'Freeze of the century' hits NJ crops

Good morning!

I’m like to celebrate the impending start of the summer season but I’m a little worried about strawberries.

A double whammy of unseasonable warmth in April followed by a four-day freeze has decimated some New Jersey crops, so much so that Gov. Mikie Sherrill is pleading with the federal government for aid.

Farmers told Dana DiFilippo that tree fruits, strawberries, and blueberries are among the victims.

“I think it’s the freeze of a century,” Jim Giamarese, who farms 130 acres in East Brunswick, told her. “I’ve been farming pretty much all my life. I’m 70 years old. I’ve experienced probably 100 frosts in my lifetime. Most of the time you can mitigate some of the damage. But it just got too cold for too long.”

Giamarese estimates he lost 90% of his apple crops and 40% of his strawberries. Other farms reported 100% losses of some crops, including Terhune Orchards in Mercer County, where the April freeze wiped out its peach, Asian pear, and cherry orchards and sorely damaged its apple and blueberry crops.

Terhune Orchards’ Tannwen Mount told Dana they’ll open pick-your-own up for tomatoes, potatoes, corn, peppers, and other vegetables for the first time to offset losses in other crops.

“As farmers, we have to pivot when Mother Nature throws us a curveball,” Mount said. “I think the message in farming, in these days of climate change, is that we have to remain diverse and still give opportunities for folks to come out and support local farming and enjoy the crops that we do have and enjoy the open environment.”

Read more from Dana.

Voting rights: With the U.S. Supreme Court knee-capping provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act, progressive activists in New Jersey have called for the state to pass its own version of the federal bill. That measure is advancing, with a New Jersey Senate panel on Thursday approving a new version of it that supporters say will counter changes at the federal level.  “This bill brings protection home to New Jersey, where we have the authority to enforce it,” said bill sponsor Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson.

Tom Kean: David Wildstein at the New Jersey Globe says he spoke by phone to Rep. Tom Kean Jr., whose extended absence from Congress and public view is striking for a man who is up for reelection in about five months in one of the most closely watched races in the nation. Kean told Wildstein what his handlers have told reporters since mid-March: He’s dealing with a health thing and he’ll be back “in the next couple of weeks.”

Kean’s phone call came as more media outlets decided to send reporters to Kean’s home in Westfield — NBC News called the town an “affluent suburban district outside of Newark” lol — in ways that teeter on the edge of creepy. A Notus reporter appeared to peer inside the house this week, saying he say a yard sign for Jack Ciattarelli’s failed 2025 bid for governor “in a trash heap in the den,” and also approached Kean’s wife as she arrived home. The Daily Beast noted that exchange and framed it this way, even though the Notus story explicitly says Mrs. Kean has been seen:

I wish Kean and his staff were being more transparent about his whereabouts, but I also think everybody needs to take a breath here, especially if you’re a reporter who does not live in New Jersey.

D.C.: Two cops who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, sued the Trump administration Thursday to block creation of a $1.8 billion fund to pay people who claim they are victims of judicial weaponization, a fund that critics say would allow for cash payments to Jan. 6 rioters who attacked police. “In the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century, President Donald J. Trump has created a $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to finance the insurrectionists and paramilitary groups that commit violence in his name,” the first paragraph of the complaint reads.