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>> From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ spotlight news with Brianna Vannozzi.

>> Hello, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Joanna gagas.

We're bringing you a special NJ spotlight news edition of reporters roundtable.

We're later in the show.

I'll give you a roundup of the top political stories of the week with the help of a panel of local journalists.

That's later.

But first, some major headlines.

The race to fill Governor Mikey Sherrill's vacant congressional seat is still too close to call.

With more than 90% of the votes counted, progressive activist Annelilia Mejia has inched out a lead over former Congressman Tom Malinowski, with just a few hundred votes separating them.

Neither candidate has declared victory or conceded, and a final tally could still be more than a week away as mail-in and provisional ballots are being counted.

Mejia says every vote must still be counted, but she is crediting her ground game and anti-ICE activism for raising her name recognition, even as she lagged behind in fundraising.

Malinowski's campaign released a statement saying they also remain confident the former District 7 Congressman will be declared the winner after all the ballots are counted.

Trailing Mejia and Malinowski are former Lieutenant Governor Tahisha Way and Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill.

Now, Gill's fourth place showing was another surprise after he racked up endorsements from former Governor Phil Murphy and the Essex County Democratic Machine.

Outside spending played a major role in this race.

The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC sunk more than $2 million into attack ads against Malinowski, portraying him as pro-ICE, those ads seen as retribution for his refusing to say he'd support unconditional aid for Israel.

While the winner of the Democratic primary will then face off against the Republican candidate Randolph Mayor Joe Hathaway, who ran in the primary unopposed.

The general election will be held on April 16th.

Also, as ICE operations are carried out across the country, President Trump has insisted his administration is removing criminals from our streets, including for the crime of coming to the country illegally.

Well, this week, a group of 25 men detained at Delaney Hall Detention Center in Newark have issued a joint letter sharing their stories of how and why they entered the U.S.

In the letter shared with advocates, the men apologized for the way they entered the country, but say their lives and the lives of their families were in danger.

They say they turned themselves in to border authorities, attended mandatory check-ins with immigration officials, and obtained work permits.

And that there were no judge's orders for their arrests or detention, but that ICE officers didn't care, arresting them at scheduled immigration appointments.

They say they feel they've been quote "kidnapped or detained without justification" and that their right to due process and legal counsel was violated.

Some say they've requested to self-deport despite the dangers they face in their home countries, but that even those requests are being delayed.

Detainees say Delaney is overcrowded and that ICE is detaining people with physical disabilities and mental health issues, as well as juveniles and the elderly.

Now, GEO Group, which runs Delaney Hall, says it "strongly disagrees with these allegations, which we believe are instigated by politically motivated outside groups as part of a campaign to abolish ICE."

Meanwhile, ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Property taxes in New Jersey hit a record high last year.

The average homeowner paid $10,500 on their property tax bill, according to data from the state's Department of Community Affairs.

That increase was on average about $475.

That's a 5% increase, which is nearly double the 2.7% rate of inflation in the country, according to the U.S.

Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the 5% property tax increase aligns with the average increase in property values across the state, which was about 5.8% last year.

Those values have increased significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic.

About 60% of property taxes are used to fund local school districts.

And some municipalities whose districts were facing severe budget deficits saw major property tax increases last year, as Governor Murphy allowed them to exceed the 2% tax cap.

Another significant cost driver for those tax rates are public workers' employee health benefits, a cost that's been rising steadily in recent years, and a portion goes to maintain roads, as well as local police and fire departments.

To learn more about the increases and what's contributing to them, check out our budget and finance writer, John Wright Myers, reporting on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

And those are our top headlines.

My conversation on "Reporters Roundtable" starts right now.

♪♪ This is "Reporters Roundtable."

We got a panel of journalists with us to help break down all the latest week of New Jersey news.

Let's see who they are.

We have Colleen O'Day, senior writer and projects editor for NJ Spotlight News.

We've got Daniel Hahn, reporter for Politico NJ, and Charlie Stile, political columnist for The Record and the USA Today Network.

Now, Governor Sherrill's acting attorney general filed a lawsuit this week against the Trump administration to unfreeze those Gateway Tunnel project funds.

They're asking for immediate relief.

At the time that we're taping, the courts still haven't made a decision, but that could happen at any moment.

Charlie, I'm going to start with you.

Just explain why New York and New Jersey brought this suit.

-I think they ran out of time and they ran out of options and the ability to persuade the Mad King, who is sitting on this money, largely, somewhat mysteriously, but largely, I believe, is out of spite and trying to use it partly out of spite and partly as sees it as some sort of leverage for a host of things, namely, maybe getting Democrats to back off some of their demands to put restrictions on ICE and Department of Homeland Security funding.

So it kind of remains something of a mystery.

So I think with the deadline running out as of Friday, today, and the possibility of having all these idle workers, they needed to show that they weren't just sort of sitting around trying to negotiate on the back channel with Trump, which seems like an exercise in futility.

So they went with the nuclear option.

So there is a separate lawsuit from the Gateway Development Commission that actually filed suit before the states did.

They say this is a breach of contract.

The states say, as you're saying, this is political.

And I sat down with the acting attorney general, Jen Davenport, earlier this week, who said, look, we've gotten numerous reasons listed as to why there's a stoppage, one of them being that this is an investigation into the state's DEI practices during the contracting process.

They say it's been a moving target, Charlie.

Absolutely.

I agree with that.

I mean, that whole DEI thing, no one really bought that.

That was just sort of an excuse to, initially it was an excuse to cover their real intent, which was to stick it to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leaders in Congress who are also from New York, who are also digging their heels in over the budget impasse.

And the more they dug in, the more his rhetoric became extreme.

He threatened to terminate the project.

So then that sort of kind of faded into the background.

Now, supplanting that, we have the issue of, as I mentioned before, the DHS funding.

And then, actually, then you think about it, sort of caught up in this broader campaign of Trump to just stick it to Democratic cities and states across the country, whether it's sending in a deportation force into Minneapolis, sending the Justice Department down to Fulton County, or ordering audits of 14 states, Democratic states, of their federal funding.

It's all designed to best rankle.

It's part of that broader campaign.

-The state says that there are a number of harms that we'll experience from the loss of jobs to loss of transportation.

If one of the tunnels, the existing tunnels that are more than 100 years old goes down, you know, this entire region economically would be impacted, as would the rest of the country.

Colleen, I'm curious, because Charlie's saying that this is a way to stick it to Democrats.

We know plenty of Republicans live in this area who would be impacted by that tunnel if it were to move forward.

I want to ask you this though because the lawsuits are being heard in the Southern District of New York.

Obviously, that's been a hot point politically in terms of things that have happened in that court.

Do you think that in any way that favors the states, New York and New Jersey, by playing that court case out there?

I mean, I certainly think it probably does, but remember, anytime there's something in the federal courts involving the Trump administration, you've got to wait a few steps.

So we've seen a lot of instances where there has been a district court judge who has stopped the administration from doing something, but then when it goes to the appellate level, if there are Trump appointees on the appellate panel, then they might reverse.

You know, anything that does happen, I mean, I would, this was, this is being heard on an emergency basis.

So I would think that maybe we'd hear something today.

I don't know.

I do want to go back to what Charlie said and talking about politics.

I'm not sure if he saw this because we were kind of tied up last night with an election, but the latest thing that's being reported by national news outlets is that the president said, at least told Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, that he would release the funding if Schumer would agree to name both Washington Dulles International Airport and New York Penn Station for Donald Trump.

So it in some ways plays into the case and the brief that we've seen outlined from the attorney general's office that there are a lot of political favors and there are a lot of political kind of, you know, there's a lot of political retaliation being tied to this funding, which we know was already allocated, appropriated.

Daniel, this is the first lawsuit that we've seen from this acting attorney general, Jen Davenport.

She is not confirmed yet, although she did get through the first round this week of the Senate hearings.

States have largely, including our former Attorney General Matt Plattgen, been successful in bringing lawsuits against the Trump administration and clawing back money that he's pulled.

Do you see this as part of that trend?

Do you think that this case will end the way New York and New Jersey hope it will?

Well, I do see this as being part of a trend of capital D democratic states pushing back against the Trump administration.

And I think what you're seeing here is something that something playing out that was talked about a lot on the campaign trail for governor.

Uh, Mikey Cheryl, the Democrat, now the governor, she promised that she would stand up to the Trump administration and sue the Trump administration in cases where she felt that interest conflicted with the state government.

Uh, and then at the time, Republican nominee Jack Ciatarelli said that he was, he would not be as keen to sue the federal government.

So I think that's what we're seeing right now is a continuation of the debate that was on the campaign trail.

And to your point earlier before, related when you said that Republicans are also taking the train in, I think that this situation really sets up a difficult situation for incumbent Republican Congressman Tom Kane, Jr., who's really in the state's most competitive, if not most competitive, if not only competitive, House seat headed into the midterms.

Yeah, how do you see Kane, because we haven't heard much, and Charlie, I'm going to come to you because I've got a question for you too on this, but how do you see Daniel, the Republican congressional delegation here in New Jersey handling this case?

It seems to me they've been pretty quiet.

Well, I think that Kane has the most to lose out of all this because right now New Jersey has three Republican members of Congress.

Only one of those seats is truly competitive.

Tom Kane Jr.

is put in a really tricky position in all this, and given what appears to be an environment that's favorable to Democrats in 2026, you gotta wonder how much trouble is this gonna cause Tom Kane Jr.

It seems like right now the answer is a lot.

Yeah.

Charlie, I know you've got something to add, but I just have to point out something that you wrote this week, 'cause I love this sentence.

"Cheryl's concerned that New Jersey's historic Big Dig project could be a big empty gash in North Bergen."

Great sentence, great line there.

But go ahead, you had something you wanted to add.

I want to feed off what young master Daniel had to say.

100% right.

And I also think, you know, the Republican fortune, the fortunes of Republican candidates in New Jersey are about the least of Donald Trump's concerns.

They're not on a radar.

If you don't believe me, ask Jack Chudorow.

For sure.

I mean, they're walking a fine line.

They have nothing too little to gain and everything to lose if they push against the president right now.

We've seen that.

But you, Charlie, wrote a piece earlier this week where you looked at how so far Governor Sherrill is comporting herself when it comes to these types of cases, comparing her to former Governor Phil Murphy, how would you say they differ?

Well I think initially she has decided to go right at Trump.

She did make a big fuss about this on the campaign trail.

And Murphy, the former ambassador, took a kind of diplomatic approach, stayed away from and didn't throw any sharp elbows too often.

He actually dined with the president, showed up at his house after the assassination attempt.

You know, he kept the rhetoric down.

And Sheryl is coming out pretty much taking off the kid gloves here.

And again, this goes back to my original point.

I don't think she really had too much of a he's kind of made it easier for easy for her on this score because he's holding up the largest infrastructure project in the country.

That's going to have ramifications, you know, right through our economy and through our job base.

Yeah, but we know that diplomacy has to exist, right?

Governors have to work with presidents.

Colleen, is she perhaps setting herself up for future frustration or, you know, the inability to get things done when it does come time where she has to work with the president?

I mean, she certainly could be.

I think that's why Phil Murphy was very cautious in terms of the way that he approached the president, because we know that there's, Donald Trump likes nothing more than for you to compliment him and fawn all over him and, you know, kind of bend the knee.

We have seen in other states where, you know, governors have angered Trump, California and Illinois, for instance, big ice presence there, a lot of raids, obviously the worst has been in Minnesota, where Tim Walz ran against, ran with Kamala Harris against the Trump ticket.

So I think it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

- Yeah, we're gonna switch gears.

Lots more we could talk about there, but there's a huge other thing happening.

If you live in the 11th congressional district where former governor Mikey Sherrill once held the seat, it's been left vacant.

A primary was held last night.

Colleen, if you went to bed before 1030, you thought there was announced winner.

If you woke up this morning and check the news, you saw something totally different.

How did that all play out?

Yeah, you know Charlie and I were at the same place.

We were in South Orange at what did you call Charlie like kind of a hipster bar where Tom Alanowski's most modern picture was there you go.

It's you know, it started out very buoyant.

He had a huge lead at the start of the night.

He came in about 840.

People were hugging him.

He didn't speak yet.

He went into the back with his team, so nobody got to hear from him.

And then after 9, it kind of started to get closer and closer.

I had my laptop there working, and I had a lot of people gathered around.

We were looking up different counties, looking at what towns were still outstanding.

Meanwhile, we saw the decision desk headquarters called the race.

We saw Ken Martin, the head of the DNC, congratulate Tom Malinowski in an email.

And then suddenly it flipped, and Annalilia Mejia was on top.

She remains on top there.

Her .

Her lead is still about 500, a little less than 500 votes, which is a little less than 1%.

Malinowski never did come out to talk to us.

His campaign manager said they were going to be pursuing in particular the mail-in ballots which had favored him, the early votes that came in.

The same day votes, the people who went out and voted yesterday were favoring Annalilia Mejia.

I know that she's been talking this morning.

We, I think while we've been taping their next step, she said last night, I know that she wants every vote counted, but she seems like she's feeling pretty confident.

And Malinowski put out a statement saying they're feeling pretty confident, even though they look like they're behind now as those as more of the late arriving mail-in ballots come in they think they might favor him so so we've been saying all along this race could come down to just a couple thousand votes as we stand right now it's a couple hundred votes i mean this is so narrow not surprising when you had 11 candidates in the race but i think what was surprising was to see on a lillia take essex county daniel uh he came in of the of the top four that we've been following in this race he came in fourth were you surprised by that yeah i think that um it was a surprise to see how the the favorite son of essex county so to speak brendan gill and essex county commissioner uh fared in the race and you know this is someone who was endorsed by by governor phil murphy i do think that um that an early read on the election results to the extent that we have them is that um ice is really unpopular amongst amongst democrats um you saw tom malinowski really get clobbered by attack ads claiming him to have uh supported funding for ice in what was somewhat something of a misleading attack by a pro israel super PAC and then you had someone like anil alia mejia who really campaigned hard on on abolishing ice and that was actually really a core part of her campaign platform so then between those two things it really suggests that that was a really motivating factor amongst Democrats in this race.

Well let me ask you this Daniel, how much do you think this is a snapshot of where the Democratic Party is both in New Jersey and regionally let's say because across the country we know there's still plenty of moderate Democrats.

Do you think it's a snapshot or do you think it's a moment in time where Ana Lilia was able to capture the kind of anger of the moment because of all the ICE activity?

No, I think it's a little bit of both.

I think that a lot of backlash to the ICE activity is a little bit of just a snapshot in time because we're coming off of a really high profile ICE activity and federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota where two American citizens were killed and that's been really top of mind.

That's been pulsing through the news cycle.

A lot of Democrats have been looking at that.

So then, you know, who knows what the top issue will be in the June primaries.

Charlie, in the words of the great Joe Pesci.

Oh, oh, you mean from casino?

It's all about I do mean from casino.

Come on, Charlie.

I'm gonna give that to you again.

I dipped my pen initially early on in the night in the deep well, ink well of conventional wisdom and said, you know, hey, this is Malinowski's going to prevail because of the almighty dollar.

It came to his aid and especially helped fend off these attacks.

And then by nine o'clock, we discarded the conventional wisdom.

So the money did probably help blunt the attacks, but then, you know, $2 million by AIPAC, basically framing him as a pro-ICE Democrat, which is just kind of ridiculous on surface, but to the low propensity to the unknown voter or voter as engaged or just seen Tom Malinowski in the 11th district for the first time, it might have had some effect.

And then Brendan Gill was also hitting him on this score too.

So let me break this down a little bit, right?

So you mentioned AIPAC for those who don't know, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent millions of dollars on a few attack ads, looking at a vote that Malinowski had while he was serving in the House.

He did support a bill package that would fund Israel.

He says he was one of all the Democrats in New Jersey's delegation to vote for it.

And he says this was really a humanitarian aid package is what they were really voting for.

The irony of all of this, right, is that this AIPAC funding, this is a conservative group.

Who did they get instead?

>> They got another member of the squad, basically, is what we have.

>> Very progressive squad.

>> It's been a harsh critic of Israel, particularly during its conduct of the Gaza war.

And the irony here is AIPAC ostensibly was mad at Malinowski because he refused to just cut a blank check to Israel, which is, according to him, pretty much standard operating procedure in our relationship with other countries when it comes to foreign aid, including Israel.

So he wasn't really saying anything extreme, but by taking him down, they got basically kind of their worst nightmare.

Another member of the left-wing squad in Congress.

And listen, we don't know for sure yet.

The totals are not tallied.

It could be several days.

As we stand right now, Turkey is in the lead, potentially.

Yeah, I'm gonna, we just have a little bit of time left and I want to get this in.

We're going to switch gears a little bit, but Daniel, you and Matt Friedman wrote a really great piece looking at some of the campaign donations that were made.

I shouldn't say campaign donations.

Let's set this up.

Some of the donations that were made to attend Governor Sherrill's inaugural ball.

Break down how that all worked.

What does a 401, 501c4 have to do with all of this?

Explain it.

All in inaugural festivities were funded by a non-profit group called Mission to Deliver.

Mission to Deliver is technically independent of the governor, although it is coincidentally run by some of her closest and long-time advisors.

It is able to receive unlimited amounts of money and also is not required to disclose its owners.

Now, to their credit, or maybe not to their credit, but if you did pony up a couple hundred dollars to attend the ball, you may have seen some corporate logos on a digital screen saying thank you to our sponsors.

But there's no way for any general member of the public to see who donated to this group that essentially funded a big party for the governor.

And as we reported in our story, just a couple of days before she was sworn in, the governor was at an Italian restaurant at American Dream Mall where people who gave at least a hundred thousand dollars to this nonprofit were able to see the governor, speak with the governor, and included business executives, lobbyists, labor union leaders, and the price to attend the departures were just a cool hundred thousand.

well you said a couple hundred dollars but in some cases we know that people paid fifty thousand dollars a ticket up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars for some donors, right?

And there is no transparency in terms of who those donors are, Daniel?

Yes, there is no requirement for the non-profit to disclose the donors list.

Yeah, that is all the time we have.

I'm glad we got that in, but thank you so much to our panel for being with us today.

We're going to be following all of these stories.

You can follow me on Instagram @johannagagasNJ.

And you can also go ahead and scan that QR code right there on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

That's going to do it for us.

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

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you right back here on Monday.

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