2020 all over again

Good morning!

The air in New Jersey is getting harder to breathe, Taco Bell in shocking news may be the source of the explosive diarrhea parasite, we’re days away from the World Cup final/the dissolution of the great state of New York New Jersey, and Trump has new claims of vote fraud. TGIF, folks. Let’s get to it 👇

Transpo: NJ Transit approved a $3.5 billion budget on Thursday, a record spending bill that comes as the agency has faced enormous fiscal headwinds. Its CEO, Kris Kolluri, credited Gov. Mikie Sherrill with allowing the agency to raise spending by 11%. Kolluri also took a swing at commuters who gripe about NJ Transit service, noting that the agency is facing a giant increase in labor costs. “I know people don’t want to understand or care because they are frustrated sometimes when their train is canceled. I understand it, but the fact that the labor contracts cost $55 million more than they did last year is a fact,” he said. Granted, but not canceling trains is the ideal for a public transit agency, right?

Commentary: I have some thoughts on recent comments by a GOP Roxbury councilman who blamed Sherrill for the Trump administration’s decision to apparently revive its once-dead plan to turn a warehouse in the Morris County town into a giant migrant detention center. The councilman, Jim Rilee, said Sherrill did an “anti-Trump dance” when the plan was first canceled, essentially forcing the president to reverse course. Darcy Draeger, chair of Morris County’s Democratic Party, told me, “It honestly sounds like an abused partner trying to rationalize what’s happening to them.”

Labor: Family leave protections in New Jersey expanded Friday under a law signed by then-Gov. Phil Murphy back in January. Under the changes, businesses with 15 or more workers are now required to provide family leave protections (down from 30 workers previously) and employees must now work for 250 hours and three months to qualify (down from 1,000 hours and 12 months). Business groups opposed the changes, saying they would make New Jersey small businesses less competitive.

Courts: Federal oversight of the state-run and long-troubled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women is now over, six years after federal investigators found that state officials failed to keep its residents safe from sexual abuse by staff.

World Cup: Just in time for the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, this is new from Katie Sobko + Coleen Wilson at the Bergen Record: “The New York New Jersey World Cup host committee appears to have operated and solicited donations to support the 2026 World Cup soccer matches held in the Garden State for more than three years without having filed legally required paperwork with New Jersey’s attorney general.”

Trump: President Donald Trump said Thursday that the nation’s election infrastructure is vulnerable to hacking by foreign actors, citing a slew of documents he declassified. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and some non-state groups “have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure,” Trump said. Trump also claimed that voter rolls in at least 18 states were “bought, stolen, or hacked by China” ahead of the 2020 election. Damn, we should find out who was running the U.S. in 2000 and ask that guy some serious questions.