https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey New Jersey en-US Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:30:40 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/courts/new-jersey-kalshi-supreme-court-petition Gavin J. Quinton Lower courts are split over whether federal law preempts states from regulating sportsbooks. Wed, 02 Sep 2026 22:30:40 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/courts/new-jersey-kalshi-supreme-court-petition New Jersey is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether federal law preempts states from regulating the prediction market platform Kalshi.

In a Wednesday petition to the high court, the state asserts Kalshi has found a federal back door into sports betting, allowing the company to avoid licensing rules, taxes and consumer protections set by individual states.

“Companies like Kalshi claim to offer legal sports betting in all 50 States, but they refuse to follow the gambling laws of any State,” Jennifer Davenport, the New Jersey attorney general, said in a news release.

The company has been bombarded with legal challenges from at least 20 states, but has a fierce defender in the Trump administration. The federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, headed by Trump appointee Michael Selig, has already sued a handful of states seeking to regulate the prediction market sector.

The issue centers around a dispute over whether Congress, in passing its 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform legislation, intended to federalize the multibillion-dollar sports-wagering industry or whether states still hold their traditional regulatory authority over sportsbooks.

"Kalshi is an open, nationwide financial exchange. It cannot be regulated by 50 different regulators," said Kalshi spokesperson Dani Lever. "We remain confident in the lower courts' rulings, and nothing in New Jersey's filing today changes our view."

The request follows a major 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that went against Kalshi, creating a direct split with a separate 3rd Circuit decision that ruled in favor of the company that New Jersey’s state gambling laws are preempted.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will grant the petition to hear the case.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey/democrats-transparency-new-jersey-voter-rolls Angie Orellana Hernandez Democratic lawmakers are attempting to ward off attacks from Trump and Republicans casting the incident as evidence of rampant election fraud. Sat, 25 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey/democrats-transparency-new-jersey-voter-rolls Republicans wasted no time in going after Democrats when news broke that 6,600 noncitizens were erroneously registered to vote in New Jersey, casting the incident as evidence of rampant election fraud.

But Democrats, led by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, are leaning hard into transparency on the issue — especially as the party has little ground available to lose in the midst of President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to tighten elections laws and claim more control from the states.

“It is the right thing to do — to be clear with the public about anything you find and to build trust in a system that generally works really well,” said Ben Olinsky, a senior fellow at the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress. “That is also the right strategy for dealing with someone who has repeatedly and habitually lied about elections in the form of Donald Trump.”

The erroneous registrations were caused by a software error, Sherrill said Tuesday — an explanation that IDEMIA, the France-based company in charge of transmitting information through New Jersey’s motor vehicle system, has denied. Former Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy also denies having any knowledge of the incident after Sherill said the mistakes occurred under her predecessor.

But during that news conference, Sherrill momentarily pivoted to the president: “Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”

“The difference between my administration and this White House is stark,” the governor said on Tuesday. “We don't deflect, deny or exploit problems for our own gain. We find them, and we fix them, because that's what a good, accountable government should do.”

Sherrill’s rebuke appeared to be an attempt to deter Trump and Republicans from using the incident as evidence for widely debunked assertions of mass voter fraud as the party pushes Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, the president’s signature “election integrity” bill.

Trump had already jumped on the issue, exaggerating at a Wednesday rally that “thousands and thousands” of votes had been illegally cast in the state after the software glitch. A preliminary review found that fewer than 400 people out of the 6,600 accidentally registered went on to illegally vote, Sherrill said.

The White House claimed credit for the situation going public at all: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Sherrill’s initial announcement was prompted by a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, but the governor previously said she learned about the incident and launched an investigation days before she was contacted by DHS.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-New Jersey) and 18 other House Republicans sent a letter to Sherrill on Friday, stating that conservatives’ concerns about election integrity over the past few years had “too often” been dismissed as “exaggerated or unfounded.” The letter said the incident showed that “these vulnerabilities are real.”

“The fact that this happened — with or without software playing a role — can neither be ignored by Congress nor dismissed as a simple, garden-variety computer glitch,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted on X. “We need the SAVE America Act to stop this from happening.”

The rhetorical tug-of-war demonstrates how an anomaly can be equipped to bolster baseless claims, Democratic lawmakers say. The way to combat attacks on election integrity, lawmakers and experts said, is to swiftly inform the public and take responsibility.

“That's the kind of transparency we need,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) told NOTUS. “We need to make sure it’s fixed, and someone needs to be held accountable for the fact that this wasn’t all squared away as soon as possible.”

Multiple lawmakers said the issue hasn’t swayed their confidence in New Jersey’s — or the country’s — ability to conduct accurate elections. Election officials being honest about “isolated problems” strengthens trust in the broader election system because it “demonstrates that safeguards are working,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“There are those who will choose to weaponize this issue in an attempt to undermine confidence in our elections — we cannot allow that,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) said in a statement.

Any concern about voting integrity from Trump and right-wing Republicans is a pretext for further federal overreach in states running their own elections, California Sen. Alex Padilla, the top Democrat on the Rules and Administration Committee, said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting is a rare occurrence, and no evidence has been uncovered that shows it changed the outcome of an election, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. Becker said “no one credible” is denying that noncitizen voting has never happened.

Election law experts, he said, are quantifying the incidents and contextualizing them “in relationship to the voter lists and the actual votes cast.” Becker said the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, would not have changed the situation in New Jersey because that information was accurately collected. The individuals marked that they were not citizens but were added to voter rolls anyway.

“It’s 400 voters in the state of New Jersey after a glitch. If you don’t have the glitch, that number is much smaller. This is a tiny blip,” Becker said Thursday. “They’re trying to use a nuclear bomb to kill an ant.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey/voter-registration-error-idemia Angie Orellana Hernandez IDEMIA, a French company that operates globally, said New Jersey was ultimately responsible for validating and adjudicating voter registrations. Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:22:45 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey/voter-registration-error-idemia The biometrics and cryptography company that New Jersey officials said was responsible for erroneously adding thousands of noncitizens to voter rolls denied any mishandling — stating that the responsibility of voter registration lies with the state.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Tuesday that a serious software error caused by IDEMIA, a French company that operates globally, led to roughly 6,600 non-citizens being accidentally registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. Fewer than 400 went on to illegally cast ballots, Sherill said, and a preliminary review found that the votes did not sway any elections.

The debacle comes in the middle of intensified debates about election integrity aggravated by President Donald Trump’s widely-debunked assertions that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Trump mentioned the incident during a Wednesday speech in Georgia, falsely stating that “thousands and thousands of votes” were illegally cast.

IDEMIA said in a statement it had worked with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) for more than 40 years, supporting the system that allows eligible residents to indicate they want to register to vote when they apply for or renew a license or state ID.

“IDEMIA's role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” the statement said, adding that voter registration data is transmitted to the state Division of Elections, which “ultimately” holds responsibility for verification. “Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

On Wednesday, a Sherrill spokesperson said IDEMIA’s system error could be attributed to the records of people who answered “No” to the citizenship question erroneously being transmitted to the Division of Elections.

IDEMIA refuted the allegations in a statement to NOTUS, saying the 6,600 files submitted to the MVC and Division of Elections contained accurate information “according to the design specifications as set out by the state.” The 6,600 individuals had checked “Yes” to wanting to register to vote and “No” to being a citizen, IDEMIA said.

The files were always available to MVC officials and did not indicate at any point that the individuals were citizens, IDEMIA said. In June 2024, the Division of Elections had alerted the MVC to 6,600 files that were missing a party affiliation, IDEMIA said, but the company did not have confirmation that those individuals were ever registered to vote.

“IDEMIA does not control or manage voter enrollment, our role is simply to collect self-reported citizenship and interest data,” the statement said. “This leads to more questions — if the Division of Elections had missing information which is required to register in the State of New Jersey, did the Division of Elections approve these individuals be added to the Voter Rolls.”

Those who were erroneously registered to vote are being notified by mail and are being removed from the voter rolls, Sherill said on Tuesday. She heavily criticized IDEMIA for releasing software with “such a glaring error,” the MVC for taking more than a year to patch the issue and former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration for not being transparent about the incident at the time.

Sherrill acknowledged on Tuesday that Trump would likely use the incident to back up his claims of widespread vulnerabilities in the country’s election security system, despite little evidence to support the claim. She said Trump “has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”

Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, election officials say, and there is no evidence that it has happened on a scale that could change the results of an election.

The incident has sparked further scrutiny. On Wednesday, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) demanded a government-wide audit into IDEMIA’s federal contracts, saying the company handles “an excessive amount of the federal security apparatus.”

“This incident raises serious concerns about the reliability of IDEMIA’s software, the company’s quality control practices, and the federal government’s reliance on a single contractor to manage highly sensitive identity and biometric systems,” Gottheimer wrote in a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and U.S. General Services Administration Administrator Edward C. Forst.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey/new-jersey-voter-registration-noncitizens Angie Orellana Hernandez Gov. Mikie Sherrill said fewer than 400 noncitizens voted in elections during the time they were erroneously registered. Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:37:57 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/new-jersey/new-jersey-voter-registration-noncitizens A software error caused more than 6,000 noncitizens to be added to New Jersey’s voter rolls, the state’s Democratic governor said Tuesday, while fewer than 400 of them were found to have illegally cast ballots.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill blamed a software vendor called IDEMIA for the issue, saying the software erroneously registered the noncitizens to vote while they were applying for drivers' licenses and identification cards through New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System. State officials said they would begin working with a new vendor.

“These individuals answered ‘no’ when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen … but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,” Sherill said in a statement.

IDEMIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sherrill’s announcement comes less than a week after President Donald Trump railed against voter fraud and election interference in a prime-time speech to the country. During the fiery White House address, he asserted that the Department of Homeland Security had evidence that more than 250,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in the country. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin backed up the claim in a press conference the next day without providing further evidence.

Noncitizen voting is extremely rare, election officials say, and there is no evidence that it has occurred on a mass scale that could change the outcome of an election.

The White House said the incident is “exactly why” Congress needs to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s controversial elections bill. Trump himself has not yet commented publicly on the news.

Sherrill acknowledged on Tuesday that Trump would likely use the news as evidence of widespread vulnerabilities in the country’s election security system, despite little evidence to support the claim.

“Let me be clear: Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity,” Sherrill said. “For the past 10 years, he's cried wolf and peddled bizarre conspiracy theories about fraud with no evidence.”

Sherrill said she launched an investigation immediately after learning about the error on July 15 — the day before Trump’s speech.

A majority of the 400 voters were registered as unaffiliated, as well as a few Democrats and Republicans, Sherrill said. The voters were scattered across the state, she added.

Sherrill said her administration does not have any evidence at this point that the erroneous votes swayed any election. An investigation into those votes remains ongoing.

“This failure didn't occur under my watch, but accountability starts now, because the people of New Jersey shouldn't have to wait a year for a problem to get solved, or two years to learn it even happened, I'm taking immediate action to make sure something like this doesn't happen again,” Sherrill said.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/healthcare/andy-kim-medikids-act Paul Kane The New Jersey senator takes a unique, long-game approach to a top Democratic goal. Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:00:00 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/healthcare/andy-kim-medikids-act Sen. Andy Kim is taking a unique approach to the Senate.

The New Jersey Democrat is trying to spark a debate about how to achieve a very-long-sought goal of his party — universal health care — while blending it with a long-term outlook that might take years or even decades to fully achieve.

“I'm trying to think through everything I can do for the next two-and-a-half years. But I'm also thinking through the next two-and-a-half decades,” Kim, 44, who is 18 months into his first Senate term, told NOTUS in an interview. “What do I want to accomplish here, what is the type of senator I want to be? And I think this is, particularly, very meaningful.”

On Tuesday, Kim is introducing the MediKids Act, which would effectively enroll every child into a section of Medicaid that is already used to provide health services for children from lower-income families.

The legislation, which does not yet have a full cost estimate, would fully fund health coverage for children from birth until age 26. Families would be free to opt out of the federally funded health insurance if they wanted different plans in the private sector, but the impact could be similar to how Medicare takes care of seniors once they turn 65.

Kim described his proposal as creating “bookends” for the most critical years: federally guaranteed health coverage from birth to 25 and 65 till death, about half of the average American life of 79 years.

Health experts estimate that 6% of children under 18, about 4.5 million, do not have any health insurance. Kim said that another 23 million are “under insured.”

Kim’s ultimate goal, however, is to have members of his party think bigger and more realistically about the drive to achieve the elusive Democratic dream of universal health care — an “Odyssey”-like endeavor that began at least in the early 1940s when John Dingell Sr. introduced the first national health-care bill. For the last decade the party has been battling over progressive demands of creating “Medicare for All” versus the more mainstream approach of expanding on the landmark 2010 Affordable Care Act.

The ACA helped drive down the number of uninsured from about 46 million in 2010 to roughly 26 million, according to KFF, an independent health-research firm.

Republicans have enjoyed the Democratic infighting over those competing ideas and, as far back as 2018, have used political hit ads calling “Medicare for All” a “massive government-run system” that would force Americans off health-care plans they like.

Kim is trying to create a different approach that takes the politically safer ground of guaranteeing health care for children.

“It’s the clearest point to be made about the need for universal health care and the idea that health care is a human right,” Kim said. “I really hope that none of my colleagues will really look me in the eye and say they don't think every child should get health care in this country.”

Kim is not the first name insiders would expect to try to lead a new health-care effort. He’s one of the most junior members of the Senate health committee and does not have a seat on the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid.

But the Rhodes scholar and foreign-policy expert who worked in the State Department, Pentagon and on then-President Barack Obama’s National Security Council holds an unusual set of crossover credentials among Democrats. He has both won a battleground district and earned plaudits from the online progressive orbit.

He launched his political career in 2017 when one of his children was born with a preexisting medical condition, at a time when congressional Republicans advanced legislation to repeal the ACA and end protections for those with such a condition. Their push ultimately fell short.

“That anxiety that I felt as a parent was gut-wrenching. I don't believe that there's anything more fearful, parents are more scared of, than their kid being sick,” he said.

After winning a Republican-held district to the east of Philadelphia, he became a pragmatic Democrat along with other House freshmen who had national-security backgrounds. One ideological ranking of his first-term placed Kim among the 30 most conservative in his caucus.

He went viral on the night of Jan. 6, 2021, when pictures spread of him on his hands and knees cleaning up the Capitol after the attack.

By 2023, after then-Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) was indicted on corruption charges, Kim jumped into the Senate race against the wishes of the state’s seemingly entrenched establishment. He went to the Senate and upended the state’s power structure, while Menendez is now serving a federal prison sentence.

He’s not currently planning any bids for caucus leadership positions. He is, under current caucus rules, at least a decade or two away from chairing an influential committee.

He does not try to react to every big scandal or controversy of the moment, which is the usual path these days to cable TV hits and large social media followings. Instead, he is the rare senator who has plotted out long-term plans, sometimes even charting out 10-year objectives.

“I'm gonna be in this fight for as long as it takes. I just doubled the number of millennials here in the Senate on the Democratic side single-handedly,” he said.

The other Democratic millennial, Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, has liberals swooning online with every clip of his reelection-campaign speeches, drawing talk of a 2028 presidential bid.

A diminutive son of Korean immigrants, Kim is not planning a presidential bid. Representing a blue state like New Jersey, he could serve in the Senate for decades to come.

“This is my life's work,” he said of his new legislation.

Kim counts himself among the Democrats who believe that Trump has given them an opportunity to reenvision federal government programs. If Democrats gain full power, he doesn’t want to just recreate the U.S. Agency for International Development or restore cuts to Medicaid that came as part of the Republican 2025 domestic policy bill.

“Part of why Trump got elected is people were frustrated with the status quo,” he said. “They thought it was broken, and we need to show that, look, I also believe that the status quo is fundamentally broken, but here is a real idea that could have immeasurable impact.”

His MediKids proposal starts off with three Democratic co-sponsors: Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Alex Padilla of California.

Voters have a complicated view of government involvement in health care, as two liberal-leaning groups, the Searchlight Institute and Zeteo, found in a study released this month. Fewer than four-in-10 Democrats have confidence in the federal government to run a national health-insurance plan.

This issue has been the Democratic dream for decades. In 1971, after Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia defeated Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts for Democratic whip, Kennedy told reporters he would dedicate himself to the “cause of my life,” universal health care.

It took 38 years for the ACA to get passed and signed into law, six months after Kennedy died.

Kim already said in his inaugural speech on the Senate floor that his farewell address will include an assessment of whether he succeeded in expanding health care.

“I hope it doesn't take that long because that would be a real detriment to the American people,” he said. “But for as long as I'm here, I'm going to be pushing on these ideas.”]]> https://washingtonsun.com/money/corporate-pacs-tom-kean-jr-capitol-hill-absence Dave Levinthal The lawmaker, locked in a competitive race, later explained that he was being treated for depression. Thu, 16 Jul 2026 04:26:45 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/money/corporate-pacs-tom-kean-jr-capitol-hill-absence Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s then-unexplained absence on Capitol Hill didn’t stop a host of corporate interests from flooding his campaign account with cash, according to federal financial disclosures filed Wednesday.

The New Jersey Republican, who later explained that depression caused the absence that spanned from early March to late June, is locked in a toss-up race that could help determine whether Republicans or Democrats control the U.S. House come January.

Political action committees sponsored by SpaceX, General Motors, Coinbase, UPS, Comcast, Entergy, Constellation Energy, New York Life Insurance and the U.S. subsidiary of shipping giant Maersk each made four-figure contributions, the records indicate.

So did a host of trade association political committees, including National Apartment Association PAC, U.S. Oncology Network PAC, American Association of Crop Insurers PAC, International Warehouse Logistics Association PAC, National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies PAC, NTCA Rural Broadband PAC, the Engineers Political Education Committee and the American Maritime Officers Voluntary Political Action Fund.

Kean is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including its subcommittees on communications and technology, as well as commerce, manufacturing and trade. These posts make Kean an attractive target for corporate influence efforts.

Kean’s campaign committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.

The lawmaker returned to Capitol Hill on June 30, explaining in a speech to fellow members of Congress that he had been hospitalized for depression.

“When I first informed the public that I was dealing with a medical issue, I was still trying to understand what was happening myself,” Kean said. “When I said I hope to return in a matter of weeks, I believed it.”

Leadership PACs for Reps. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Nick LaLota (R-New York) and Rudy Yakym (R-Indiana) also gave Kean’s campaign thousands, despite Kean not campaigning at that time.

The campaign reported that Palmer Luckey, founder of defense contractor Anduril Industries, personally contributed more than $900 to Kean’s campaign on March 31.

And Never Surrender Inc. PAC — the successor political committee to President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign committee — gave $5,000 on April 13, federal records show.

Kean’s overall fundraising from April 1 to June 30 — just under $300,000 — was nevertheless anemic for a candidate in such a competitive race.

The lawmaker made no in-person campaign appearances during this time, likely contributing to his underwhelming donation numbers from individual contributors.

His campaign committee continued to pay staff and vendors. And Kean’s overall campaign finance picture remains robust: He entered July with more than $3.6 million on hand thanks to his ability to conserve stores of cash because of an uncontested primary.

Democrat Rebecca Bennett will face Kean in November’s general election for New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District after Kean won his June 2 Republican primary against no competition — but with the tailwind of a Trump endorsement.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/congress/missing-tom-kean-jr-returns-to-congress-new-jersey-medical-condition-speech Jade Lozada The New Jersey Republican disclosed the illness in a speech on the House floor shortly after his return to the U.S. Capitol. Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:22:24 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/congress/missing-tom-kean-jr-returns-to-congress-new-jersey-medical-condition-speech Rep. Tom Kean Jr. revealed on Tuesday that his nearly four-month absence from Congress was caused by a severe case of depression.

The New Jersey Republican disclosed the illness in a speech on the House floor shortly after his return to the U.S. Capitol, his first public appearance since he disappeared earlier this year.

“When people hear the word depression, many people think simply feel it means feeling sad, but depression is so much more than that, it is physical, it is emotional, and until you experience it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand how powerful this illness can be,” he said.

“When I first informed the public that I was dealing with a medical issue, I was still trying to understand what was happening myself. When I said I hope to return in a matter of weeks, I believed it,” Kean added.

The congressman said “I’m good,” when asked by reporters how he’s feeling following his speech on Tuesday. Kean immediately exited the Capitol and declined to answer further questions.

The New Jersey Republican was spotted publicly for the first time in months last week, when a New York Times reporter spoke briefly with the congressman at his home. He declined to answer questions about his condition, but promised earlier this month that he would be “completely transparent” about his medical condition when he returned to in-person work.

“Congressman Kean is eager to return to in-person work on June 30 and resume a full schedule,” Harrison Neely, Kean’s spokesperson, told NOTUS earlier this month.

Kean said on Tuesday that he did not know how long his hospital stay would be when he was first admitted.

“I am grateful that I accepted help, because today I stand before you healthier, stronger, and excited to return to the work that I love,” Kean said. “Asking for help is not a weakness, it is a strength.”

He is not the only lawmaker to seek mental health treatment in recent years. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) spent six weeks in the hospital to receive treatment for clinical depression in 2023, following a stroke the previous year. At the time, Fetterman said his depression worsened after he won his election.

Kean has faced sharp criticism for refraining from disclosing his medical issue to his constituents, particularly in an election year.

Kean’s district in northern New Jersey is a top target for Democrats in the midterms, and rated a “toss up” by the Cook Political Report. In November, Kean will face off against Rebecca Bennett, the Democratic nominee and a former Navy helicopter pilot, who has criticized his near-total silence on his medical condition.

Kean won the uncontested Republican primary earlier this month. President Donald Trump gave Kean his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in a Truth Social post from May.

“HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!” Trump wrote.

The congressman said in a statement on the day of the primary that he was “more energized than ever” and “focused on my recovery.”

Kean’s team was active during his absence. The Republican has introduced legislation and approved staff trips. His social media accounts have been active with first-person posts. He also traded eight different stocks in March, a NOTUS review of congressional financial disclosures found.
]]> https://washingtonsun.com/congress/tom-kean-jr-return Jade Lozada The appearance comes just days before he is expected to return to Congress following a mysterious medical issue. Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:51:23 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/congress/tom-kean-jr-return Rep. Tom Kean — the New Jersey Republican who has for months eluded reporters, his neighbors and the speaker of the House alike, citing a mysterious medical condition — was spotted at his home in New Jersey on Wednesday, The New York Times reported.

Kean, dressed in a suit and tie, briefly spoke to a reporter but declined to answer questions. His aides said last week that he will return to Congress, where he has missed more than 100 votes since March, on June 30. It is unclear whether Kean will address his medical condition that day if the House leaves Washington early for recess.

Representatives for Kean did not immediately respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on Thursday.

The saga of Kean’s disappearance from public view has vexed Washington insiders and constituents alike following a trail of cryptic statements left by his staff.

“There’s no cameras where Tom is,” Kean’s chief of staff Dan Scharfenberger told the Times in May.

During his absence, Kean won the Republican primary for New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District uncontested, and picked up President Donald Trump’s endorsement. The race is rated a toss-up by The Cook Political Report and is a top target for Democrats in the midterms.

Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot who will face off against Kean in November as the Democratic nominee, criticized Kean’s monthslong silence, calling him a “coward.”

“You are failing us, and you do not deserve to represent us in Washington,” Bennett said in her victory speech earlier this year.

Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson did not know much about Kean’s disappearance, though the situation worsened Johnson’s chances at passing legislation with a narrow Republican majority.

“I don’t even know the details, and, you know, I have to respect that it’s a member’s personal privacy on whatever matters they’re dealing with,” Johnson told reporters in May.

Kean has released few public statements since his last public appearance in March. On June 2, the day of New Jersey’s primary, Kean said he is “more energized than ever” and “focused on his recovery.”

Kean said in an April statement that he anticipates he will make a complete recovery from his illness and “return to a full schedule and be at 100 percent.” He then told the New Jersey Globe in May that the medical issue will not affect his cognitive health.

“I understand the need for transparency on this matter and I look forward to sharing my experience with the public,” he wrote in a statement posted to X earlier this month.

Kean has said he was doing “virtual work” over the last few months. The congressman has introduced legislation and seemingly approved staff trips, while first-person social media posts have appeared on his accounts.

Kean also bought and sold shares of eight different stocks over three weeks in March while he remained missing from the Hill, according to a NOTUS review of congressional financial disclosures.

The transactions total $50,008 to $190,000 and include shares of Amcor, Chubb Limited, First Citizens BancShares, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo. (Federal lawmakers are only required to disclose the value of their trades in broad ranges.)]]> https://washingtonsun.com/agencies/trump-threat-state-unemployment-fund-confusion Natalie Alms If carried through, states could lapse on unemployment benefit payments. Wed, 17 Jun 2026 23:16:19 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/agencies/trump-threat-state-unemployment-fund-confusion The Department of Labor’s historic threat to withhold funding from states’ unemployment insurance programs didn’t quite land with the weight the government apparently intended: Several states told NOTUS they didn’t know much about the Trump administration’s new directive.

The Labor Department announced it sent out a letter Wednesday, signed by acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, telling states that “for the first time in modern history” — their emphasis — the federal government would cut states off from administrative funding if they didn’t do more to address waste, fraud and abuse in their unemployment systems.

The missive, which name-checked six states run by Democratic governors, including California, New Jersey and New York, but no red states, blamed the Biden administration for allowing “widespread fraud” in the programs.

It’s unclear whether states received the message.

A spokesperson for the Virginia Employment Commission said they couldn’t yet comment on the letter, as “we are currently trying to determine whether and where the letter was received within the Commonwealth and have not yet reviewed the correspondence directly.”

New Jersey’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development asked for more information from NOTUS on the directive. “We don’t have insight on this yet,” a spokesperson said.

The Labor Department didn’t respond to NOTUS’ request for clarification on whether it had actually sent out the warnings on Wednesday, when the agency put out an associated news release.

The confusion could stem from the fact that the department’s letter is addressed to state governors, not the state offices that run jobless aid programs.

Some states did get the memo. Andrea Cyr, a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Labor, said the state was “aware of the letter.”

“The State has implemented several updates since the pandemic to fight fraud and abuse and we continue to work with our law enforcement partners to pursue criminals and hold perpetrators accountable while continuing to make sure workers receive the benefits to which they are entitled under law efficiently,” Cyr said in a statement.

The Trump administration has prioritized rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” in social services. This latest threat to take away a main source of funding used to operate an unemployment insurance program is unprecedented, and it could affect the distribution of benefits.

“It would be a disaster,” said one former high-level executive in a state labor office, who asked for anonymity out of fear the Trump administration would target their state. “I don’t know how states would operate.”

The jobless aid system did struggle to ward off fraudsters looking to cash in on expanded benefits during COVID-19 pandemic — the beginning months of which happened during the first Trump administration.

Quantifying the exact number of benefits doled out to fraudsters during the crisis is difficult, but the Government Accountability Office has pegged $60 billion as a conservative estimate.

There is no single federal unemployment insurance system. Rather, states run individual programs, following guidelines set by the federal government.

The federal government also covers states’ administrative costs through taxes on employers. Most states rely completely on the federal government for the money to operate the program.

So far, the Labor Department hasn’t told states what they would need to do to prevent that funding being taken away. Wednesday’s letter says that the department will send specific directives in the coming days.

“We are officially putting governors on notice,” Sonderling said in a statement. “This department is no longer afraid to use every lever available to ensure taxpayer money is protected.”

Some see the letter as political bluster until proven otherwise, said the former state-level executive, noting that most states didn’t receive any advanced warning on the coming threat. A spokesperson at Maryland’s Department of Labor noted that Sonderling was praising the state’s anti-fraud work just yesterday.

“The Trump Administration continues to govern by press release – blasting notes to the media and providing states with no information while threatening them,” a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told NOTUS. “If they were serious about protecting taxpayers, they wouldn't be eliminating resources used to modernize systems and strengthen fraud prevention.”

Last May, the Labor Department terminated millions in grant funding it had previously given to states to modernize their jobless aid systems. A spokesperson for Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and Industry said those cuts hit funding that helped states root out fraud.

Pennsylvania was among the states listed in the Labor Department’s letter as having “egregious systemic issues.” The spokesperson rejected the characterization, calling Pennsylvania a “national leader… despite USDOL’s sudden and arbitrary termination in May 2025 of vital federal grants used in part to combat fraud.”

Typically, issues with how states are running their unemployment programs go through a back-and-forth process with the Labor Department’s regional offices to ensure compliance.

The federal government has the authority to shut off administrative payments to states that aren’t following all of DOL’s rules for how to operate the program, although “it just doesn’t happen,” said Michele Evermore, who worked at Labor during the Biden administration.

That’s in part because the Labor Department only has the ability to withhold the entirety of this administrative funding, which would cause maximum pain for states.

The last time a state even came close to losing funding was in the 1970s, even though most states are occasionally out of line with one of the department’s many rules, Evermore said. Many currently aren’t meeting standards for how long a person should have to wait to receive their benefits, for example.

The department’s letter specifically called out New York and California, but lumped together fraud and other mistakes in the payment process that makes a payment “improper,” like paperwork errors. Left off the letter was Florida, which ranks No. 2 on a Department of Labor website listing improper payment rates across states.]]> https://washingtonsun.com/us-news/psychological-terror-inside-delaney-hall-ice-immigrant-lawsuits Jose Pagliery Court records describe deplorable situation at the ICE jail in New Jersey as protests continue nightly. Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:37:23 GMT https://washingtonsun.com/us-news/psychological-terror-inside-delaney-hall-ice-immigrant-lawsuits NEWARK, N.J. — A woman says in court papers that guards starved her for five days straight. A man claims “conditions violate basic standards of human dignity.” And several plead for help as the drinking water tastes like “raw sewage.”

The mistreatment of immigrant detainees that has led to daily protests outside a privately-run ICE jail in New Jersey is laid bare in lawsuits describing deplorable conditions as well as first-hand accounts of wretched treatment some believe is intentionally cruel.

NOTUS visited the site on Thursday just as the Delaney Hall detention facility released Emanuel Rodrigues, a Brazilian man with a rare life-threatening medical condition, who spent what he says were 130 excruciating days in solitary confinement — labeled “medical isolation” by officials.

His wife, Anna Lucas, feared venturing beyond the retractable metal gate topped with barbed wire, leaving NJ.com journalist Daysi Calavia-Robertson to fetch Rodrigues and his wheelchair as he clutched his black Bible.

Lucas fell to her knees and wept when she finally saw her husband. They embraced as protesters cheered.

In an interview conducted in Portuguese and Spanish, Rodrigues described what he called “psychological torture” by guards who flipped on bright lights all night, opened and slammed heavy doors when detainees were sleeping, and blasted the volume on televisions at all hours — but made sure to leave the remote control just beyond inmates’ reach.

“They wouldn’t let us sleep,” Rodrigues said. “Everything there is to maximize suffering to pressure us to deport ourselves. … Many of them are bullies; bad in the heart. We had to bang on the door for water and wait for more than six hours. Some are OK, but most are cruel.”

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As he spoke, he held on to drawings he made during his captivity. One features the perspective of someone trapped deep inside a well — capturing what he said was the utter despair he felt when the chronic aches from his rhabdomyolysis, which breaks down muscle all over his body, went largely untreated. Another is a sketch of his hand, which he said was reaching out to God in his darkest moments.

“I was going crazy from the pain,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to detailed questions about the conditions at Delaney Hall.

However, the agency issued a statement saying that “for many illegal aliens, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives.”

Delaney Hall has become the latest example of the Trump administration’s deportation policies crashing head-on into local resistance.

The same kind of sustained protests seen outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Portland, Oregon, and Minneapolisare now taking place in Newark. This time, the facility is a recently reopened jail run by the prison contractor GEO Group with roughly 1,000 beds that has been described as the largest of its kind on the Eastern Seaboard. It is also unwelcome by the city government, which tried but failed to get a judge to block its use by pointing to missing permits.

Immigration Protests New Jersey (5548x3699, AR: 1.50)Immigration Protests New Jersey (4000x2667, AR: 1.50)
When ICE agents attacked protesters outside the jail in recent days, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill deployed state police — who showed up at night in armor, riding horses, and beat demonstrators with metal batons and choked them with tear gas. Sherrill has since faced tough questions from New Jersey residents and local journalists about her actions that only escalated violence against the people who’ve set up a single white tent outside the jail, hold up signs and shout at employees that they’re fascists.

Aleixa Diaz, a organizer with the group Spirit of Liberation in Jersey City, told NOTUS she had to take two days off to recover from the harrowing experience protesting that night. She described how state police blocked the north end of the street and ordered everyone to evacuate within 15 minutes — even though the south side of the street was blocked by ICE vans. She said ICE agents shot at them with rubber bullets while state police gassed them.

“They tricked us,” Diaz said. “Sherrill hasn’t given us an answer to that.”

Newark police have since tried to take control of the scene, forgoing riot gear and showing up in regular police uniforms to monitor the crowd, which tends to swell up in size every night. It’s the latest attempt to temper the rising tensions, as temperatures spike into the 90s and advocates say detainees inside continue a hunger strike in protest of the conditions.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who has protested outside Delaney Hall and was arrested by federal agents during a visit, spoke to NPR earlier this week after he issued a temporary curfew there. He called the situation “untenable,” noting that some protesters had set fire to tires in the street but saying that ICE was still to blame for escalating the confrontations. However, he emphasized that more attention should be paid to the situation inside the facility rather than outside of it.

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Lawsuits filed by those inside the jail paint a distressing picture, according to hundreds of pages of restricted court filings reviewed by NOTUS.

So far this year, detainees have filed more than 531 lawsuits challenging their detention at Delaney Hall — a rate of more than three per day. Just the claims against that one facility make up more than a third of the habeas corpus lawsuits across the entire state, even though more than 5,000 inmates are held at two other federal prisons and another ICE detention facility.

Danixa Ondina Urbina-Yanes, a 38-year-old Honduran mother of five children — four of whom are U.S. citizens and the other who now has legal status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — was driving to her babysitter when she was stopped by ICE agents last month. Her lawsuit describes being subjected to “absolute food deprivation for five consecutive days where she was forced to survive on the leftovers of her 10 cellmates.”

Her lawsuit alleges that after she placed a meal order on May 22, the jail simply “took all her commissary money and canceled her order.” She didn’t eat until May 27 and “became very ill.” During that time, she noticed that two of her cellmates were pregnant — one miscarried and another fainted, the suit states.

A lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Jorge Luis Rivera Rivera — who was at work delivering Amazon packages when a police officer arrested him and turned him over to ICE — alleges his three stepchildren have been suffering anxiety attacks since he was taken from them in January.

“My detention conditions violate basic standards of human dignity. I have experienced lack of nutritional food, lack of cleanliness and sanitation, mistreatment and disrespect from guards, inadequate medical care, unsanitary living conditions,” his lawsuit states.

A lawyer for Freiman Xaviel Hamui Morales, a Venezuelan who received temporary protected status that legally allowed him to remain in the United States, described how his client worked in construction and volunteered as a camera operator at church until he was arrested by ICE in March. The lawsuit he filed listed numerous problems at Delaney Hall: “food quality, sanitation, overcrowding, limited medical care, communication restrictions.”

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Dozens of other lawsuits list similar complaints, while some highlight detainees’ length of stay. A 27-year-old Guinean man identified simply as A.M.D. — to hide his real name in case he is deported back to the African nation where he was tortured — has been held since October. Ivan Emilio Millan Enriquez, who fled the café he opened in Colombia when he was threatened by leftist guerillas and was working as a bike mechanic and Uber Eats delivery driver when ICE arrested him, has been at Delaney Hall since October as well.

Federal judges are sorting through claims, but mirroring the crush of lawsuits filed in Minneapolis earlier this year, the judicial system is overwhelmed.

It took five days for Leonardo Adrian Albarracin Bonifaz — who has an 8-year-old daughter and worked as a dishwasher at a Charlie Brown's Fresh Grill in the suburban town of Scotch Plains, New Jersey — to get intervention from U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner, who ordered him released within 48 hours. He was released at 6:05 p.m. that same day, according to a memo from Assistant U.S. Attorney John Crosby.

DHS said there is no detainee hunger strike at the detention center and that “all detainees are provided with proper meals, quality water, blankets, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”

Several lawyers countered that last point, saying that clients have had phone and tablet access taken away in recent weeks as punishment for shedding light on the conditions there.

During House testimony this week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullins said the federal government would not allow New Jersey state health inspectors to go beyond a narrow site visit in which they were denied access to sleeping areas, bathrooms and medical units.

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Mullins has dismissed Delaney Hall as “a political topic” and, when speaking to reporters, said of hunger-striking detainees: “Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want. … The fact is, we're giving them the calories they want. This isn't Holiday Inn.”

Sterling Santamaria, a local immigration attorney who represents detainees, said her clients now routinely snatch apples and bananas from the cafeteria and stuff them into their pockets to avoid ever having to eat prepared food riddled with worms and mold.

“I think it’s done on purpose. They want to make it as miserable as possible so detainees just decide to give up and take the removal order,” she said. “If I have a guy from Guatemala and he decides to leave, he’ll tell whoever is in his hometown not to come here.”]]>