Back to school, sans phones

Good morning!

I live in Bloomfield, where my niece (13) and nephew (11) dragged themselves out of bed this morning for the first day of school.

This is the first year they and most other New Jersey public school students will have to grapple with a new statewide mandate to ban cellphone use during the school day. Phil Murphy signed it in January in his final days as governor, and it’s a policy supported by his successor, Mikie Sherrill.

Sherrill has four children, and said on Tuesday she’s looking forward to phone-free school days.

“The best way I can describe it is almost a sense of relief. Everybody needs a break,” she said.

The ban had near-unanimous support from the Legislature, with just three votes against. One was Assemblyman Brian Bergen (R-Morris), who has mocked his colleagues as Luddites for supporting the measure.

“Fun fact: NJ ALSO still has a 1989 law making it a criminal offense for a student to carry a BEEPER. We never repealed it. We just banned the next device. In 30 years, kids will laugh at this law the way we laugh at the beeper ban,” he said on social media last week.

Read more from Sophie Nieto-Muñoz.

Energy: Sherrill signed a bill Tuesday aimed at expanding balcony solar, the use of portable solar energy units that can help lower electric bills for folks like myself who can’t partake in regulation solar panels or community solar. The law bars towns and homeowner associations from preventing residents from using the units. I am seriously considering obtaining one just to start a fight with my own homeowner association, which like many others has only passing knowledge of the U.S. Constitution.

NYC: The New York Times has details on the horrifying death of Erin Piacenti, a new mom and bank executive from New Jersey who police say was stabbed to death in Times Square on Monday afternoon in what appears to be a random attack. Authorities identified the stabber as Pamela Cisneros, who they say also stabbed a tourist before police shot her to death.

Voting: An anonymous U.S. Postal Service employee has made claims that the agency is moving forward so quickly to adhere to President Trump’s vote-by-mail executive order that chaos will surely ensue. One alarming bit from a letter written by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut): The Postal Service is aiming for a zero-percent failure rate. “When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well,” the letter reads.

If your goal is to design a system aimed at disenfranchising millions of voters easily, this is the kind of thing you’d do.

Housing: There’s a bit of a fight in Montclair between the owners of two buildings and the operators of Nicolo’s Italian Bakery & Deli, which is in one of the buildings and opposes plans to move the deli into new, fancier digs as part of a redevelopment plan. Matt Kadosh at Montclair Local has more on the battle. Meanwhile, if you go to Nicolo’s, I suggest the No. 1, a chicken cutlet and broccoli rabe sandwich that is to die for.

Courts: The debate over the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices is renewing, with Democrats again calling for expanding the court and House Republicans moving to cap the number constitutionally at nine. House Speaker Mike Johnson accused the Democratic Socialists of America, whom he referred to as the “communist socialists in the Democrat party who are taking the party over,” of wanting “to pack the U.S. Supreme Court.” “We’re gonna make sure that doesn’t happen,” the Louisiana Republican said.