>> From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vannozzi.

>> Hello and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gaggis.

>> Good morning.

I'm Joanna Gaggis.

Coming up in the broadcast, the countdown is on to the World Cup games here in New Jersey.

Are hotels and restaurants ready for the crowds?

Plus, a war of words.

We talk with the head of the Catholic diocese of Trenton about the verbal clash between Pope Leo and President Trump over the Middle East conflict.

And later, businesses are eligible for refunds on tariffs they've paid.

So what should businesses in our state know?

But first, New Jersey has a new congresswoman.

Representative Annalilia Mejia was sworn in by Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday evening, only four days after winning the special election in the state's 11th congressional district.

Mejia handily defeated Republican Joe Hathaway by about 20 points, although the last of the mail-in ballots still have to be counted.

Mejia took the oath of office surrounded by her family and other members of New Jersey's Democratic caucus and then delivered her first speech on the House floor.

Amid recent resignations on both sides of the aisle, Mejia's formal swearing-in brings the total number of Democrats in the House to 213 compared to Republicans' 218, which does include one Independent who caucuses with the Republicans.

In her first remarks before Congress, Mejia chose to highlight her immigrant roots and her commitment to working people in her district and the nation.

Take a listen.

I join you today with a message delivered by the people of New Jersey's 11th Congressional District but echoed nationally.

Stand up, defend, restore not only our democracy but also a just economy that actually works for working people.

Governor Mikey Sherrill is asking the federal government to help cover the cost of the deadly blizzard that hammered the state in late February.

That storm brought record-level snow in many parts of the state, dumping 24 inches in less than 24 hours in some areas, and it contributed to the weather-related deaths of 12 people.

Sherrill is joined by most of the state's congressional delegation in her calls for federal support, starting with our two U.S.

Senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, as well as seven members of the House, six of them Democrats and Republican Jeff Van Drew.

They're urging President Trump to unlock FEMA aid, noting that the cost and damages to the state is estimated to exceed $100 million.

That's according to New Jersey's Office of Emergency Management.

But FEMA aid has been tied up in the bitter funding battle on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers still haven't reached an agreement on how to fund ICE, which, like FEMA, falls under the Department of Homeland Security.

There's been no response to the letter as of yet from the Trump administration.

Coming up, we hear how New Jersey's restaurant and hotel industry is preparing for the World Cup crowds, and how they feel about the proposed sales tax increase during the Games.

That's next.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

As the countdown to the World Cup continues, New Jersey is preparing for the influx of more than 1 million tourists to the Meadowlands region between June 13th and the date of the final match on July 19th.

Democratic Senator Paul Sarlo has proposed a bill to hike the sales tax to a whopping 9.6% during the tournament to cover the costs of hosting the global event.

That 3% tax increase would apply to retail goods, food and more, and a 2.5% sales tax increase would be added to hotels.

Well, critics of the plan say that driving up costs could discourage fans from spending their time and money in the Garden State.

Daniel Klim is of the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association, and he joins us now to talk it all through.

Dan, great to have you on the show.

Thanks for being with us.

Thank you for having me.

Let me just first ask you, how are restaurants and hotels preparing for this influx of people through this kind of one-month period?

So, we're trying to get them as much information as possible.

The association this week just launched a campaign called New Jersey Home of Hospitality, where we can provide resources from all over the state to prepare our restaurants, our hotels, our hospitality groups for this influx of people, not only for the World Cup, but also for America 250 in South Jersey.

We're expecting, hopefully, people come over from Philadelphia for the World Cup games there and for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

So we've got a lot going on.

And our job as an association is to make sure that we provide our members and the industries with as many resources as possible.

Is there a projected number of what the economic impact could be or is expected to be for your industry in particular?

We haven't seen a projected number for hotels, restaurants and hospitality groups, but we know the overall economic region we're looking at anywhere from $3 to $4 billion.

And we're hoping that trickles down throughout the entire state.

So someone who comes here and goes to a game at the Meadowlands will also take advantage of what the shore has to offer or amusements like Maury's Pier is down in Cape May.

We want them to be able to experience the whole state.

Have restaurants in particular, and we can talk about hotels as well, but are they pre-hiring for this?

I would imagine that they're going to need to bolster staff and they're going to need to make sure that they can handle the crowds.

Well, we're trying to get out as much information about hiring, about safety protocols, about everything they're going to need ahead of time.

So those are some of the things that we're trying to do right now to get people prepared, to understand their staffing, to understand how other cultures may dine or how they may pay.

We want to make sure that they have enough food.

So we're working with a lot of our distribution partners on recommendations there.

So there's a lot of information, including workforce, that we're trying to get out in this short amount of time.

to get it out ahead as early as possible to give people as much time that they need to cover all the things that they're going to need to cover for these events.

Let me ask you about this sales tax issue.

We see this bill floated.

I've spoken with Republicans on this show who say this is a terrible idea.

We're going to discourage people from coming here, from spending here.

What does your industry, your association, have a position on whether or not this 3% sales tax increase is a good or bad thing?

Well, we're very concerned about it right now because that 30 mile radius around the Meadowlands does touch a significant part of the state.

But it's not just a tax on the visitors who are coming here.

It's a tax on the residents who are here as well.

It's a tax on the businesses, too.

And so a lot of there are underlying costs, too.

For example, when the sales tax goes up, there's credit card fees that are going to have to be paid for with processing.

That's on the backs of the small business owner.

And an independent restaurant right now is making less than a 3 percent margin on their profits as it is.

So we don't want to see this tax go through.

We don't want to -- we want to be competitive in the regions between Philadelphia and New York.

We want people to come and spend their money and see all the great things we have to offer in New Jersey.

So we don't want to look at additional taxes on our small businesses.

Yeah, let's look at the hotel tax in particular because that would be a 2.5%.

And just put into perspective for us some of the taxes and fees that already exist for someone booking a hotel room here in New Jersey.

Well you've got all the basic service fees but then you add this additional fee that inflates the amount of money that somebody is going to have to pay for a room and that's going to be on par with Philadelphia or New York.

It's going to be the same.

We're not competitive in our pricing.

So we want to create incentives that allow people to stay here to dine here to shop here and to be a part of the New Jersey culture that we all love.

Is there any in your mind any kind of carve out.

Let's say you live in New Jersey.

You get to show your I.D.

and you don't pay the tax.

Or do you think all across the board this just makes us less competitive.

And this potentially drives folks to New York to Pennsylvania.

Well I think it makes us less competitive because we're doing this with less than 60 days till the opening and I don't know how we could carve out residents or how we could change payment systems and do all those things that this is proposing in such a short amount of time.

Yeah, let me just switch gears quickly.

We've seen a whole lot of ICE activity here in the state of New Jersey and we've seen reporting that it's in particular impacting restaurants.

And I just want to get a sense from you, if you're experiencing from your members a worker shortage or any other, you know, workers not coming to work or having been removed from the job, are they feeling the impacts of this and how are they dealing with it?

We have not gotten reports in our offices about this being a continuous process.

We have heard isolated incidents over the past maybe year, but we are not getting a lot of information in our office about activity in restaurants.

Do you have any concerns whatsoever that restaurants and hotels will be able to staff, will be able to bolster that work supply, the workers that they need in this critical period?

That is the hope, and that's why we're trying to provide as many resources as possible to get staffing levels up to where they need to be.

I just worry that if we do have an additional tax on them and people go to the other states to enjoy the games, we won't need those extra workers.

The goal is to make sure that we have adequate staffing across all levels of our industries.

And no concerns about ice activity during that time potentially impacting staffing?

Well, I think there's always a concern.

It's just a matter of making sure that we can be supportive for any restaurants that reach out to the association to give them the information they need.

All right.

Daniel Klim, New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association, thank you so much.

Thank you very much for having me.

There's still a lot of uncertainty around the U.S.

and Iran reaching an agreement to end the conflict in the Middle East.

The deadline of the ceasefire and the timing of future negotiations has been a moving target in recent days.

In the meantime, the conflict has drawn the attention and criticism of Pope Leo, who's the first U.S.-born head of the Catholic Church.

President Trump responded by chiding the pope.

And after an exchange of messages, the president posted to social media a now-deleted AI image of himself as Jesus, prompting swift backlash from members of the faith community.

I'm joined now by Bishop David O'Connell, who leads the Catholic Diocese of Trenton.

Bishop, thank you so much for being with us today.

My pleasure.

The pope has said that the world is being ravaged by tyrants and that the Catholic Church takes the side of the humans involved.

I'm going to ask you a philosophical question.

How does the Church define whether a war is a "just war"?

Well, over the centuries, the Church has developed a tradition, a theory, a teaching, which is referred to in moral theology as the "just war theory."

And it's a series of principles that the Church puts forth that should be met before a war is considered to be just.

Can you give me a few of those?

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I can give you a couple of those.

War is considered to be a serious evil, never a good, and the starting point for any consideration or discussion has got to be a presumption against war.

There's got to be a just cause.

In other words, it's got to be effectively restricted to defense.

And there should be some proportionality.

The harm that is caused by war must be weighed against other harms that might be present.

There's got to be a legitimate defense that's ordered toward peace.

There's got to be some expression of charity and concern for the enemy.

And there are some limits on war and a role for international authority.

There's no such thing in the church's teaching as a punitive war in the way that some older theories say.

With all of that and some of the things that the Pope has come out and said in some of his messages, the President has responded by calling the Pope weak on crime.

Does the church have a moral obligation to be tough on crime or to support that position in light of everything you just laid out?

Well, to be honest with you, when the president made that comment, I was baffled by it.

I don't know how he would know that.

The pope has never been in a position, either as pope or as cardinal or as bishop, where he had any responsibility for dealing with crime per se.

And so that really, I thought, was a claim that didn't have much foundation.

I think that the president expounded on that by saying that, you know, no one should want a world in which Iran has access to nuclear weapons, justifying the U.S.

action there.

But I just want to ask how you would characterize the pope's response to the messaging that that the president put out about him.

Well I would like to say this first.

The president has claimed that Pope Leo has spoken out in favor of Iran having nuclear weapons.

And that is not true.

That's not found anywhere in any of the talks or messages that Pope Leo is given.

And so that to me is a kind of a very difficult thing to to accept.

But given to the question of how the pope has responded how would you characterize it.

I think his response has been very direct, very clear, very respectful.

I don't think he has any desire, and he said this, to get into a debate or a war of words, so to speak, with the President of the United States.

The church, the Catholic Church in particular, has recently seen an uptick in its parishioners coming in, new converts into the church.

And I'm not asking you to speak for any church beyond the Catholic Church, but it certainly wasn't just Catholics who reacted when they saw the president post this image.

He says that he thought it was him as a doctor because he says he heals people and he helps people get better.

What is your response and the response of your diocese to seeing that image?

Well, I don't know what the response of the whole diocese is, but my response was, that's a ridiculous thing to say.

He obviously, or whoever generated that, obviously was trying to portray the president in a Jesus role.

And that's what that picture represents.

To me, I just think it's ludicrous.

I have to ask you, again, kind of a more philosophical question.

As we see the church weigh in on the conflicts between the U.S.

and other countries, and this isn't the only time the church has weighed in, here in the U.S., does the separation of church and state still exist as the founding fathers first envisioned it, Thomas Jefferson first kind of outlined it?

Yeah, I think it does.

And I think we make an effort to be very respectful of the state and its positions.

But there is a clear separation between the two outlined in our foundational documents in the U.S.

And I think we try to be respectful of that.

I know the church has said that it doesn't take a partisan position.

The pope has said that it's not a partisan position.

I'm not sure if the pope has been partisan in any way.

been partisan in any way.

been partisan in any way.

I'm not sure if the pope has been partisan in any way.

I'm not sure if the pope has It's a concerted effort, I know that I do, to avoid any kind of political entanglements.

And the Pope has said that himself.

He doesn't want to get involved in any politics.

He preaches the gospel, and he's going to continue to preach that gospel, no matter how it's interpreted by political figures or political people.

I want to just-- I want to quote him a bit.

The Pope said that he has no fear with neither the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the gospel, and that the dignity of every human, the loss of life, suffering of the innocent, are tragedies.

Where do you believe, does the church believe this conflict should go from here?

Well, the Pope is speaking as the universal shepherd, the universal leader of the church, and he's speaking with a moral clarity.

And I think he is making every effort that he can to focus attention away from war, away from violence, away from some of these things that he's accused of having said, to try to get people to be much more involved and interested in what the church preaches.

And what the church preaches and what the pope preaches is the gospel.

And the gospel is the word and the thought of Jesus Christ.

And the pope is the vicar of Christ.

I just have to ask you, as people hear the church speaking out as this moral compass, this moral leader, there are critics who say, look, the Catholic Church has failed to be a moral leader over the years with the way that it's handled the sex scandals that have plagued the church.

How do you respond to that?

Well, I think there are over the history of the church, not just in recent years, but over the history of the church, times when there have been moral failures.

You're dealing with human beings.

And I think that has to be kept in mind when you talk about things like the sex abuse crisis, terrible crisis, the terrible blight on the church's experience, especially in more recent years.

And so the church is making every effort at this point to try to address that, try to be transparent, and try to correct that.

All right.

We have to leave it there.

But, Bishop O'Connell, thank you so much for your time today.

Bishop, down there in Trenton, the diocese in Trenton, we appreciate it.

You're most welcome.

The federal government has begun the process of refunding a total of $166 billion worth of tariffs that it collected from businesses across the country.

Now those tariffs had been imposed by the Trump administration on imported goods under an Emergency Powers Act.

But the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled in February the tariffs were unlawful because only Congress has legal authority to impose them.

businesses could start filing claims for those tariff refunds.

So what does that mean for New Jersey business.

Here to explain is Peter Connolly CEO of the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

Peter great to have you on the show.

I know your organization.

I know your organization helps small to medium sized manufacturing business access resources and develop skills to grow.

I want to ask you when it comes to these tariffs first who is eligible for them.

So if you're an importer is who is eligible.

So when you look at the large companies of Wal-Marts and Kohl's they are an importer of goods.

They are eligible and only importers are.

So if you're a small or medium manufacturer you're usually dealing with an importer to bring in your materials.

The importer is the one that is eligible not a small medium business.

So how many of those businesses exist here in New Jersey.

Let's start there.

So there's 10000 small medium manufacturers in New Jersey.

>> And they're all big >> Those big importers, you have Amazon, it depends on where they're located.

To be honest, it's not going to trickle down to your mom and pop, your small medium manufacturer in New Jersey.

Yet they have to work through their importer to get a refund.

>> We're going to talk about that trickle down because that's a layered issue.

But just when it comes to those businesses that are eligible, what amount are they able to claim?

Has the federal government clarified?

Is it simply the amount that they paid?

Is there a limit or a cap?

There's uncertainty there.

It just got rolled out yesterday.

I know there's some issues with the Cape website.

So I think it's going to take time to work through that.

So who knows.

I mean as tariffs got instituted there was also uncertainty on how it got implemented what percentage it was what country it was.

And so small medium manufacturers had a tough time deciphering in the beginning of what actual tariffs were going to be imposed on them.

And that's why they work through import companies.

I want to talk about that trickle down piece that you laid out.

When we look at this really those importers paid it but it trickled down to as you said small to medium sized businesses and then eventually on to the consumer.

So first question do we know if any of these importers are going to be passing on some of those refunds to smaller businesses.

And then we'll get to the consumer side.

That is yet to be seen whether they the importers will pass that down that each company has to work with their importer.

So there are some companies that imported themselves small companies and they will be eligible.

But if they went through an import company they would have to work through that.

And there's some very good work companies and I'm sure that that's going to work but it will take time.

As an organization that represents these small to medium sized businesses do you hear of any of them saying they're going to be demanding those types of refunds from their importers.

They can try to demand but it's going to take time.

We're one day into this.

We're a day and a half to this.

So it's going to take time to figure that out.

We've seen just a couple of reported statements from some businesses that I want to highlight.

FedEx for one says that it plans to return money to its consumers.

I don't know how it plans to roll that out or how it plans to calculate but at least there's a verbal commitment there.

And then Costco says that it plans to I guess give back in a way by lowering prices for consumers.

Not everyone's satisfied with that.

Do you anticipate that there could be some class action lawsuits from from consumers to those bigger businesses saying hey we want a piece of this.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But again I'm going to use timing.

You know the administration is also looking under Section 301 to impose tariffs again on a different way instead of doing it the way they did again.

So I'm going to keep going back to the term uncertainty.

You know that's what affects small medium manufacturers.

It's an uncertainty in the market.

When you see Wall Street you know just just look at gas prices gas prices.

It's up and down in some certainty.

What are you hearing from the businesses that you represent in terms of that new attempt from the Trump administration to impose tariffs through the new rule.

Is there can we expect legal action here.

I think you will but you're not going to see it from small medium manufacturers.

You know you're going to see that from the bigger bigger boys the Amazons the Costco's.

You know you're not going to see the small businesses unless somebody like the National Association of Manufacturers NAM or the Chamber of Commerce of the US starts to pick that up and help them.

But you know I really see it being more of the big boys.

This is obviously one hundred sixty six billion.

It's a big number.

Nothing to sneeze at.

That's a huge number.

What impact do you think this has along kind of the pipeline of of goods and services.

And does it end up impacting consumers.

I know it's only a day in.

But do you think that this has a major impact.

Yes I don't think you're going to see a big change at least talking to our the manufacturers that we deal with.

It's going to take time.

Again they don't think they're going to see any of the hundred sixty six billion.

All right.

We're going to have to leave it there.

Peter Connolly CEO of the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

Appreciate the insight today.

Thank Thank you for having me.

All right that's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gaggis for the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News.

Thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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