Read more
1/9/2019 Total waste of time’: Trump storms out of shutdown meeting with Dems
The meeting’s collapse signals just how stuck the two sides are as the partial government shutdown stretches into its 19th day.
President Donald Trump stormed out of a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders and rallied the Senate GOP to his position on the border wall on Wednesday, raising the prospects for the longest government shutdown of all time and increased speculation that Trump could soon declare a national emergency.
After speaking with Senate Republicans, the president cut short his meeting with Democratic and Republican leaders after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she would not fund his border wall regardless of when the government reopens. The president tweeted the meeting was a “total waste of time.” Read more
1/9/2019 Trump defiant on wall as some Republicans push to end shutdown
President Donald Trump on Wednesday called his meeting with Democratic leaders a “total waste of time,” signaling just how far apart negotiators are as the partial government shutdown has stretched into its 19th day.
“Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time,” Trump tweeted after meeting with congressional leaders at the White House. “I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!” Read more
1/9/2019 STATE QUESTIONS FEDS’ LOWER SUBSIDY FOR NJ’S HEALTHCARE REINSURANCE PROGRAM
Federal provision for covering costliest medical claims is well short of what New Jersey officials had expected. DOBI Commissioner Marlene Caride asks for explanation
Federal officials have agreed to provide an estimated $180 million this year to support New Jersey’s new healthcare reinsurance program. The program is set up to help offset the costliest medical claims, starting with those generated in 2019. Read more
1/8/2019 White House reverses course on food stamp funding+
Trump administration officials said Tuesday that the Agriculture Department will be able to pay out food stamp benefits for the entire month of February — tamping down fears that the partial government shutdown could have resulted in rationing or halting of benefits.
The assurance that the food stamp program, which serves nearly 39 million people, would be on secure financial footing for February marked another major reversal from the administration in the ongoing shutdown fight. Read more
1/8/2019 Full text: Pelosi and Schumer respond to Trump’s immigration speech
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s response to President Donald Trump’s immigration speech, as delivered on Capitol Hill. I appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to the American people tonight about how we can end this shutdown and meet the needs of the American people. Sadly, much of what we have heard from President Trump throughout this senseless shutdown has been full of misinformation and even malice. The president has chosen fear. We want to start with the facts. Read more
1/8/2019Trump ratchets up plea for a border wall, calling it a ‘crisis of the soul’
President Donald Trump on Tuesday night made a public plea for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, claiming that law enforcement officials are the ones demanding it, while blaming Democrats for the prolonged government shutdown that has resulted from an impasse over how to pay for the barrier. Read more
1/8/2019 How Trump could use a national emergency to get his border wall, explained
As the partial government shutdown enters its third week with little signs of progress, President Donald Trump has begun to float a new idea for building his border wall: declaring a national emergency. He could probably do it.
Trump, apparently concerned that any signs of wavering on a wall might cause some erosion of his political base, has taken his rhetoric on how he’ll get the wall to the next level in recent days as Congress appears unwilling to grant $5 billion for the construction of about 200 miles of a barrier at the US-Mexico border. Late last week and through the weekend, he has been talking about the possibility of declaring a national emergency to get the wall project done, though — in typical Trump fashion — he hasn’t been entirely clear on the details of how he sees it playing out. Read more
1/8/2019 FEDERAL SHUTDOWN ALREADY HURTING NJ AMID FEARS OF GROWING IMPACT
Businesses in New Jersey have already been hit by the closure of some government agencies. Paychecks, food stamps and other assistance could be held back if it drags on
An ongoing partial shutdown of the federal government has already caused canceled meetings, delayed permitting and the closure of some facilities at national parks in New Jersey. But concerns are running high that the effects could be more serious and widespread if the political gridlock continues in Washington, D.C. Read more
As the government’s partial shutdown drags on with no clear end in sight, millions of America’s most vulnerable citizens could be left to go hungry.
Come February, the Department of Agriculture, among the nine federal agencies that shut down in December, is warning that it may have to severely cut the nation’s largest food aid program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — commonly referred to as food stamps, the Washington Post reported. Read more
Nearly 39 million people stay fed through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Those 39 million people could be in real trouble if Donald Trump and Senate Republicans don’t agree to end their shutdown and reopen government. Food stamps will be funded through January, but February is a big question mark.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a $3 billion reserve to cover food stamps during a shutdown—but that’s not enough funding for a full month. There might be more of a cushion available, but the USDA isn’t talking. According to a nonprofit manager who works with state agencies that handle SNAP payments, “We can never really get a good handle on reserves. They’re very tight-lipped about it.” And if the state agencies involved are left in the dark, the uncertainty is that much greater for the people who depend on SNAP to put food on the table every day. Read more
“Over the last two years President Trump set the tone from the top in his administration that behaving ethically and complying with the law is optional,” House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings told Politico. House Republicans did just about everything possible to enable that ethic in the Trump era, but the free-for-all is over. Read more
Donald Trump has personally led two negotiations with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. During the first one in late December, he declared that he would be “proud” to shut down the government over his precious border wall. During the second one last week, Trump threatened the shutdown could last for “months or even years” and later bragged to reporters that he “absolutely” said that.
But now that nearly 1 million federal workers are furloughed or working without pay, the national parks have become literal wastelands, and airport chaos is ensuing, Trump’s getting skittish and wants his aides to find him a way out of this gigantic mess, according to the Wall Street Journal.
During a private meeting with aides at Camp David on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he wanted them to come up with a resolution to the shutdown fight that would reopen the government without him appearing to have capitulated to Democrats, Read more
1/6/2019 Trump Cannot Build His Wall By Declaring a “State of Emergency.”
In the latest manifestation of head banging against wall temper tantrums, Trump has shutdown the government over wall funding and threatened to go one unconstitutional and impeachable step further. Trump is threatening to declare a “state of emergency” and build his wall under that authority. Having promised the American people that Mexico would pay for the wall Trump is now threatening to declare a “state of emergency” to compel the American taxpayer to pay for the wall. Read more
As Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi emerged from a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump, they made it clear that any progress in dealing with him was limited to “a better understanding of positions.” When it comes to actually ending the government shutdown, it fell to Schumer to deliver the terms from the White House: Trump is willing to shut down the government for “months or years” until he gets what he wants.
Trump then appeared to confirm that he did say this. And that he is “prepared” to keep the government shut down as long as it takes to get what he wants. Read more
1/4/2019 Homelessness and Housing Affordability Connection
Renters on Bottom Rung of Rental Ladder Risk Falling Into Homelessness if Rents Increase Even Slightly
Communities where people spend more than 32 percent of their income on rent can expect a more rapid increase in homelessness. This trend is according to new Zillow-sponsored research on the size and root causes of the nation’s homelessness challenge.
The research also estimates that the scale of homelessness nationwide has been under-counted by roughly 115,000 people, or 20 percent. Read more
1/4/2019 MASSIVE HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS MERGER SEEKS TO INTEGRATE MENTAL, PHYSICAL CARE
The joining of Hackensack Meridian Health and Carrier Clinic reflects an attempt to jettison a fragmented approach to the care of patients with multiple needs
Two of New Jersey’s leading healthcare institutions have joined forces in a partnership designed to expand access to addiction care and strengthen the behavioral health system. Read more
1/3/2019 Pelosi invites Trump to give State of the Union on Jan. 29
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just hours after reclaiming the speaker’s gavel, formally invited President Donald Trump on Thursday to give his second State of the Union address.
“In the spirit of our Constitution, I invite you to deliver your State of the Union address before a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, January 29, 2019 in the House Chamber,” Pelosi wrote in her letter to the president on Thursday evening. Read more
1/3/2019 Trump makes surprise appearance in briefing room to defend the shutdown
President Donald Trump made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room on Thursday, offering a vigorous defense of his demands for billions in border wall funding that has resulted in a prolonged government shutdown.
Trump insisted on the necessity of a physical barrier on the southern border, and was flanked by border patrol officers who also said a physical wall would help stop the flow of undocumented immigrants from coming across the border.
1/3/2019 Congress no closer to deal despite House votes to end shutdown
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday used her first day in power to attempt to end a government shutdown that’s lurching into its third week while denying any new money for President Donald Trump’s border wall.
Just before 10 p.m., the Democrat-controlled House voted to fully fund nearly all of the government agencies that have been shuttered since Dec. 22. The House also voted to temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security. Read more
1/3/2019 Pelosi elected speaker as Dem House takes on Trump
Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker for the 116th Congress on Thursday, cementing her legacy and returning the longtime Democratic leader to the post she first held eight years ago.
Pelosi, the first and only woman to ever wield the speaker’s gavel, received 220 votes out of the 430 votes cast. Fifteen Democrats defected, with twelve casting votes for other people and three voting “present.” As speaker, Pelosi will be the most prominent Democratic foil to President Donald Trump and second in line to the presidency. Read more
1/3/2019The survivor: Nancy Pelosi makes history — again
The past seven speakers of the House have lost their majority, been forced out by their own colleagues, or stepped down amid personal scandal. One of them — Nancy Pelosi — now has a second chance to rewrite her legacy.
On Thursday, the 78-year-old Pelosi will be the first person in more than six decades, since the legendary Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn, to return to the speaker’s chair. Read more
1/3/2019 Goodbye, Paul Ryan: He leaves office with a 12% favorability rating
House Speaker Paul Ryan leaves office today, handing the gavel to Democrat Nancy Pelosi after his own tenure of spiraling deficits, dishonest tax cuts, obsessive and entirely political Obamacare repeal efforts and a general inability to stand up to Donald Trump or in fact anyone else. Read more
1/3/2019 A new day—and a new Congress—is here, and Democrats are officially taking the House!
This is the day—it’s really 2019 now, because it’s the first day of the new Congress. Take a deep breath … and then feel free to let it out in a big cheer. Nancy Pelosi will be making history not just as the first woman speaker (again) but as “the first person in more than six decades, since the legendary Texas Democrat Sam Rayburn, to return to the speaker’s chair after losing it.” Read more
1/3/2019 EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE FOR POOR RESIDENTS WHO HAD BEEN CUT OFF SINCE CHRISTIE YEARS
New law gives up to five years of payments for housing, other needs. Gov. Phil Murphy says ‘more permanent solutions to this challenge’ are necessary i.Creative Commons
New Jersey has sewn up another hole that had opened in its safety net earlier this decade, restoring for at least the next five years emergency housing and other assistance payments to some low-income residents who were threatened with homelessness when aid programs ended several years ago. Read more
1/3/2019 Trump tells Schumer he can’t accept Dems’ offer because he’d ‘look foolish’
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump told a group of lawmakers he can’t accept Democrats’ offer to re-open the government as the two sides negotiate border wall funding because he “would look foolish if I did that,” according to a person familiar with the exchange. Trump met with congressional leadership from both sides of the aisle Wednesday amid an on-going partial government shutdown. Read more
1/2/2019 House Dem majority welcomes first black female floor director
A veteran House Democratic staffer is set to break racial barriers once the House Democrats take power this week.
Shuwanza Goff will be the first African-American woman to serve as floor director, a low-profile but hugely important position in incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) office. Read more
Trump’s excuse for shutting down the federal government is that Congressional Democrats have refused to provide billions of American taxpayer dollars so he can fund an imaginary “border wall,” the purpose of which, in theory, is to keep undocumented immigrants from entering the United States and “stealing” American jobs.
In the process, however, Trump shut down the government’s E-Verify system, used by over 400,000 U.S. employers to verify an employee’s citizenship and eligibility for employment. Read more
1/1/2019 Trump invites congressional leaders to White House for wall briefing
The meeting would be the first time the president has sat down with Democrats since the shutdown started.
President Donald Trump has invited congressional leaders to a Wednesday afternoon briefing on the border wall at the White House, according to three congressional sources familiar with the invitation.
White House officials on New Year’s Eve asked House and Senate leaders in both parties to attend the meeting. The session, which will include a briefing by top Homeland Security Department officials, comes as a partial government shutdown over Trump’s border wall reaches its eleventh day. Read more
1/1/2019 How the shutdown is reaching a breaking point
Many of the departments and agencies hit by the partial shutdown are running out of carryover cash and time to prep checks for the midmonth pay period. Nine federal departments haven’t received a cent in federal funding in more than a week.
They’ve limped along on leftover money, coasted through the quiet days of the holidays and paid staff with checks already prepped before the lapse. Read more
12/27/2018 Congress returns to session — but shutdown drags on
Republicans and Democrats look more dug in now than they were a week ago.
Officially, Congress will be in session on Thursday. Unofficially, lawmakers are doing little to nothing to end a partial government shutdown now in its sixth day — and President Donald Trump isn’t moving, either.
Aides in both parties say they see little reason to believe anyone is budging over the funding of Trump’s border wall, least of all the president himself. Party leaders are now gaming out how the new Democratic House will react to a shutdown affecting a quarter of the government, and there are increasing worries that the funding lapse will persist for weeks, potentially deep into January. Read more
12/27/2018 Trump tries to steer shutdown focus to financial impact for Democrats
President Donald Trump seemingly added a new spin to his usual shutdown rhetoric Thursday, tweeting that its economic impact disproportionately falls on Democrats.
“Have the Democrats finally realized that we desperately need Border Security and a Wall on the Southern Border. Need to stop Drugs, Human Trafficking, Gang Members & Criminals from coming into our Country,” he wrote, before pivoting to a financial — but still partisan — argument. “Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?” Read more
12/26/2018 Federal workforce starts to feel pinch of prolonged shutdown
The partial government shutdown entered its fifth day Wednesday with no signs of a breakthrough and hundreds of thousands of federal workers about to feel the pinch of a protracted standoff.
President Donald Trump and Democratic congressional leaders aren’t currently negotiating directly, according to GOP and Democratic aides. Staff-level discussions are continuing, but there’s no indication that key players are ready to reach an accord. Read more
12/26/2018 Trump says he will do ‘whatever it takes’ to secure funding for border wall
President Donald Trump dug in his heels Wednesday as the partial government shutdown drags on, telling reporters during a trip to Iraq that he would do “whatever it takes” to get a wall at the border with Mexico.
“Whatever it takes. We need a wall,” Trump said in response to questions about when the government would reopen, according to a pool report. “We need safety for our country.” Read more
12/26/2018 Christmas Meltdown Shows Mentally Unfit President.
For a President who in his first year waged a faux war so he could declare victory in the non-existent war against Christmas, Trump turned Grinch this year, and unlike the “real” Grinch he never got better. His crazy tweets sent the stock market plummeting, he challenged the innocence of a 7 year old, and concluded with a bizarre “Christmas message” hate rant involving James Comey. What the pattern all shows is a mentally ill man unfit to serve in the office. Read more
12/25/2018 Trump keeps up drumbeat for border wall
President Donald Trump used a Christmas morning gathering in the Oval Office to reiterate the reasons he insists funding is needed for a border wall, even if it means the federal government will continue to be partially shut down.
“I can’t tell you when the government is going to reopen,“ Trump said, according to pool reports. Read more
Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) “American Housing and Economic Mobility Act,” which proposes to increase funding for the HTF, now has companion legislation in the House of Representatives, introduced by Representatives Cedric Richmond (D-LA), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Barbara Lee (D-CA), and Elijah Cummings (D-MD).
The bill proposes new solutions to the ongoing affordable housing crisis in America by expanding or improving several vital programs, including a major increase in funding to the national Housing Trust Fund (HTF) to build and preserve homes for the lowest income households in America. Read more
Yesterday, the New Jersey State Legislature voted favorably on three of the Housing and Community Network of New Jersey (the Network)’s policy priorities including lifetime emergency assistance! The Network thanks everyone who called and e-mailed their Senators and Assembly members. Read more
12/21/2018 Year-Long CR Would Put Thousands of Families at Risk of Losing Access to Stable Housing
The U.S. Congress has only a day to reach an agreement to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY19. An agreement would avoid a government shutdown before the current stop-gap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), expires on Friday, December 21. The latest news is that Congress has approved a short-term CR until February 8th according to the Washington Post. Read more
12/20/2018 A new Trump rule could take food stamps away from 755,000 people
The USDA wants to toughen SNAP work requirements, but there’s little evidence the program discourages work.
Republicans in Congress could finally get their wish to make it harder for poor people to access food assistance.
“Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, we are taking steps to restore integrity to SNAP,” USDA head Sonny Perdue said in an op-ed Thursday, “and move people toward self-sufficiency.” Read more
12/20/2018 Murphy Sees It as a Year of Achievements, Anticipates Action on Key Priorities
Taking stock at the end of his first year in office, the governor brushes aside the problems, looks back with satisfaction and forward with anticipation. By some accounts, Gov. Phil Murphy’s first year in office ended with a thud instead of a bang. That’s because he followed up a tough budget fight by failing to get his top priorities like a $15 minimum wage and legalized marijuana through the Legislature before the end of the year. Read more
12/20/2018 Trump administration aims to toughen work requirements for food stamp recipients
The Trump administration unveiled a plan Thursday to force hundreds of thousands more Americans to hold jobs if they want to keep receiving food stamps, pursuing through executive powers what it could not achieve in Congress.
The country’s food assistance program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, already requires most adults without dependents to work if they collect food stamps for more than three months in a three-year period. But USDA regulations allow states to waive the requirement in areas with unemployment rates that are at least 20 percent greater than the national rate. Read more
12/20/2018 Chaos in House as battle over wall upends shutdown talks
A last-ditch push for Trump’s wall is complicating efforts to avoid a shutdown
The House Republican caucus was thrown into chaos Thursday as conservatives revolted against a funding bill that includes no new money for President Donald Trump’s border wall.
On the brink of a Christmastime shutdown, House Speaker Paul Ryan is confronting resistance from rank-and-file Republicans, who have begun personally egging on Trump to force a shutdown over the wall. Read more
12/20/2018 Senate passes short-term spending bill to avert shutdown
The bill now goes to the House, where it’s expected to be approved.
The Senate passed a short-term spending bill on Wednesday night to avoid a partial government shutdown, kicking a fight with President Donald Trump over border wall funding until next year.
The legislation was passed by voice vote and will keep the government open until Feb. 8, provided the House will pass it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the Senate will remain in session on Thursday pending House action on the spending bill; on Wednesday evening conservatives in the House urged the rejection of the legislation because it shorts the border wall. Read more
12/20/2018 CR for Federal Budget Extended to February 8th
Year-Long CR Would Put Thousands of Families at Risk of Losing Access to Stable Housing
The U.S. Congress has only a day to reach an agreement to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY19. An agreement would avoid a government shutdown before the current stop-gap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), expires on Friday, December 21. The latest news is that Congress has approved a short-term CR until February 8th according to the Washington Post. Read more
12/20/2018 GoFundMe campaign for border wall aims for a billion (at least)
President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to shut down the government over funding for his border wall. But as the question of money for his campaign proposal once again roils Congress, one man thinks he may have found a solution: Crowd-funding.
Brian Kolfage, a 37-year-old Florida resident who was severely wounded in the Iraq war, has started a GoFundMe campaign to complete Trump’s signature pledge. The campaign has raised over $2 million in the three days since it started, with an overall goal of $1 billion. Read more
The biggest rat to be abandoning the sinking Republican ship is House Speaker Paul Ryan, the would-be wunderkind wonk and most overrated policy-maker in recent memory. He’s leaving now, undoubtedly, to try to get out with the minimum of Trump taint. To that end, he’s spending his remaining days in office in a manner that’s entirely predictable. Instead of contributing to the effort to keep the government from shutting down at the end of the week, he’s polishing his turd of a record with a multi-part video recorded on the taxpayer dime, and with a farewell address at the Library of Congress. Read more
12/19/2018 Ryan’s legacy can’t escape Trump
The retiring House speaker touted a series of accomplishments in his farewell address, but Trump will loom over his tenure. To hear retiring Speaker Paul Ryan tell it, he presided over one of the most productive Congresses in recent history. Tax cuts. Opioids legislation. A fortified military budget.
But as the Wisconsin Republican heads for the exits, the reality is he will be remembered with a far more controversial legacy. Read more
12/19/2018 McConnell moves to avert shutdown disaster
The bill will fund the government through early February
Mitch McConnell moved to bail out Congress and President Donald Trump from an intractable government shutdown impasse, preparing on Wednesday to fund the government into early February and avoid a funding lapse right before the holidays. Read more
12/19/2018 Helping the Helpers: Advocates Want Task Force for Unpaid Caregivers
Whats needed to support family members and others who care for elderly or disabled loved ones?
As nearly one in five New Jerseyans knows well, helping elderly or disabled loved ones with their daily lives — running errands, sorting mail, dressing and feeding, or monitoring complex medical equipment — can take a serious emotional and physical toll over time. Now, pending the say-so of the governor, Trenton is about to explore what more it can do to help such caregivers. Read more
12/19/2018 Obamacare ruling could cut deeper than many Americans realize
From free mammograms to no lifetime limits, the health law has changed coverage in ways that are popular. A new court ruling puts that at risk. Millions of middle-class Americans who get health coverage through work have been getting Obamacare benefits for years — whether they know it or not.
And millions of older Americans who rack up big drug costs under Medicare get more financial help through Obamacare — whether they know it or not. Read more
12/18/2018 NJ violated civil rights of psychiatric hospital patients, lawsuit alleges
New Jersey is violating the civil rights of psychiatric patients on a large scale, according to a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of four patients at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital.
Instead of addressing conditions at the Morris County hospital, the 60-page class-action suit claims, government officials created “an atmosphere of terror and retaliation” to intimidate doctors and staff who dared to speak out. Read more
12/18/2018 Trump Foundation to shut down under agreement with New York attorney general
President Donald Trump’s personal charity will shut down and disperse whatever funds it still has under a new agreement announced Tuesday by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood.
The attorney general’s office sued the Trump Foundation in June, alleging the president and several of his children used it for their personal and political benefit. That lawsuit, which seeks millions of dollars in restitution, will continue, even as the foundation agrees to cease existence. Read more
On December 20. 2018, at 7:00 p.m., a group of non-profit agencies and interfaith congregations gathered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Plainfield for the third annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Vigil.
This event, which is open to the public, is held on the eve of the day with the least amount of daylight and the longest night, December 21. This day has been chosen as a time to remember all homeless people who died on the cold streets or living in dangerous abandoned buildings during the past year due to their lack of shelter or care. Read more
12/17/2018 Trump keeps GOP in suspense over shutdown
Senate Republicans are searching for a way out of the impending partial government shutdown. But they are waiting for President Donald Trump to weigh in before making a move, and he appears to be in no rush to help them out.
Roughly one-fourth of the federal government is scheduled to shutter on Friday without action, and Democrats and Trump continue to spar over his border wall. With the House out of town until Wednesday, all eyes are on the Senate GOP majority and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who hates shutdowns. Read more
12/17/2018 Top Republicans struggle to persuade Trump not to shut down the government
Congressional Republicans struggled Monday to find a way to persuade President Trump to back off a public threat to shut down the government over border wall money, staying largely in the dark over the impasse that could halt pay for hundreds of thousands of federal workers by the end of the week. Read more
The only Republican applauding the appalling and ridiculous decision by an extremist federal judge in Texas declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional is Individual 1. The rest of them understand how much this screws them politically. They’re well aware that they lost the 2018 election largely on the issue of health care, and now the ones still in office know they’re on the hook for the promise they made to people that they would preserve all the protections in the ACA, particularly those for people with pre-existing conditions. Read more
12/17/2018 Outgoing House Republicans really don’t care if there’s a shutdown
If there’s going to be a partial government shutdown at the end of the week, most of the blame will be on Individual 1, because he continues to persist in the idea that it will somehow make him more popular. But part of the blame will be on outgoing House Republicans, who really can’t be bothered to show up at work these days. Read more
12/17/2018 Trump says he would work with Democrats on ‘great’ replacement if Obamacare is scrapped
President Donald Trump on Monday predicted that Democrats would work with him in the event that the Affordable Care Act is struck down, echoing promises he’s made in the past that have not come to fruition.
A federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled that without the individual mandate, which Republicans stripped from the law in its tax overhaul last year, former President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement violates the Constitution. Read more
12/17/2018 Democratic Leaders Cancel Vexed Redistricting Vote After Outcry — Now What?
Bowing to a torrent of criticism, legislative leaders have gone back to the drawing board. Grassroots Democrats were among those outraged by the proposal. .The decision by New Jersey’s Democratic legislative leaders to cancel a vote today on their controversial proposal to change the redrawing of districts gives lawmakers the opportunity to craft a new reform plan that embodies many of the provisions sought by grassroots activists and good-government advocates. Read more
12/16/2018 White House prepares for shutdown as both sides dig in over Trump’s wall
The White House and a number of federal agencies have started advanced preparations for a partial government shutdown, as President Trump and congressional Democrats appear unlikely to resolve their fight over a border wall before some government funding lapses at week’s end.
On Sunday, neither side appeared willing to budge from their negotiating positions over funding for Trump’s proposed wall along the border with Mexico. Read more
12/11/2018 How Paul Ryan is selling his food stamp loss
The compromise farm bill is stripped of every controversial proposal the House GOP wanted on food stamps.
House Speaker Paul Ryan is touting the bipartisan farm bill unveiled this week as a win for Republicans by claiming it strengthens work requirements for food stamp recipients — something Ryan has long sought.
There is just one catch: It does no such thing.
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The farm bill is usually a major bipartisan effort that unites urban and rural lawmakers over food stamps and farm subsidies. But in recent years, it has become an ideological platform for conservatives to try to slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Conservatives have lost the battle for a second time since 2014. Read more
12/11/2018 Trump says he’s ‘proud’ to shut down government during fight with Pelosi and Schumer
President Donald Trump clashed sharply with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in a remarkable Oval Office meeting before reporters Tuesday, with the president threatening to shut down the government and the Democrats warning him they will not bend.
In a pitched partisan argument televised for all to see, the GOP president and the House and Senate Democratic leaders traded barbs over Trump’s border wall during what was supposed to be a private negotiating session to keep a large swath of the government from shuttering after Dec. 21. Read more
12/11/2018 Farm bill compromise primed for passage
The compromise farm bill unveiled Monday night avoids partisan minefields on food stamps and commodity policy that would have jeopardized its chances of clearing Congress before the end of the year.
Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees rejected sweeping changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that House Republicans and President Donald Trump had sought, clearing a path for bipartisan support in both chambers. The final bill also sidesteps a Senate attempt to tighten limits on subsidies for wealthier farmers. Read more
12/11/2018 Trump: The border wall ‘will get built,’ by the military if necessary
President Donald Trump pledged Tuesday that his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border “will get built,” threatening to use the military if need be, while claiming that much progress has already been made on the structure.
Trump’s comments come as he is set to meet later in the day with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in an attempt to end a stalemate over border wall funding that threatens to shut down large swaths of the government next week. Read more
On November 27, 2018, Newark Today show, host Michael Hill was joined by Ketlen Alsbrook, Chief of Staff of the Newark Department of Health and Community Wellness, Taiisa Kelly with Monarch Housing Associates, and Richard Uniacke with Bridges Outreach.
Hill’s guests talked about the city’s new year-round shelter initiative while also highlighting city-wide programs and services for those in need during this year’s holiday season. Callers were invited to call in and join the conversation with their questions. Read more
12/10/2018 Why Trump’s public charge rule is a civil rights issue—TODAY is the deadline to fight it
The Trump administration is forcing immigrants make the impossible choice between health care or a green card. Under a new proposed rule, immigrants who apply for or use public benefits like food stamps, Medicaid, and public housing would be denied visas, green cards, and even have grounds to be deported. Read more
12/10/2018 Paul Ryan’s long con
He betrayed his promises and left a legacy of debt and disappointment
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s legacy can be summed up in just one number: $343 billion.
That’s the increase between the deficit for fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2018 — that is, the difference between the fiscal year before Ryan became speaker of the House and the fiscal year in which he retired. Read more
While President Trump’s attention, and the nation’s, has been on the US/Mexico border, his administration has been quietly chugging through the regulatory process with a proposal that would make it extremely difficult for many immigrants to come to the US or receive green cards if they’re deemed likely to use public benefits like food stamps or Medicaid.
But it hasn’t escaped comment — or outrage — at all. Read more
12/7/2018 The Mueller investigation has gotten closer to Donald Trump
What we know — and still don’t know — about the special counsel probe and the president.
The most crucial question in the special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia has yet to be answered: What about the president himself?
Robert Mueller’s investigation has turned up a lot so far. Thirty-three people have been indicted or pleaded guilty. That number now includes five former advisers to Trump. Read more
12/6/2018 The Mueller investigation has gotten closer to Donald Trump
The most crucial question in the special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia has yet to be answered: What about the president himself?
Robert Mueller’s investigation has turned up a lot so far. Thirty-three people have been indicted or pleaded guilty. That number now includes five former advisers to Trump.
And recent news developments suggest that the probe is coming even closer to the president. Already, a leaked draft charging document conspicuously alluded that Roger Stone was in touch with Trump when Stone urged associates to try to get hacked material from WikiLeaks. Read more
12/5/2018 State, National, Enrollment in ACA Marketplace Down Over Last Year
As Trump targets Obamacare, fewer New Jerseyans are signing up for health insurance on the federal marketplace despite price cuts and push by Trenton to bolster enrollments. In other states, it’s worse
Gov. Phil Murphy urges New Jerseyans to enroll in the Affordable Care Act in Elizabeth on Monday.
With just days left to sign up, 16 percent fewer New Jersey residents have sought to enroll in the federal health insurance marketplace that allows them to purchase discounted coverage for 2019, when compared to last year’s statistics. And the Garden State is far from alone. Read more
12/5/2018 Governor Promises Things Will Be Much Better at NJ Transit in 2019
Murphy says 2018 was spent ‘reversing years of negligence’ as he announces initiatives to improve the ‘customer experience’
Gov. Phil Murphy and top state transportation officials are promising to make next year a better one for New Jersey Transit customers after struggling through a difficult first year running one of the nation’s largest mass-transit agencies. Read more
12/4/2018 Homeless Sabbath Events Provide Congregations Opportunity to Show Faith in Action
During the weekend of December 14-16, 2018, multi-faith congregations in Union County, New Jersey will participate in a multi-faith “call to action,” the Third Annual Homeless Sabbath Weekend.
Tap into sites across Union County have reported on both the Homeless Sabbath Weekend and the Homeless Memorial Vigil which will take place on Thursday, December 20, 2018 7 pm at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Plainfield. Read more
12/4/2018 Murphy on Looming ACA Enrollment Deadline: Get Out and Get Coverage
Speaking at library in Elizabeth, governor also fields questions about sexual assault investigation, Honeywell’s decision to move execs to North Carolina. With just 12 days left for New Jersey residents to enroll in the Affordable Care Act, Gov. Phil Murphy didn’t waste words or time yesterday, speaking at the main public library in Elizabeth.
“This is one of dozens of locations … across our state where residents can simply walk in and walk out enrolled in healthcare for 2019,” Murphy said.
“Any New Jersey resident who needs healthcare can simply go to one website, GetCovered.NJ.gov,” he added. Read more
12/3/2018 Making Housing the Priority for Homeless People in NJ — over Treatment or Sobriety
elsewhere in the country. In the three years before he secured his own apartment, Oscar, a Cumberland County man who had long been homeless, was admitted to local hospitals about 300 times and was among the Bridgeton area’s biggest user of EMS services. He also spent at least 80 nights in jail. Read more
12/3/2018 Olive Branch or Stick? — Sweeney Calls on Murphy to ‘Get in a Room’ and Talk
New Jersey’s Democratic leaders are at odds over landmark legislative issues. When will they talk things out?
With the clock ticking down on a couple of landmark legislative issues — legalizing recreational marijuana and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour — Gov. Phil Murphy and Senate President Steve Sweeney continue to disagree over critical details and blame each other for delays in pressing forward with legislation. Read more
11/15/2018 Who Can Solve New Jersey’s Affordable-Housing Conundrum?
Gov. Murphy hasn’t made affordable housing a priority, but he’s giving the closing keynote at the League of Municipalities annual conference, and local leaders —
Affordable housing hasn’t been a top priority for Gov. Phil Murphy during his first year in office, but today he will address a convention of mayors and other local-government leaders who consider it a primary concern. Read more
11/14/2018 Free or Reduced-Cost Health Insurance for a Limited Time Only
It may be tough to get much closer to universal health coverage in New Jersey, but targeted outreach can pay off
It’s open enrollment time again for Obamacare health plans, a good time to take stock of how New Jersey is doing covering the uninsured. In a previous column, I wrote that quick actions by the New Jersey Legislature and Murphy administration led to savings in premiums for this year’s plan offerings in healthcare.gov. While we are nowhere near declaring the problem of healthcare costs solved, it is nearly unheard of to see premiums actually fall, as they did this year. Read more
11/14/2018 Local Law Enforcement to Get New Guidance on ICE Detainer Requests
Amid steep increase in detentions of undocumented immigrants, advocates say NJ’s existing protocol is inadequate in Trump era of heightened enforcement efforts. New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal is giving law enforcement officials new guidance for handling federal detainer requests or inquiring about an immigrant’s legal status, siding with advocates who say the existing protocol has gaps and is inadequate for today’s political climate. Read more
11/13/2018 Parties barrel toward clash over Trump’s border wall
If the two sides can’t come to terms on special counsel Mueller and the border wall, part of the government will shut down. Congress is hurtling toward a brutal fight over government funding centered on a pair of contentious issues: President Donald Trump’s border wall and special counsel Robert Mueller. Read more
11/13/2018 Speaker Coughlin Introduces Anti-Hunger Bill Package
(TRENTON) – Speaker Craig Coughlin today announced the introduction of an anti-hunger bill package which addresses food insecurity and tackles the issue of hunger in New Jersey. The bills specifically address the reduction of food waste and food deserts, helping farmers, the provision of resources and information to the general public and food insecurity among students enrolled in public institutions.Read more
11/13/2018 NJ’s New Congressional Delegation: Younger, Greener, Not as Wealthy
The Garden State’s new representatives are very different from those they are replacing
New Jersey’s congressional delegation got not only much bluer as a result of last Tuesday’s elections, but it also got younger, greener and poorer.
Voters likely elected four new representatives — the results for the 3rd district seat in Burlington and Ocean counties has not been called, pending provisional ballots. But it’s unlikely Republican incumbent Tom MacArthur will be able to overcome the 3,427 deficit he had as of Saturday. New blood bringing fresh views to Congress was at least part of the winning candidates’ appeal to voters and they are very different from those they are replacing. Read more
11/12/2018 2018 General Election Results: Senate, House, Special Legislative, And County
2018 General Election Results
(Winners in Bold/Incumbents noted with *)
Come January, New Jersey will be as blue as it’s been since before people looked at states run by Democrats and Republicans as blue and red.
The governor is a Democrat.
The two U.S. Senators are Democrats.
It looks like 11 of the 12 Jerseyans in the U.S. House will be Democrats (pending the vote counting in 3rd district, where the Democrat has claimed victory).
That’s the lowest total for Jersey House Republicans since the 1912 election – the same year Fenway Park opened and the Titanic sunk. Read more
11/9/2018 Chris Christie on short list to be Trump’s next attorney general, reports say
Former Gov. Chris Christie is on President Donald Trump‘s short list of less than a half-dozen people to be the nation’s next attorney general, according multiple reports..
New Jersey’s 55th governor has coveted the position. Now that Trump has pushed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions out of as the country’s chief law enforcement officer Wednesday, Christie’s name has emerged as a possible replacement. Read more
11/9/2018 Murphy Signs Law Banning ‘Ghost Guns’ In Latest Effort to Control Firearms in NJ
Prohibition on homemade, 3D-printed and other ‘ghost guns’ is latest step in governor’s campaign to strengthen already tough gun-control posture. Moving closer to his goal of giving New Jersey the toughest gun-control laws in the nation, Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday signed a prohibition on “ghost guns” — firearms that are homemade, 3D printed or otherwise undetectable by security scanners. Read more
11/8/2018 Here’s What Trump Will Do With His Big New Senate Majority
After expanding their Senate majority despite losing the House on Tuesday, Republicans are poised to reshape the federal judiciary for a generation—with implications for everything from arbitration to contraception to climate change. Read more
11/8/2018 Trump has eroded important democratic institutions. Will Democratic wins change that?
The Democratic victories in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night have obvious policy consequences. But it could have lasting implications for the health of America’s democracy too. Read more
11/8/2018 NJ Democrats Itching to Test Their Strength in D.C. After Close to a Clean Sweep
The party hasn’t had results this good in more than a century. Republicans must figure out how to recover from their big losses in Tuesday’s elections .Voter enthusiasm and high turnout among traditional Democrats, suburban voters and those looking to check the president are what turned New Jersey blue on Tuesday as the party won every seat reasonably within its grasp. Read more
11/7/2018 Republicans will hold on to their Senate majority
Buoyed by a favorable battlefield, Republicans have held on to their Senate majority.
The enthusiasm that drove Democrats to take the House wasn’t enough to overcome the party’s disadvantage in the Senate map, with 10 Senate Democrats running for reelection in states that Donald Trump won in 2016. Read more
11/7/2018 New Jersey’s Rising Blue Tide Raises the Boats of Most Democratic Candidates
Bob Menendez returns to Senate for third term, while Sherrill, Malinowski, and Van Drew all deliver victory speeches
It may not qualify as a “blue wave,” but New Jersey did its part Tuesday in returning Democrat Bob Menendez to the Senate and flipping at least three congressional seats from red to blue. Political observers said the overarching issues were the dislike of President Donald Trump and a lopsided Democratic vote from women, youth, and people of color. Read more
11/7/2018 The midterm elections revealed that America is in a cold civil war
This is a country fundamentally split in two, with no real room for compromise
The 2018 midterm elections were a significant victory for the Democratic Party. Retaking the House blocks the Republicans from passing new laws and gives Democrats the ability to conduct real investigations into President Donald Trump’s multifarious scandals.
But while the immediate post-election battle may be in the House of Representatives, the midterms also revealed that the war for the soul of America is only just getting started. Read more
11/6/2018 We May Not Learn Results of Several Close Races by End of Tonight — or for Days
County clerks say recent changes in electoral law have already caused confusion for some voters, are likely to cause more, and could delay returns in close races. For the first time in a number of years in New Jersey, it’s likely that the winner of one or more of the high-profile races — U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s seat and House races in the close 3rd, 7th and 11th districts — will not be known by the end of the night. That’s because polls are showing that a handful of congressional races are very close and a recent law changed the process for mail-in ballotin. Read more
11/6/2018 5 things to watch for in New Jersey on Election Day
New Jersey, which typically gets little attention on Election Day, is host to some of the nation’s marquee races in Tuesday’s midterm elections.
The Democrats’ hopes of taking over the House of Representatives could hinge on New Jersey, where four of the state’s five Republican-held House seats are in danger of flipping. The state could end up with its smallest Republican delegation to Congress since before World War I. Read more
11/5/2018 Post-Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, N.J. Jews and Muslims seek stronger bonds
The day after 11 Jewish people were shot dead at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Afia Yunus — a prominent South Jersey Muslim American — spoke at an interfaith community vigil in Pennsauken.
“The moment I heard [the news], my heart broke,” she said, standing before several hundred people at the Camden County Boathouse in Cooper River Park. Read more
11/5/2018 The Pentagon is resisting Trump’s most controversial military requests for the border
The military won’t do everything Trump wants them to.
US-Mexico border is coming from a surprising place: the Pentagon.
When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requested troops at the border, it asked the military to perform emergency law enforcement functions like crowd control. But the Pentagon rejected that request in late October in part because it felt active-duty troops don’t have the legal authority to arrest individuals on US soil. Read more
11/5/2018 Migrant caravan? NJ voters are more concerned about health care and the economy
Preserving “pre-existing” condition mandate a top priority
As President Donald Trump talked up his plans to deploy 15,000 troops to confront a “national emergency” at the Mexican border, Democratic activist Amber Pallante walked through a Burlington County neighborhood late last month, worried about the closer-to-home threat of losing health insurance. Read more
New Jersey’s fiery U.S. Senate race has largely involved Democratic incumbent Robert Menendez and Republican challenger Bob Hugin trading biting attack ads, personal insults, and criticism of each other’s character and careers.
But where do the two candidates stand on key issues? How would the opponents — who are locked in a tight race — approach immigration and health care? What about the Gateway Tunnel? And do they think marijuana should be legal? Read more
11/2/2018 Once Reluctant to Speak Out, an Energized Obama Now Calls Out His Successor
MIAMI — Former President Barack Obama’s voice has a way of lifting into a high-pitched tone of astonishment when he talks about his successor, almost as if he still cannot believe that the Executive Mansion he occupied for eight years is now the home of President Trump.
For most of the last two years, he stewed about it in private, only occasionally speaking out. But as he hit the campaign trail this fall, Mr. Obama has vented his exasperation loud and often, assailing his successor in a sharper, more systematic way arguably than any former president has done in three-quarters of a century. Read more
11/2/2018 Senate Race Has Been One for the Ages: Nasty, Noisome, Negative
Republican challenger Bob Hugin has spent millions of his own money to unleash savage ads against Sen. Bob Menendez who has fired back on a far smaller budget
Next Tuesday will end what ranks among the nastiest campaigns in New Jersey history, with a self-funding millionaire launching an incessant barrage of negative ads — including one deemed false by several fact checkers — against the incumbent U.S. Senator, who has done his best to fire back on a more limited budget. Read more
11/2/2018 Donald Trump’s race-baiting closing argument going into Election Day, explained
There’s no subtlety in President Donald Trump’s closing message to voters: Be very scared of brown people in this country.
Days from a midterm election, where Democrats look poised to take back control of at least one chamber of Congress, Trump unveiled a modern-day Willie Horton ad — the TV spot used as a textbook example of a racialized attack that George H.W. Bush used against Michael Dukakis 30 years ago. Read more
11/1/2018 Legislature to look into viral outbreak that led to 10 deaths at N.J. pediatric facility
The state Senate is planning a hearing to look into what factors may have contributed to the deadly viral outbreak at a pediatric healthcare facility that has so far claimed the lives of ten children, and continues to grow.
Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, who chairs the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee, said many questions need to be answered in the adenovirus outbreak at the Wanaque Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Haskell. Read more
11/1/2018 ‘Consider it a rifle’: Trump says migrants throwing rocks will be treated as armed
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the U.S. military would treat any rocks or stones being thrown by asylum-seeking migrants slowly heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border as firearms.
“I will tell you, anybody throwing stones, rocks, like they did to Mexico and the Mexican military, Mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico, we will consider that a firearm,” Trump said during an announcement that his administration next week would release a “comprehensive” executive action on immigration that will include changes to the asylum-seeking process Read more
10/31/2018 10 House races where health care could swing the 2018 election
All the different ways health care is playing in the 2018 midterms
Even with Obamacare repeal in the rearview mirror (for now), the defining issue for many voters in 2018 is health care.
No issue has mobilized Democrats more, after Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act last year. Polling from the Pew Research Center, Kaiser Family Foundation, and others has shown health care is arguably the top issue for voters this year. It has become a staple of Democrats’ campaigns across the country — from progressive enclaves where running on single-payer health care boosts turnout to red-tinted states that voted for Trump, where vulnerable Democrats are leaning into the protections for preexisting conditions embedded in Obamacare. Read more
10/31/2018 The US is sending 5,000 troops to the border. Here’s what they can and can’t do.
They can fly aircraft and lend support, but they can’t detain anybody — and more may be coming.
President Donald Trump ordered an additional 5,200 troops to “harden” the US-Mexico border before the so-called caravan of migrants from Central America seeking asylum and a new life in the US arrives. The group of about 4,000 migrants from mostly Honduras and Guatemala is currently 1,000 miles and weeks away from the US border. Read more
10/31/2018 Will Republicans really protect patients with pre-existing conditions?
The midterm elections are less than a week from now, and polls show that large majorities of Americans want to keep the Affordable Care Act provisions that protect people with pre-existing conditions from being turned down because of their medical history (75 percent) or charged higher premiums (72 percent). It’s no wonder then that politicians are trying to outdo each other in promising to never, ever take away such protections. Read more
10/31/2018 NJ Officials Push to Grow ACA Enrollment and Thwart Trump Efforts to Gut Law
Governor kicks off campaign to sign up more low-income New Jerseyans for health insurance, starting tomorrow
The state will invest more than $800,000 in a campaign to expand insurance coverage among low-income residents as part of New Jersey’s first administration-led push to educate the public about their options under the federal Affordable Care Act. Read more
10/31/2018 These NJ Houses Seats Probably Are as Safe as Houses for Democrats
Nothing in the polls suggests Republicans, or any other challengers, are going to take these seats away from the incumbents
Democrats are making a run at a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and they are looking at New Jersey as a firewall, with the state likely to add at least two seats to its seven-to-five majority, with two others in play. Read more
10/31/2018 Lawmakers OK Committee to Investigate Administration’s Hiring Practices
The Legislature has given the go-ahead for a special committee to investigate the Murphy administration’s hiring practices. Resolutions were passed in both chambers Monday that granted subpoena power for the investigation. Read more
10/30/2018 NJ unveils website, creates partnerships for health care open enrollment
New Jersey has launched an Affordable Care Act public awareness campaign with a new website to help residents sign up for health care. The unveiling came at the War Memorial where nonprofits from across the state came to Trenton for ACA training.
“We’re going to prove that working together we will protect New Jersey,” said Gov. Phil Murphy. Read more
On October 26, 2018, the Anti-Poverty Network (APN) of New Jersey’s Annual Poverty Summit featured welcoming remarks from New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA) Deputy Commissioner Robert Long on their work to provide affordable housing.
Long shared DCA’s priorities around housing and told the audience that the Governor Murphy and Lieutenant Governor Oliver administration supports the mission of APN to end poverty in New Jersey. Read more
10/30/2018 Speaker Ryan: ‘You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order’
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday broke with President Donald Trump on whether an executive order could deny a constitutional guarantee of citizenship to babies born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents. Read more
10/30/2018 Trump: the media never blamed Obama for the Charleston church shooting
Trump is upset that the media linked him to the pipe bomb mailer but didn’t link Obama to the church shooting.
President Donald Trump’s latest evidence that the media is treating him unfairly: Headlines didn’t blame President Barack Obama for the Charleston church shooting, as he’s been blamed for the pipe bomb mailer.
“I was in the headline of the Washington Post — my name associated with this crazy bomber, ‘Trump bomber’ or something,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News aired on Monday. He elaborated, “They didn’t do that with President Obama with the church — the horrible situation with the church.” Read more
A group of progressive Jewish leaders has a message for President Donald Trump in the wake of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue over the weekend that left 11 people dead: Stay away until you fully denounce white nationalism and stop targeting minorities, immigrants, and refugees. Read more
10/29/2018 Trump’s troop deployment to the border comes under fire
The Pentagon’s decision to send 5,200 active-duty troops to beef up the Mexican border — just days before the midterm elections — drew swift criticism Monday from some former military and national security officials who accused President Donald Trump of abusing the military for partisan gain. Read more
10/29/2018 Gab, the social media platform favored by the alleged Pittsburgh shooter, explained
The social media history of the man accused of killing 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday was littered with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and rants about Jews.
Many of these posts were on Gab — a social media networking site created as the “free speech” alternative to Twitter, and where the shooter’s profile read “jews are the children of satan.” Read more
10/28/2018 Cancer-Free Watson Coleman Undergoing Treatment Plan After Pro
SCOTCH PLAINS – U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12) received a special rousing applause this morning at the Union County Democratic Committee breakfast.
Governor Phil Murphy led the charge for the congresswoman when she appeared – bald – at Pantagis in the middle of his speech.
The governor interrupted himself to pay homage to Watson Coleman and welcome her.
The crowd obliged.
Later, she explained that she is undergoing chemo therapy. Read more
10/27/2018 Trump: ‘This was an anti-Semitic attack at its worst’
President Donald Trump repeatedly denounced hate-based violence Saturday in public remarks delivered in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 people dead on the Jewish Sabbath.
At an evening rally in southern Illinois, the president said the “monstrous” attacks “require all of us working together to extract the hateful poison of anti-Semitism from our world. This was an anti-Semitic attack at its worst. The scourge of anti-Semitism cannot be ignored, cannot be tolerated, and it cannot be allowed to continue. Read more
10/26/2018 DOE fires employee who poked fun at special education students
A state Department of Education employee, once suspended for making fun of special education students when she was a teacher, was fired Friday as reporters began inquiring about her hiring by the Murphy administration earlier this year.
Maryellen Cervenak was hired in July to be the acting director of the department’s Professional Learning Network at an annual salary of $70,000, spokeswoman Carmen Cusido said. Read more
10/26/2018 Newt Gingrich just revealed what the Kavanaugh fight was really about
The former Republican House speaker suggested Kavanaugh would help stop the release of Trump’s tax returns if Democrats subpoena them.
Republicans fought tooth and nail to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in spite of serious allegations of sexual misconduct in his past (which he denies) and questions of his character and truthfulness under oath. Read more
10/26/2018 Bob Menendez’s corruption case is making Democrats nervous about a safe Senate seat
Democratic Sen. Menendez is in a close race in New Jersey. What does that mean for Democrats taking back the Senate?
Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) seat — normally considered safely in a Democratic stronghold — is now a toss-up, according to the latest ratings from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
The race between longtime incumbent Menendez and Republican Bob Hugin appears to be narrowing with Menedez’s recent corruption trial on voters’ minds. The corruption trial happened about a year ago, and ended in with a hung jury and a mistrial. Read more
10/26/2018 ICE Arrests of Immigrants in NJ — Essex County in Nation’s Top Ten
Essex County is among hot spots in the country for arrests of immigrants by ICE agents. Sharp rise in New Jersey under Trump administration .Gov. Phil Murphy has taken a few small steps toward making New Jersey a “sanctuary state,” as he promised during his campaign. Yet Essex County ranks among the 10 counties in the country with the most arrests of immigrants not already in police custody in the first eight months of last year made by U.S. immigration. Read more
10/26/2018 Landmark Opioid Bill Feels Unfinished Without Full Repeal of IMD Exclusion
Restriction limits access for Medicaid enrollees to life-saving community-based treatment and recovery assistance
With overwhelming bipartisan support, both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives recently passed legislation aimed at combating the devastating opioid epidemic that our country is currently facing — the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act. The bill, a comprise agreed upon between the Senate and House, represents the most comprehensive action ever taken to fight the raging opioid epidemic. It is expected that the President will sign the final bill into law. Read more
U.S. Representative Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) has introduced H.R. 7054, the “Housing Innovation Act,” which would establish an Office of Housing Innovation within the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD.)
The new office would focus on “developing new approaches for increasing and diversifying the supply of housing and for meeting the challenges of housing shortages, housing affordability, and traffic congestion, and for other purposes.” Read more
10/25/2018 In Only Debate Menendez, Hugin Swing Hard but Not Quite as Hard as Their TV Ads
Incumbent senator and Republican challenger take shots, make unexpected apologies, even agree on some issues — and avoid a handshake. At the first and only debate this election season of the two Bobs running for the U.S. Senate, both men repeated the well-worn ethics charges about one another that have dominated the campaign, but they talked substantively on a number of issues and even agreed, if only partially, on a few, including immigration and healthcare. Read more
10/25/2018 Trump called for unity in the wake of bomb attempts — then blamed the media
President Donald Trump sounded more somber than usual as he kicked off a Mosinee, Wisconsin, rally on Wednesday. It didn’t take him long to turn a call for unity in the face of political violence into a jab at the media and an allusion to Democratic “mobs.” Read more
10/24/2018 Trump condemns potential explosives sent to Clinton, Obama, CNN as ‘despicable acts’
The president also said a major federal investigation was underway.
Authorities are investigating potential explosives sent to CNN and liberal political figures, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire donor George Soros, as the White House on Wednesday denounced the “terrorizing acts.” Read more
10/24/2018 Let’s Be Real, Scandal Investigation Will Freeze Trenton
Select committee examination of Murphy administration’s hiring practices will overshadow all else
Despite repeated assurances from the Democratic legislative leadership that business as usual will prevail while the investigation into the hiring practices of the Murphy administration goes forward, the odds of timely approval of significant items on the governor’s agenda are long, indeed. Read more
10/22/2018 Trump and G.O.P. Candidates Escalate Race and Fear as Election Ploys
President Trump on Monday sharply intensified a Republican campaign to frame the midterm elections as a battle over immigration and race, issuing a dark and factually baseless warning that “unknown Middle Easterners” were marching toward the American border with Mexico. Read more
10/22/2018 Trump blames Mexico and Democrats for migrant caravan
President Donald Trump blamed the Mexican police and military, as well as Democrats in the United States, for failing to block a caravan of migrants trekking to the southern U.S. border, labeling it a “National Emergy” [sic] in a series of tweets on Monday. Read more
10/18/2018 State Officials: Undoing Christie Move Was Good for Patients, Services
Commissioners say reorganization of mental-health and addiction services benefits patients and providers alike
Oversight of community-based behavioral health services is back where it belongs, according to New Jersey officials, and the restructured system is working better to support local providers and ensure patients in state psychiatric hospitals are getting the treatment and other services they need. Read more
10/18/2018 New Push to Expand Emergency Access to Lifesaving Medicines
Diabetic’s near-death experience helps make case for allowing pharmacies to dispense a month’s worth of meds, even without valid prescription. When an expired prescription prevented Jordan Reinhart from getting the insulin he needed at a Woodbridge drugstore one Sunday morning earlier this month, he went home empty-handed. The next morning, the 27-year-old was admitted to intensive care with a potentially life-threatening complication. Read more
10/17/2018 Commission to Investigate Administration’s Actions in Sexual-Assault Case
Legislative group will also review government hiring practices, conduct of background checks, and how criminal justice system handles allegations of sex offenses. A special bipartisan legislative commission will investigate the hiring and retention of a former high-level New Jersey official accused of sexually assaulting another state official while the two worked on the Murphy for Governor campaign last year. Read more
10/16/2018 Joint legislative committee to investigate administration’s hiring of Alvarez
The state Senate and Assembly will convene a joint committee to investigate Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration’s hiring of Albert J. Alvarez as chief of staff to the state’s Schools Development Authority, despite the knowledge that Alvarez had been accused of sexual assault in 2017. Read more
10/16/2018 The state of the battle for the House of Representatives, explained
Republicans are playing whack-a-mole in their struggle to keep the chamber.
Three weeks before the 2018 midterms, more than a dozen Republican-held House seats appear to have tipped toward Democrats — and dozens more are in play too, according to polls and expert race ratings. Meanwhile, only a handful of Democrat-held seats appear to be in danger of flipping to the GOP. Read more
10/16/2018 GOP plan to get Americans off food stamps puts 4 million children and seniors at risk
Republican efforts to make it harder for low-income Americans to qualify for government social programs could jeopardize the food supply of more than 4 million children and seniors, and potentially leave 22 million people without health insurance, according to a report released Monday by the Brookings Institution. Read more
10/16/2018 Governor Responds to Questions about Handling of Sexual-Assault Charge
Hours before leaving on an overseas economic mission, Murphy announces independent investigation into his administration’s hiring of a man accused of sexual assault. Gov. Phil Murphy is not changing his plan to spend the next nine days traveling overseas for a long-scheduled economic mission even as his administration has been rocked by a sexual-assault scandal that is still developing. Read more
10/15/2018 Role of Rapid Re-housing in Responding to Homelessness
NJ Rapid Re-housing Uses EA Funds to Provide Case Management to Households in Housing Receiving TRA
Rapid re-housing is a short-term, crisis response intervention intended to minimize a household’s time spent homeless. The approach aims to help people exit homelessness and stabilize in housing as quickly and efficiently as possible.
It provides housing search services, short-term financial assistance (e.g., help paying rent and move-in costs), and case management services. Research on rapid re-housing is still emerging. Read more
10/15/2018 Healthcare Costs Continue to Rise in NJ, Outpacing National Increase
Although record numbers of New Jerseyans now have insurance coverage, the price of healthcare remains a major difficulty for families and small businesses
Far fewer people are being admitted to New Jersey hospitals in recent years, with improvements in medical care and a growth in less-costly outpatient options. But, with the price of inpatient care escalating by nearly 40 percent over four years, spending on this category continues to climb. Read more
Shelterforce reminds us in its feature “The Answer” that nonprofits can get out the vote among their residents, clients and staff. And now is the time to make those final pushes around voter registration in New Jersey. The deadline to register to vote in New Jersey is Tuesday, October 16, 2018.Click here for the application to register to vote in New Jersey. Read more
10/12/2018 Clergy Urge Governor, Lawmakers to Raise Minimum Wage in NJ to $15
With politicians seeming to have become bogged down on issue, religious coalition expresses urgency about addressing Garden State’s widening wage gap. The campaign to lift the state minimum wage to $15 has broadened to include a large coalition of religious leaders who are calling on Gov. Phil Murphy and legislative leaders to pass a rate hike this year. Read more
10/11/2018 New Jersey is pushing one of the strictest plastics bans in the nation. But is it enough?
This is the first installment in “The War on Plastic,” an on-going series that details the plastic pollution problem in New Jersey and efforts to curb it that could change the way you eat, drink and shop.
Try to think of something in your life that doesn’t involve plastics.
Chances are, you won’t be able to. Plastic is everywhere, from food containers to your smart phone to the plumbing in your home. Read more
10/11/2018 Trump is separating an unknown number of families at the border for “fraud”
The Trump administration has separated more families at the US-Mexico border than it’s previously admitted — including untold numbers that were never officially counted as “separations” because Border Patrol agents claimed the people they were separating weren’t actually families. Read more
Tuesday is the final day to register to vote in New Jersey and have your say in who New Jersey sends to Congress.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., faces a challenge from Republican Bob Hugin, and all 12 House seats are on the ballot. Several of those seats could flip from red to blue and help Democrats retake the House. Read more
10/11/2018 More than 100,000 New Voters in NJ in Recent Months
With the midterm elections looming, twice as many Democrats as Republicans sign up to vote
In a sign of high interest in the midterm elections, New Jersey has seen a big spike in the number of new voter registrations, 110,814 between January and the end of September this year, according to data from the Department of State. Read more
10/11/2018 Why Republicans are suddenly saying they love a central part of Obamacare
Republicans have a preexisting conditions problem in the 2018 midterms, and they know it.
Take the Missouri Senate race. Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley is simultaneously supporting, in his official capacity, a lawsuit to overturn the existing rules to protect preexisting conditions — while also releasing a Senate campaign ad that highlights his commitment to protecting preexisting conditions. Read more
10/11/2018 Has the Kavanaugh Controversy Swayed You to Vote in the Midterms?
The unprecedented confirmation hearings and subsequent swearing-in of the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest member are influencing voter turnout nationally. Will they send you to the polling booth or keep you away? Read more
10/10/2018 How to save the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court faces a legitimacy crisis. Here’s what we can do about it.
With the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Republicans have succeeded in a decades-long effort to capture total control of the judicial branch. While they will surely celebrate this victory, the real loser in this partisan battle is not the other side — it’s the Supreme Court. And without radical reforms to save its legitimacy, the Court may never recover from its transformation into a nakedly partisan institution. Read more
10/10/2018 Poll: Kavanaugh confirmation energizes Democrats more than GOP
Republicans are touting the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as rocket fuel for the GOP grass roots in next month’s midterm elections, but it’s Democrats who appear more energized by the nomination fight, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. Read more
10/9/2018 No Agreement on How to Keep Lid on Health Insurance Costs in NJ
More people in Garden State have access to insurance because of Affordable Care Act but there’s no consensus on how to protect the benefits. New Jersey has made strides in expanding and strengthening health insurance coverage in recent years but protecting those gains and addressing the rising cost of care long-term is going to take more work and stakeholders might not agree on what the next steps should be. Read more
10/8/2018 Racist, anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled across N.J. school
Updated Oct 8, 3:23 PM
Authorities are investigating racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic graffiti found spray-painted on a Union County high school over the weekend.
Dov Ben-Shimon, the chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey, posted photos of the graffiti, sprayed on a brick wall of Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School, to his Facebook Saturday. Read more
10/8/2018 Kavanaugh to hear his 1st arguments as Supreme Court justice
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Supreme Court with a new conservative majority takes the bench as Brett Kavanaugh, narrowly confirmed after a bitter Senate battle, joins his new colleagues to hear his first arguments as a justice.
Kavanaugh will emerge Tuesday morning from behind the courtroom’s red velvet curtains and take his seat alongside his eight colleagues. It will be a moment that conservatives have dreamed of for decades, with five solidly conservative justices on the bench. Read more
10/8/2018 President Trump Signs Continuing Resolution
Continuing Resolution Ends December 7th Opportunity to Urge Your Elected Officials in DC to Fully Fund Affordable Housing. Congress failed to pass a four-bill spending package (“minibus”) that included the FY19 Transportation-HUD (THUD) and Agriculture spending bills, instead passing a stopgap continuing resolution running through December 7, 2018. Read more
10/2/2018 U.S. Rep. Smith Co-Sponsors Housing Credit Bill
Urge His Colleagues from NJ to Join the 174 House Co-Sponsors of HR 1661 the Housing Credit Bill
Over one-third of the House has signed on to support the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act (H.R. 1661.) This bipartisan legislation would make significant strides towards addressing our nation’s severe shortage of affordable rental housing by strengthening the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit). Read more
10/2/2018 Ford demands interview in FBI probe
The FBI is expected to wrap up its time-limited probe of the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh as soon as Wednesday . Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys on Tuesday implored the FBI to interview her and act on investigative leads they have provided for its inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Read more
10/1/2018 Trump takes another shot at Cory Booker, hints at high school groping story
WASHINGTON a For the second time in three days, President Donald Trump went after U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, an opponent of putting Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more
9/28/2018 Kavanaugh closer to Supreme Court with Flake support
Brett Kavanaugh is one big step closer to Senate confirmation on Friday morning, with the Judiciary Committee expected to advance his Supreme Court nomination to the floor after swing-vote Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) announced his support.
The 53-year-old appeals court judge delivered an emotional and defiant defense amid sexual misconduct allegations on Thursday, a showing that successfully rallied many Republicans behind him. Kavanaugh’s next test comes in the Judiciary panel, though Flake’s public support all but ensures the judge will sail to the floor with a positive recommendation. Read more
9/28/2018 NJ Legislature Unanimously Approves Tougher Sexual Harassment Policy
New policy specifies mandatory anti-harassment training for lawmakers, applies to staff, lobbyists, journalists — virtually all those doing business in State House. State Sen. Loretta Weinberg addresses yesterday’s press conference.
On a day that much of the nation spent time listening to U.S. Senate testimony from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, New Jersey lawmakers introduced a stricter anti-harassment policy of their own. Ford testified before the Judiciary committee about her recollection of a sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers. Read more
9/27/2018 GOP governors call for delaying Kavanaugh vote
Four Republican governors have called for the Senate to take its time with or even forgo a vote on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court ahead of a hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill to examine sexual assault allegations against him.
Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, John Kasich of Ohio, Larry Hogan of Maryland and Phil Scott of Vermont are part of a small faction of Republicans who urged caution over three public allegations that have come to light since Kavanaugh’s July 9 nomination, even as the majority of their colleagues in the Senate have argued for pushing through the process. Read more
9/26/2018 Lawmakers Plan to Ban Plastic Carryout Bags, Straws, Food Containers
Adding a 10-cent fee on paper bags, according to proponents, should encourage consumers to switch to environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic
The state is looking to adopt one of the nation’s most far-reaching bills to address pollution caused from plastic waste.
New Jersey lawmakers have drafted a bill to ban single-use carryout plastic bags but now want to extend the prohibition to plastic straws and polystyrene food containers. Read more
9/26/2018 GOP anger over Kavanaugh allegations boils ahead of hearing
Three Republican senators have been his most aggressive enforcers — and appear most at risk of looking dismissive of Christine Blasey Ford.
Lndsey Graham complained that Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers are making him out to be “Bill Cosby.” Orrin Hatch blasted “phony” accusations in The New Yorker. And John Cornyn urged the Senate to get on with a confirmation vote before more “reckless” allegations are lodged against the Supreme Court nominee. Read more
9/25/2018 State Taps National Expert to Monitor Troubled Bellwether Homes
Experienced ombudsman hired at provider’s expense to review care, services, staffing, and accountability — among other issues
New Jersey has picked a nationally recognized leader to monitor the state’s largest provider of group homes and services for disabled individuals, Bellwether Behavioral Health, a facility that became the subject of news reports regarding abuse and neglect of its residents. Read more
9/24/2018 Are you registered to vote in the 2018 election?
To see if you are registered to vote in the county you live in check this page of Elections.NJ.gov.
You can register to vote in New Jersey if you are:
- A citizen of the United States (includes those born in Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands). Read more
9/24/2018 Kavanaugh drama rattles GOP support
Senate Republicans have gone from confidently predicting the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to a new message: It all comes down to Thursday. Read more
9/24/2018 Democrats rally on behalf of Kavanaugh’s accusers
With the nation riveted on sexual assault and harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh six Democratic state senators in Trenton Monday rallied on behalf of the two women accusers.
“We have to raise our voice and say that the person they want on the highest court in the land, he will not be there. We will not back down,” said Sen. Nia Gill. Read more
9/24/2018 Kavanaugh tells Senate he won’t withdraw
A defiant Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday afternoon that he “will not be intimidated into withdrawing” his nomination amid sexual misconduct allegations.
A day after the New Yorker published an article Sunday night laying out a new accusation, Kavanaugh told the panel he is facing “smears, pure and simple” and reiterated his desire to testify on Thursday about a sexual assault claim made by Christine Blasey Ford. Read more
9/24/2018 New Federal and State Funds to Help Anti-Addiction Fight in Garden State
- The money will go for prevention and treatment of opioid addiction. More than 2,000 New Jersey residents have died this year of drug-related causes. New Jersey will receive more than $30 million in new federal funding to expand its work to prevent and address opioid addiction, including more support for programs to help some of the most vulnerable patients connect with proven clinical treatments. Read more
9/21/2018 Now is the Time to Dig out Segregation at its Roots and Achieve Fair Housing
On September 17, 2018, Tom Angotti wrote the blog post in Shelterforce “Fair Housing at 50: At the Root, It’s Still Race Over Place.” Agnotti writes about how in 2018, at the 50th anniversary of the Kerner Commission’s report, that the United States’ cities and towns are still as segregated as they were fifty years ago. Read more
Both chambers of Congress continue to negotiate a final deal on a four-bill spending package (“minibus”) that includes the FY19 Transportation-HUD (THUD) and Agriculture spending bills. Read more
9/19/2018 Republicans ‘duck and cover’ on pre-existing conditions
GOP candidates can’t neutralize attacks over Obamacare’s most popular protections. Republicans are struggling to convince voters they will protect people with pre-existing conditions as Democrats trying to build a blue wave for November pound them for threatening to take away sick people’s health care. Read more
9/19/2018 Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly Center of NJ’s Affordable Housing and Homelessness Debate
On September 10, 2018, NJ Spotlight reported on Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly in article entitled, “The man at the center of New Jersey’s affordable housing debate,” and his commitment to ending homelessness. Read more
9/19/2018 Momentum for State to Buy Foreclosed Homes, Turn Into Affordable Housing
Similar measures failed repeatedly under Gov. Christie, but proponents optimistic his successor will look favorably on plan to remake thousands of bank-owned homes . New Jersey would buy up foreclosed homes and turn them into affordable housing to address two long-standing problems in the state, under legislation that has begun moving through the Legislature. Read more
9/18/2018 Obamacare lawsuit boosts Democrats in state AG races
Democrats believe they have their best chance in years to flip crucial state attorney general seats by trumpeting the same message that drew furious protesters to town halls and to the polls last year: Republicans are trying to take away your health care. Read more
9/12/2018 What Do You Want to Know about Medicaid in NJ? New Website Has Answers
Data Dashboard, open to all, is aimed at making information more accessible and should help with decisions about allocating funds
Healthcare advocates, policy organizations, government officials, and curious patients can better explore public data related to New Jersey’s Medicaid program, thanks to a website the state has established to improve the transparency and operation of the system. Read more
9/12/2018 What we don’t know about Bernie’s favorite healthcare idea.
Since Bernie Sanders made “Medicare-for-all” a central plank of his wildfire presidential campaign, support for a once-fringe idea has exploded. Democratic senators with eyes on the 2020 presidential contest – including Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris – have conspicuously lined up as co-sponsors of the “Medicare-for-all” legislation that Sanders introduced last year; a similar proposal in the House has 123 co-sponsors. All of those politicians are Democrats, but among voters, support appears to cross the aisle: A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that “Medicare-for-all” was supported by 70 percent of American adults, including a slight majority of Republicans. Read more
9/12/2018 Q&A: The last time America tried to fix Medicare
In the late 1990s, dire forecasts showed that Medicare, the popular health program for Americans over 65, would go bankrupt in a decade. Congress seemed incapable of making hard choices about what to do next. And a president embroiled in a growing scandal was tacking away from the center and toward his compromise-averse base. Read more
9/12/2018 Medicare’s cost surprise: It’s going down.
One of the best-kept secrets in American health care might be that Medicare spending — in important ways — is going down.
If that surprises you, it’s probably because you’ve read about Medicare’s budget-busting growth. And at the top line, that‘s true enough: Medicare’s overall costs have soared, increasing about 50 percent during the Obama administration alone. Baby boomers are signing up for Medicare at the rate of 10,000 people per day, and they‘re expected to live longer, sicker lives than any previous generation. Medicare’s actuaries estimate that if current trends hold, the increasing number of beneficiaries will push the system into insolvency in 2026. Read more
9/11/2018 There’s Money for Upgrading NJ Election Security but Little for Vital Paper Trail
Despite expert opinion that, without paper ballots, New Jersey’s election system is far from secure, state allots negligible amount to remedy that weakness New Jersey plans to spend $10.2 million to enhance election security over the next several years, but will use only part of it to conduct a small pilot project involving what some experts say is the most important change the state needs to make: moving to a system of paper ballots. Read more
9/10/2018 HUD Awards $99M Nationwide Section 811 Mainstream Housing Choice Voucher Funding
On September 4, 2018, The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded $98.5 million to 285 local public housing authorities across the country in Section 811 Mainstream Housing Choice Voucher funding. This funding will provide permanent affordable housing to nearly 12,000 additional non-elderly persons with disabilities. Read more
9/10/2018 Booker insists he broke ‘sham’ Senate rules in releasing Kavanaugh documents
NEW BRUNSWICK — New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker wants people to know he broke Senate rules when he released documents last week on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh that were deemed only for members of the Judiciary Committee.
“The fact of the matter is, right now, here we stand on Monday morning and I have now released hundreds of pages of committee confidential documents against their rules, because they’re sham rules,” Booker said at a press conference Monday Read more
9/7/2018 Obama just gave the speech the left’s wanted since he left office
Barack Obama delivered a campaign-style speech Friday that shattered the norm against ex-presidents criticizing their successors, openly accusing President Trump of threatening American norms, institutions, and even lives. But he urged Democrats to think of Trump not as a disruptive force but as a defender of the powers that be, a clown whose antics distract from the need to fundamentally reform the status quo. Read more
9/7/2018 Republicans are arguing that Medicare-for-all will undermine Medicare
One key political selling point of Medicare-for-all is that Medicare (the existing program for senior citizens) is well-known and well-liked. But Republicans are increasingly looking to jiujitsu Medicare’s popularity. They are arguing that Medicare-for-all will come at the expense of Medicare for those who already have it, and there’s some reason to believe it will work. Read more
9/7/2018 Here’s what we learned from Kavanaugh’s 2-day questioning marathon
Democratic senators targeted Brett Kavanaugh’s views on executive power, abortion rights, and health care during two days of questioning this week.
Lawmakers also focused heavily on Kavanaugh’s inconsistencies between his 2006 confirmation testimony and documentation that’s emerged since, as well as questionable meetings he may have had pertaining to the Mueller investigation. And they hammered on concerns that the vetting process for Kavanaugh — which has been incredibly partisan — has not been transparent enough. Read more
9/6/2018 Can New Jersey Save Its Long-Neglected Psychiatric Hospitals?
A recent report outlines an 18-month plan to overhaul all four of New Jersey’s state psychiatric hospitals.
The report was commissioned by former Gov. Chris Christie, who paid an outside consultant $750,000 to put it together. The result were just released, and they highlight what many in the mental health community already knew. Read more
9/6/2018 Biden Stumps for Sherrill, Blasts Trump Administration, at Campaign Rally
New Jersey Democrats are going for broke in the battle for the 11th Congressional District, pulling out all the stops to help Mikie Sherrill overcome her GOP rival, state Assemblyman Jay Webber, and flip a red district that’s been held for years by Republicans. Read more
It was one of the most anticipated questions ahead of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
“Do you agree with Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor that a woman’s right to control her reproductive rights affects her ability to ‘participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation’?” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked Kavanaugh on Wednesday. Read more
9/5/2018 5 big heat-seeking missiles fired at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by Cory Booker
U.S. Sen. Cory Booker got his say Tuesday as the Senate Judiciary Committee began several days of high-stakes hearings on President Donald Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump, who pledged during the campaign to choose justices committed to overturning abortion rights, picked U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on the high court. Read more
9/4/2018 Kavanaugh hearing a test for Sen. Cory Booker in new role
Since the day in July when Judge Brett Kavanaugh was tapped for a U.S. Supreme Court seat, the confirmation hearings starting Tuesday have consumed the lives of Senate Judiciary Committee members.
For U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, preparation has meant hiring more staff to help pore over more than 400,000 pages of documents provided to the committee. When he recently hopped a plane to campaign for a fellow Democrat in Nevada, he carried a book bag loaded down with reading material on the nominee. Read more
9/4/2018 Dems demand adjournment in chaotic start to Kavanaugh hearing
The early disruptions came as Kavanaugh prepares a pledge to be a ‘neutral’ arbiter.
Democrats grabbed the reins of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing even before his first words, pressing Republicans to adjourn the hearing on President Donald Trump’s nominee as multiple activists on the left erupted in their own disruptions. Read more
9/3/2018 GOP leaders scramble to avoid pre-Election Day shutdown
Congressional Republicans return to Washington on Tuesday with a singular goal for September: avoid a government shutdown.
But with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, that’s easier said than done. Read more
9/3/2018 Democrats’ last shot at stopping Trump’s Supreme Court pick
If they can’t beat Kavanaugh, they’ll use his conservative views to fuel their ‘blue wave.’
The long-shot path to killing Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination runs through the heart of the American health care system — and right into the November midterm elections. read more
8/24/2018 Exclusive: Big changes coming to N.J.’s neglected public psychiatric hospitals
Staffing was so low at Ann Klein Forensic Center, New Jersey’s psychiatric facility for patients with criminal histories, patients were routinely and unnecessarily locked inside their rooms overnight and for hours during shift changes.
On his first day on the job in January, State Health Department Commissioner Shereef Elnahal told NJ Advance Media the Mercer County facility was on the verge of losing its national accreditation from The Joint Commission — the independent stamp of approval verifying a hospital is safe and functioning properly — if the “lock-ins” didn’t stop and other safety risks were not fixed. Read more
8/24/2018 Sen. Cory Booker offers new reason for opposing Trump Supreme Court nominee
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh could sit in judgment of the president who picked him, an important reason to oppose his nomination, according to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker.
Booker, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that will hold hearings on Kavanaugh next month, reiterated his opposition to his nomination after meeting with the judge. Read more
8/23/2018 Governor Murphy Signs “Jake’s Law”
8/23/2018 The revealing Medicare-for-all fact-check debate roiling the internet, explained
An earnest debate about single-payer health care in America has been consuming a certain corner of the internet after the release of and then the backlash to a libertarian think tank’s score of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all bill. Read more
8/23/2018 Sweeney to Murphy: Join me in cutting costs and you could be president
State Senate President Steve Sweeney, embarking on an effort to drastically reduce the cost of government in New Jersey, has a message for Gov. Phil Murphy: Follow me down the road of fiscal austerity and you could become a national political leader.
“Think about if you’re the governor that really fixed the problems here,” said Sweeney, a Democrat who spent months this year fighting the governor’s tax-raising proposals, in a two-hour interview with POLITICO. “You might wind up president.” Read more
8/22/2018 Infuriating: GOP is using Americans with Disabilities Act to close polling places in black counties
Officials in heavily black Randolph County, Georgia, sparked a national outcry last week over their plan to close seven of their nine polling places using the Americans with Disabilities Act as a pretext, and now Kira Lerner at ThinkProgress reports that the Trump administration itself is using this devious new tool for voter suppression. Led by Trump’s Justice Department, Republicans are threatening jurisdictions over polling places that supposedly are inaccessible to the disabled, either forcing local officials to pay for costly upgrades or close them. Read more
In late July 2018, U.S. Representatives James Clyburn (D-SC-6) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA-1) along with Congressman Donald Payne, Jr. and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman introduced the Restoring Tax Credits for Affordable Housing Act (H.R. 6542). In addition, U.S. Senator Cory Booker introduced the Housing, Opportunity, Mobility, and Equity (HOME) Act (S.3342) on August 1, 2018.
This new House affordable housing bill seeks to restore the Housing Credit’s production potential. After the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 resulted in a reduction in the value of the Housing Credit, this proposed bill could be the remedy that unintended consequence .Read more
The battle lines between the Michael Cohen forces and the Donald Trump forces have begun to be drawn with no truce in sight. Extensive media reports and the recent conduct of the parties suggest that Michael Cohen has “crossed the Rubicon” and is more than willing to cooperate and testify against his former client, Donald Trump. The Cohen forces have released to the media a copy of a tape recording that Cohen made of Trump as well as a leaked statement that Cohen can testify that Donald Trump was aware of the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. In response, Trump forces have started a volley of negative attacks on Cohen casting him as a scoundrel, a liar, and a pathological manipulator desperate to make a deal. It will be difficult for either side to turn back at this point. Read more
8/22/2018 House Democrats just previewed how they’d investigate Cohen’s allegations if they win
After former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s bombshell confession under oath that the president of the United States was a co-conspirator on campaign finance violations of arranging payments to women Trump had affairs with, House Democrats want to know more. Read more
8/22/2018 Poll: Trump trails several Democratic prospects in 2020 match-up
The 2020 presidential election is still more than 800 days away, but a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows President Donald Trump with paltry levels of support when matched up with nearly a dozen would-be Democratic opponents.
Against the two best-known candidates — former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — Trump trails 12 percentage points and is mired in the low 30s. Biden leads Trump, 43 percent to 31 percent, and Sanders’ lead over the president is virtually the same, 44 percent to 32 percent. Read more
8/21/2018 Why ‘Medicare for all’ is playing poorly in Democratic primaries
Most of the prominent Democrats eyeing 2020 presidential bids — including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — champion the idea of “Medicare for all,” suggesting it’s become almost a litmus test for the party’s base. Read more
8/21/2018 Collins: Kavanaugh sees Roe v. Wade as ‘settled law’
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh believes that the high court’s landmark case Roe v. Wade is settled law, Sen. Susan Collins said Tuesday.
Democrats have argued that Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court would threaten abortion rights, but Collins (R-Maine) said Kavanaugh told her that he believes the 1973 decision that established abortion rights is settled law, suggesting he may not vote to overturn it if confirmed. Read more
8/21/2018 How the U.S. Government Can Solve Affordable Housing Crisis
The largest part of Americans’ paychecks goes to housing. Since 2001, rents have increased drastically ahead and out of step with Americans’ incomes. On the flip side, vacancies in affordable housing have barely increased, hurting economic growth as job-seekers cannot afford to live near jobs that pay good wages and salaries. Read more
Michael Cohen’s confession in open court that he violated campaign finance law to cover up an alleged affair between Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels — and that he did so at Trump’s direction — is a stunning moment in American politics. Read more