The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed Rep. Tom Kean Jr. for re-election on Wednesday, tying the vulnerable New Jersey Republican to a lobbying group whose policy agenda critics say has failed to deliver on its economic promises — a connection that could complicate Kean's bid as polls show him trailing his Democratic opponent. The endorsement, announced during a Chamber tour stop in Raritan Borough, marks the fourth time the nation's largest business lobbying group has backed Kean.

In the United States, a localized confrontation occurred outside NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and wounded a man in New York’s Marble Hill neighborhood Oct. 8. But while demonstrators clashed with police outside the hospital, where at least five people were arrested, the discord in New York highlights the relative calm in the weeks before a major midterm election in which President Donald Trump threatens extreme measures to cheat.

By James J. Devine In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Claudius famously admits the emptiness of his own performative devotion: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” For constituents of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, that hollow sentiment perfectly encapsulates the political theater of Representative Tom Kean Jr., the Republican congressman who wasn't immediately missed after he disappeared from public view in March and left his constituents and fellow lawmakers wondering what happened to him.

New federal estimates show the privatized Medicare program will overpay insurers by $76 billion this year — as the program fuels a corporate buying spree of primary care practices. The nonprofit organization KFF notes that 32.8 million people enrolled in privatized Medicare Advantage plans in 2024, or around 54% of the eligible Medicare population. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an influential congressional advisory group known as MedPAC, reported in March that the federal government will pay 14% more to cover seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans than it would if those same beneficiaries were in traditional Medicare — an estimated $76 billion in excess spending.

Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, will deliver the commencement address for the Northwestern Prison Education Program on Friday, Oct. 16. This graduation marks the first time incarcerated women students in the U.S. will receive a bachelor’s degree from a top-10 university. “We are deeply honored to have Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi deliver the commencement address for NPEP’s inaugural cohort of graduating women students,” said Jennifer Lackey, NPEP's founding director and Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy and professor of law at Northwestern University.

New York declares a disaster emergency as Pennsylvania reports more than 1,000 infections and five deaths; New Jersey health officials urge residents to check vaccination records. A nationwide measles resurgence has reached its highest level in more than three decades, with approximately 4,080 confirmed infections across 45 jurisdictions as of Oct. 8, 2026, raising concerns in New Jersey as neighboring states struggle to contain outbreaks of the highly contagious disease.

By Kate Wells Christina Starks-Clay doesn’t know how “Medicare for All” would work exactly, but she’s willing to bet it’d be better than what she has now. Standing in line for U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s town hall in Michigan’s state capital in September, she whipped out her phone to pull up a screenshot. It was of the $1,000 cashier’s check she’d picked up at the bank that day to pay down a chunk of her son’s dental bills.

Pope Leo XIV renewed his condemnation of capital punishment on Saturday, calling it an assault on the sanctity of life that denies sinners the chance at redemption. His remarks came as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's unprecedented plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of a federal death row inmate drew outrage from religious leaders, lawmakers in both parties and international human rights officials.

The modern American political theater operates on a transactional frequency so loud it threatens to drown out reality itself. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump tells cheering crowds that his supporters will applaud “the stupidest things,” a rare moment of candid contempt for a base he treats as an endless applause machine. Yet this cynical candor is merely the domestic symptom of a much more dangerous foreign policy: a worldview where sovereign nations, human lives, and global security are reduced to ledger entries, shakedowns, and real estate deals.

The bill passed the House 232-198 and now awaits Senate action. “Members of Congress should serve the public — not profit from public office,” Kean said on the House floor, but the Republican lawmaker who mercilessly attacked former Congressman Tom Malinowski's investments recorded 189 trades totaling $3.19 million, with the most recent transaction dated September 12, 2026. Democratic congressional nominee Rebecca Bennett has sold off her investments and promises not to enrich herself with stock trades if she is sent to Congress.

By Stewart Resmer, USMC (Ret.) Would that I could, we would walk in the gardens as the sages of the past would do, heads down in deep moral contemplation over this, minding our steps so as not to kill even the smallest creature beneath our feet, feeling regretful guilt for the grass we crush and the stones we burden. Instead, we live in a world of gigafactory bytes and terabytes of information at the speed of fiber-optic light.

Republicans are panicking. Democrats are expanding the map. A growing faction within the party’s progressive base is warning that the opportunity to change the nation’s direction could be squandered by the very forces that have long controlled the party’s purse strings. With Trump’s approval rating at record lows and Republicans facing historic headwinds, the electoral battlefield is shifting in Democrats’ favor.

Ron Reagan, the son of former President Ronald Reagan, sharply criticized President Donald Trump on Friday for remarks suggesting Iran could “take out” Los Angeles and San Diego, calling the comments part of a broader pattern of abnormal behavior that Americans must not accept. President Ronald Reagan's son sharply criticized President Donald Trump In a Substack essay published Friday, Reagan wrote that Trump’s remarks at a Nebraska rally earlier this week represented a fundamental break from presidential conduct.

A New Jersey appeals court has upheld the firing of veteran Roselle Police Chief Stacey Williams, handing Mayor Donald Shaw a victory after years of bitter litigation, repeated state orders to reinstate the chief, and allegations of political retaliation. The Oct. 9 decision reversed a state Civil Service Commission ruling that had reduced Williams' termination to a 30-working-day suspension and ordered his reinstatement with back pay and benefits.

For most people, undergoing three open-heart surgeries would be enough to discourage strenuous physical activity. For 46-year-old competitive bodybuilder Jeremy Braud, however, the prospect of returning to the gym was among his greatest motivations for undergoing a complex operation at Jefferson Health. Born with a congenital heart defect that required surgery before he could walk, Braud spent much of his life knowing that another major operation was inevitable.

A former White House ethics lawyer said taxpayer-funded television ads promoting President Donald Trump could amount to an impeachable offense, while a New Jersey congressman faces similar criticism over publicly funded communications that mimic his campaign themes. Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics lawyer in the White House counsel's office under former President George W. Bush, wrote Sunday that Trump has no right to use taxpayer money for campaign ads.

New Jersey spent more than two decades rebuilding a child welfare system once described as dysfunctional, eventually making enough progress to escape federal court oversight and rank among the nation's better-performing states on several measures of child safety. Then Gov. Rebecca 'Mikie' Sherrill proposed cutting state funding for the agency responsible for protecting those gains. Sherrill's fiscal 2027 budget called for reducing state appropriations to the Department of Children and Families by $28.8 million, or 1.9%, from the previous fiscal year.

The Trump administration and congressional Republicans Tom Kean Jr., Chris Smith, and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, are ending a federal subsidy program that has kept Medicare Part D prescription drug premiums stable for about 25 million seniors, setting the stage for premium increases in January 2027. Despite promises from the GOP politicians to "protect Medicare and Medicaid," the changes will increase the cost of living, causing more people to face terrible choices.

The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office is issuing a public safety campaign this week focused on the hazards of lithium-ion batteries, warning residents that failure to handle powered devices properly can lead to sudden fires and drastically reduce escape times during a home emergency. The initiative coincides with Fire Prevention Week, observed nationally from Oct. 4 through Oct. 10. Authorities emphasized that while lithium-ion batteries power a vast array of everyday technology — from smartphones and laptops to e-bikes and power tools — they can quickly become unstable if punctured, swollen, improperly charged or exposed to extreme heat.

The National Troopers Coalition, a powerful national police labor bloc frequently criticized by civil rights advocates for opposing law enforcement oversight and systemic reform, announced a slate of congressional endorsements in New Jersey on Tuesday, including all three incumbent Republicans. The National Troopers Coalition (NTC) has not included any Black women in its recently announced 2026 congressional endorsements, but it is supporting all three of New Jersey’s GOP congressmen: Reps.

Although he missed more than 140 roll calls in Congress while hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. voted four times for a proposed federal moratorium on state and local regulation of artificial intelligence that could have prevented New Jersey from enforcing new protections intended to keep the cost of powering massive data centers from being passed along to residential customers.

Russia’s mounting losses in Ukraine and the United States’ prolonged confrontation with Iran are exposing a common weakness in wars launched by vastly stronger powers: The ability to destroy does not guarantee the ability to compel surrender. In Ukraine, Russian forces are suffering heavy casualties while Ukrainian troops reclaim territory in a strategically important eastern sector. In the Middle East, seven months of American military pressure have failed to resolve a confrontation that continues to disrupt energy supplies and erode public support at home.

Six teenagers were injured, one critically, when an SUV left the roadway and struck them on a sidewalk Tuesday afternoon, Lindenwold police said. The victims range in age from 14 to 16. One teenager was trapped beneath the SUV and rescued before being flown to a hospital in critical condition, police said. The other five were taken by ambulance to area hospitals with injuries police described as not major.

By James J. Devine Nearly a decade after a Stockton University watchdog report warned that New Jersey's tax expenditure reporting was a fiscal black hole, a new NJTODAY.NEWS analysis finds the state is still handing out billions in tax breaks while keeping the public in the dark about who benefits and whether the giveaways work. The original brief, published in January 2017 by the…

Hunterdon County leaders offered sharply divergent views Friday on the 7th Congressional District race, with local Republicans defending U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. as an independent-minded liberal after Democrats supporting moderate challenger Rebecca Bennett described him as a rubber-stamp vote for the Trump administration. Republicans pointed to a Heritage Action scorecard showing Kean with a 46% session score and a 52% lifetime score, arguing that it demonstrates weak alignment with conservative policy positions rather than lockstep loyalty.

The president’s war, inflation & political weakness are becoming a serious liability for Republicans President Donald Trump’s deteriorating approval ratings and voter anger over rising prices and the war with Iran are creating increasingly difficult terrain for Republican congressional candidates, prompting GOP groups to retreat from one major Senate battleground as Democrats expand their offensive into Republican-held districts. The clearest evidence emerged in North Carolina, where a dam browe when the Senate Leadership Fund, a major Republican super PAC, announced it is pausing television advertising intended to help Trump-endorsed Republican Michael Whatley defeat former Democratic Gov.

By James J Devine In 2020, a monstrous crime shook New Jersey. A gunman, seeking to assassinate U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas, killed her 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl and grievously wounded her husband. The response—Daniel’s Law—was born of grief and a genuine desire to prevent such horror from recurring. But grief is a poor legislator and we know where good intentions lead us.

A major new study from Brown University reveals that roughly 44% of U.S. pre-K-12 schools are located within one mile of a known environmental hazard site, including Superfund sites, brownfields, and Toxics Release Inventory facilities. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that approximately 8% of schools (nearly 10,000 schools enrolling 3.36 million students) sit within a quarter-mile of these hazards.

Six people were wounded in shootings in Trenton and Sicklerville over the weekend, while authorities investigated the deaths of three people found with apparent gunshot wounds inside a Montgomery Township home Friday. The latest shooting occurred Sunday night at a Wawa on the 400 block of Sicklerville Road in the Sicklerville section of Winslow Township. Officers responded around 9 p.m. to a report of a gunshot victim, police said.

United Airlines is the largest carrier at Newark Liberty International Airport, handling approximately 68% of all passenger traffic, but most of those civilian flyers have no idea that military equipment is being transported to Israel on those same planes. Although military shipments were paused for about six months due to President Donald Trump's unprovoked and illegal war against Iran, United Airlines has resumed shipping military cargo to Israel aboard civilian passenger flights, according to records reviewed by The Intercept, following a six-month suspension during the joint US-Israeli assault on the Islamic Republic.

by Dana DiFilippo, New Jersey Monitor State, county, and municipal officials got more than $60 million in national opioid settlement funds over the past year that was meant to be spent to repair harms caused by the deadly overdose crisis. Instead, it funded concerts, inflatable bounce houses, DJs, dirt bike demonstrations, police canines, ice cream, movie nights, bicycles and gym gear for cops, graduation parties, college-prep programs, vehicle wraps, attorney fees, pet sitting, fishing, summer camps, meals, and more, according to spending…

A federal judge on Thursday declared a 30-year-old law criminalizing noncitizen voting unconstitutional and dismissed a case against a Jamaican woman accused of illegally casting a ballot in the 2020 presidential election. U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz ruled that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority when it enacted the federal prohibition on noncitizen voting in 1996, concluding that the Constitution leaves the power to establish voter qualifications to the states.

The ‘Press 3’ option returned Tuesday following sustained pressure from lawmakers and advocates Specialized crisis services for LGBTQ+ youth on the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline were restored Tuesday, ending a 14-month gap that began when the Trump administration abruptly shut down the program in July 2025. The “Press 3” option, which connects LGBTQ+ young people with counselors trained to address their specific mental health needs, resumed after a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers and advocacy groups pressured the Department of Health and Human Services to deploy $33.1 million in congressionally appropriated funding.

"When New Jersey announced in July that a voter registration snafu had allowed fewer than 400 noncitizens to vote since 2023, the response from Republicans — and much of the political press — was apoplectic," said Jim Saksa, who wrote about the discarded ballots for Democracy Docket. More than 360,000 mail ballots cast in the 2024 federal election were rejected for technical, non-material reasons, according to federal data reviewed by Saksa for Democracy Docket — a figure that dwarfs the number of fraudulent votes that have prompted congressional investigations and calls for sweeping new voting restrictions.

Two years after The New York Times reported that multibillion-dollar corporations were gobbling up primary care practices, the pace of consolidation has only accelerated. New research reveals that health insurers now control a rapidly growing share of the Medicare primary care market, even as the shortage of primary care doctors—who practice in one of medicine’s lowest-paid, least glamorous fields—continues to worsen.

Workers at the Phillips 66 Bayway Refinery in Linden have voted to authorize a strike as contract negotiations approach a Thursday deadline, adding a labor dispute to longstanding questions about the refinery’s environmental and economic impact on the city. Members of Teamsters Local 877 voted 92 percent in favor of authorizing a strike, with about two-thirds of the membership participating, according to Teamsters Local 877 President Jeff Sanford.

There is an unusually simple way for mem bers of Congress to tell voters where they stand on abortion: Put their names on legislation. That opportunity has been sitting in plain sight in the House. Rep. Christopher Smith, the New Jersey Republican dinosaur whose opposition to abortion has been a defining feature of his congressional career, introduced H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2025.

Mahmoud Khalil launched his memoir, "No Land to Stand On," before a packed crowd at Book Culture near Columbia University on Monday night, in what human rights lawyer Steven Donziger described as "a major literary and political triumph." Donziger, who won a $9 billion verdict against Chevron as a human rights lawyer, interviewed Khalil at the event and offered a blunt assessment of what the book documents.

Former New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell is challenging the state investigation that led to his resignation last week, arguing that investigators reached false conclusions and never gave him a meaningful opportunity to respond to the allegations against him. Caldwell, 66, resigned Sept. 25, one day after Gov. Rebecca 'Mikie' Sherrill issued a demand for him to step down following the release of a 61-page report by former New Jersey Attorney General Christopher S.

Workers who live in states with anti-union laws – the so-called “right-to-work” states – earn almost severn percent less than those who live in states favorable to collective bargaining, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute shows. That translates to about $4,000 a year less for those living in states that have adopted misleadingly named right-to-work laws – which are all about…

Days after he made a false promise to payoff voters with $5,000 in taxpayer money, the Republican tyrant’s threatening to audit citizens who don't send cash donations to his campaign apparatus. A fundraising email sent in President Donald Trump's name is pressuring supporters to "pledge" to vote for Republican candidates in the midterm elections, warning that their files have been "flagged" and that the matter could "escalate."

The White House has spent more than $1.7 million in taxpayer money on a series of television ads prominently featuring President Donald Trump, drawing sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike who allege the spots amount to political propaganda ahead of the November midterm elections. The White House defends them as patriotic public service announcements. The ads, which carry the disclaimer “Paid for by the U.S.

Projections released in April by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) predicted that military escalation in the Middle East would put tens of millions of people at risk of falling into poverty across 162 countries, Nine months into the conflict that President Donald Trump launched without authorization or provocation, the UNDP's early projections for the war's global fallout have proven too optimistic, according to a review of agency data, international reports and economic indicators.

The Trump administration's attempt to cover up an Iranian cruise missile strike failed this week when the Pentagon quietly added eight Marines injured in the Sept. 14 attack to its casualty database, nearly two weeks after the vessel they were operating on was hit in the Strait of Hormuz. Most congressional Republicans have voted at least seven times against resolutions that would end the unprovoked and unauthorized war, so the fumbled cover-up adds to the embarrassment associated with the incompetent prosecution of violence and its domestic consequences, such as rising gasoline prices.

A line of cowardice on immigration runs straight from Bill Clinton in 1996 to Donald Trump in 2026. By James J. Devine Thirty years after President Bill Clinton signed a sweeping immigration crackdown, the machinery created with overwhelming bipartisan support has become the legal foundation for President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign — while a bipartisan attempt to overhaul the system in 2013 remains a stark reminder of a path Congress abandoned.

The nation’s largest small-business advocacy organization endorsed three Republican members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation for reelection Tuesday, putting a spotlight on a sharp divide over wages, worker protections and the role of government in addressing the cost-of-living pressures facing New Jersey families. The National Federation of Independent Business endorsed Reps. Jeff Van Drew of the 2nd Congressional District, Chris Smith of the 4th and Tom Kean Jr.

U.S. Rep. Analilia Mejia is inviting residents of New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District to an in-person town hall Wednesday evening in Chatham Borough, where she plans to discuss the economy, immigration, artificial intelligence, voting rights and her work in Congress. The community town hall is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 30. Attendance is free, but advance registration is required, and the exact location in Chatham Borough will be provided to people who RSVP.

Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit private equity firms, insurance companies and other for-profit corporations from owning or controlling medical practices, an effort aimed at curbing the growing influence of corporate investors over physicians and patient care. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Jeff Merkley of Oregon joined Reps. Val Hoyle of Oregon, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia in introducing the Stop Corporate Takeovers of Physicians Act.

The nor'easter that battered the Jersey Shore this weekend carved away beaches and dunes in what Atlantic City Beach Patrol officials are calling the worst erosion since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. A half-mile stretch north of Steel Pier took the hardest hit, with the storm cutting into dunes, exposing previously buried structures and leaving steep drop-offs along the shoreline. Deputy Chief Dave Russo, a longtime member of the Beach Patrol, gave the storm a nickname.

A fourth-generation South Jersey family farm ordered to pay more than $550,000 after a federal labor investigation will take its constitutional challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court this fall in a case that could determine how far federal agencies may go in imposing monetary penalties through their own administrative courts. The us Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Nov. 10 in…