The way to go...

Good morning!

NJ Transit, not content with fouling up morning and evening commutes, has moved onto screwing with air travel.

A telecom outage led to grounded flights Monday morning at Newark airport and five others, and the back-up plan also failed because a NJ Transit contractor goofed and severed a key fiber-optic cable, according to Colleen Wilson at the Bergen Record. Even flights in Logan Airport in Boston had to be canceled.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy initially blamed Amtrak for the disruption, but Amtrak was quick to point the finger at NJ Transit, as it’s wont to do. Flights at Newark, JFK, and LaGuardia resumed Monday night.

This was less funny than when that cow caused a headache for rail commuters back in 2023. But NJ Transit is at least using yesterday’s incident as a potential revenue-raiser:

Courts: Did you know that in New Jersey, it’s against the law to use certain types of items like baseball bats as weapons, even in self-defense? A group of gun owners is challenging those restrictions in federal court, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s pro-firearm ruling in the case known as Bruen requires fewer restrictions on nonfirearms, too: “While the Bruen decision has forced New Jersey to allow the carry of guns for self-defense, New Jersey law still explicitly bans and punishes the carry of common, everyday objects other than firearms specifically for the purpose of self-defense. That flies in the face of Bruen and must change.”

Paramount: New Jersey and 11 other states dropped their legal challenge of the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger Monday after Paramount agreed to a host of actions to settle the dispute, including by agreeing to meet annual film release benchmarks and committing to raise spending on domestic movie production by at least $1.5 billion. “We have been laser-focused on the interests of New Jersey’s working families throughout, and the agreement our multistate coalition obtained here reflects that,” New Jersey Attorney General Jen Davenport said in a statement. “We look forward to generations more of films and TV shows produced right here in the birthplace of the motion picture industry.”

Prisons: A New Jersey mom is calling for justice for her 18-year-old son after she said he was severely beaten by other inmates at a Middlesex County juvenile lock-up and she found out only because her older son happened to see video of the fight on social media. “These young men, they commit these crimes but they’re still young men with families. Like my son is not what you would call an adult male, so for you not to contact his mother after he’s had a concussion and was throwing up blood?” she told Dana DiFilippo. No comment from state officials.

Jealous?:

The reason is we don’t wanna.

D.C.: With diesel fuel prices skyrocketing — up nearly $3 a gallon from a year ago in New Jersey, per AAA — members of President Trump’s party are urging him to take action. Longtime Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley has asked Trump to embargo diesel fuel exports as costs “ARE KILLING FARMERS INCOME.”

Health: Medicaid enrollees and leading medical orgs are suing to challenge new Medicaid work requirements. The plaintiffs are arguing that the restrictions, set to take effect Jan. 1, create barriers to healthcare coverage for the nation’s most vulnerable.