♪♪ >> From NJ PBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Brianna Vannozzi.

>> Hello, and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gagas.

Brianna Vannozzi is off.

Coming up, Republican Justin Murphy talks about challenging Democrat Cory Booker in the race for the U.S.

Senate.

Does he have a chance at winning in November?

Plus, the Boss has a new home.

We'll get the latest on what fans can expect at the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.

But first, President Trump signed a $70 billion spending plan for ICE and Border Patrol.

What does it include?

We'll take a look.

Funding for NJ Spotlight News provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association and RWJBarnabas Health.

Learn more at rwjbh.org.

This week, a month-long funding battle came to an end when President Trump signed a $70 billion bill into law that'll fully fund ICE and Border Patrol through the end of his term.

Now, Democrats have been pushing back on the administration's immigration enforcement policies and calling for reforms, while Republicans were ultimately able to override them by two votes.

I spoke with our Washington, D.C.

correspondent Ben Hulak about the razor-thin margins that got this bill through.

Here's that conversation.

Ben, great to see you.

On Wednesday, President Trump signed a bill that was sent to his desk that funds ICE and Border Patrol through the end of his term.

Just talk us through what was in that bill.

This is $70 billion for both agencies, which are the sub-agencies within the Department of Homeland Security that have led President Trump's mass deportation campaign.

This was a highlight he ran on in 2024 when he ran for the presidency.

And this is essentially round two of massive pots of funding that will go out nationwide.

First round, if viewers remember, was this large budget law that Republicans in Congress passed last summer.

Folks may have come to know this as the big beautiful bill, or as Democrats call it the big ugly bill, but that was the first round of funding.

This is the second and there are really no safeguards attached to it, which was a big letdown for Democrats on the Hill.

It's, unless you've been following it as closely as you have, folks might be a little confused, right?

Because we've seen this budget standoff for a long time.

We were in a partial government shutdown.

Can you just kind of simply break down for us the different stages of funding that happened along this way, where now I think it is fully funded and this is, I guess, a closed issue for now.

Yes.

So it's really complicated.

DHS is sort of this octopus of an agency.

It has so many sub-agencies, TSA, Coast Guard, FEMA, and those agencies don't have a ton to do with immigration enforcement.

So when Republicans wrote this law that I mentioned, this big budget law, about $4 trillion, and passed it into law last summer, they included money for ICE and CBP to run through the rest of Trump's term.

So they included money all the way out to 2029.

And that was a deliberate choice so that these agencies could continue running no matter what happened.

That is step one.

Step two is regular.

DHS receives money from Congress every year in an annual appropriations process, and that is when the shutdown happened.

That there was sand thrown in the gears politically by both parties in both the Senate and the House to halt that regular funding process earlier this spring.

That's when the shutdown happened.

That was separate from the first pot of money I just mentioned.

And as the shutdown happened, TSA workers were furloughed.

The rest of DHS largely was sort of silent and workers were sent home.

Meanwhile, ICE and CBP agents were out working and funding and doing their jobs often and arresting people and enforcing the borders because they had this earlier pot of money to operate.

So, effectively, they were impossible to shut down.

So, Ben, this really came into focus when we saw heightened activity in Minneapolis that ended with the killing of two U.S.

citizens.

Democrats started getting very loud, calling for reforms.

We heard some Republicans say that they would support reforms as well.

As we've gone through this budgeting process and these kind of stages of budgeting, what reforms have been included?

None of the big ticket items that Democrats wanted.

They wanted judicial warrants that had to be signed by a judge.

They wanted ICE and CBP officers to remove their masks, their face coverings when out policing on the street.

They wanted sanctuary status for places like schools, hospitals, churches, places of worship.

None of that came to pass.

And in large part, this was the oldest political story in the book.

They didn't have the numbers.

Democrats did not have the numbers to muscle through any changes in the House or the Senate.

And that's effectively the ballgame.

They would also have to include changes that the president would sign into law.

And this is likely his signature issue.

This has been hardline immigration reform, has been one of, maybe along with tariffs, the most salient issues Mr.

Trump has run on for more than a decade now.

So there's no way he was going to sign into law any serious changes to DHS oversight.

It does look like there were some provisions included in April in the broader DHS funding that would include money for body cameras, some congressional oversight of detention centers, which we know was already included as law previous to this, and de-escalation training for officers and agents.

We're going to get into the congressional oversight in just a minute, but you talked about this, the Democrats just simply not having the numbers, and at one point it looked like this might not pass, right?

It looked like it could be a tie, and of course we don't have here in New Jersey Congressman Tom Kaine Jr.

on the floor voting.

What can you tell us about how this ended in those final hours and where in the world is our Congressman?

On that last point, I still don't know.

Yeah, I wish I could share with folks what I know.

If I ever find out, when I find out, they will know within an hour after I've written that story.

The way this played out on immigration reform and this large funding package, which I should really underscore, $70 billion is many years worth of funding for ICE and CBP typically.

This is an enormous pot of money and these agencies already had about $170 billion worth of funding through the bill from the law from last year.

But anyway, on the House floor last night, sort of an interesting moment, the Senate had cleared this last Thursday in a marathon session where almost every Democratic amendment was voted down.

And the House is still this really tenuous political place.

Speaker Johnson has a thin majority.

He can lose maybe three, four votes, maybe two votes depending on the day and who's present.

Anyway, for a few minutes it was deadlocked at 213 to 213 and a tie vote fails.

So basically Johnson sent out his lieutenants, his whips, to go lean on people, Republicans who had not voted yes, and leaned on one one guy, Tim Wahlberg of Michigan, which is sort of interesting.

He's not a typical troublemaker for the party.

He votes yes reliably.

Pressured him.

He flipped within a few minutes and off to the races.

The bill would soon be law.

So 214 to 212 is how that ended.

Quickly, there is no timeline as to when this money can be spent, right?

There's no annual kind of marks to hit?

That's right.

There are no annual marks.

The only mark here is this runs through the rest of Donald Trump's second term.

Republicans have been, this has been baked into their whole immigration enforcement strategy.

They don't want a future Democratic majority Congress, perhaps the next Congress, to defund this money.

that could happen, but that would have to happen over Trump's veto.

Of course, we do know that many members of Congress here in New Jersey continue to show up for oversight visits.

They are allowed to do so.

There is no delay in terms of them needing to post seven days prior.

But we will stay on this and how this money is being spent.

Ben Hulak, Washington, D.C.

correspondent.

Thank you, as always.

My pleasure.

New Jersey's U.S.

Senate race is set.

Republican Justin Murphy will take on three-term Democrat Senator Cory Booker in November.

Murphy's an attorney from Burlington County and a former committee person for the town of Tabernacle in the Pine Barrens.

He won last week's GOP primary, and I sat down with him for an interview to discuss his vision for New Jersey and the nation.

Justin, thanks so much for taking some time to talk to us.

Congratulations on your win.

You did beat three primary challengers to become the Republican candidate.

And I want to ask you why you believe you are the right person to represent New Jersey in the U.S.

Senate.

Thank you for having us.

My campaign is very appreciative to be here to speak with you.

We had a primary.

It was a good primary, competitive primary, and all my opponents were worthy.

They were good candidates.

They each brought a lot of zeal and a special skill set.

We were fortunate to get our message out across the state and be able to win the primary and the nomination.

And we're out to do something that the Republican Party in New Jersey has not done since 1972, and that is elect a Republican to serve in the U.S.

Senate.

So what I'm holding out to people is that my campaign is about sending a new generation of Americans to serve in Washington.

If we keep sending recycled political class politicians, I don't think our problems will be solved.

We need a new generation of Americans serving in Washington so New Jersey can have a new day in its politics.

And that cannot happen unless we send new people to Washington to represent us.

As I mentioned, we haven't sent a Republican to the U.S.

Senate since 1972.

That's a long time.

We're reaching out with people with a bright, optimistic, confident future that our American family can work together to build and believe in together.

We're doing things across the state.

We're doing grassroots events, and we're just reaching out directly to the people.

I want to dig into your platform a little bit and some of the issues that you would champion if you were sent to the U.S.

Senate.

First is that you'd like to change the tax code in America.

Can you talk through what that change would look like?

Yes, absolutely.

I've been fortunate and blessed in this great country of ours to be self-employed and a small businessman all of my working adult life.

And I can tell you firsthand that the small business community will have no better friend in Washington than Justin Murphy serving in the U.S.

Senate.

What I would like to do first and foremost is implement an entirely new system of taxation.

We need as Republicans to reduce the tax burden on our families and businesses.

That's our standard protocol.

That's our Reaganomics.

And it's successful and it works and we should always do that.

But we need to elevate the debate on taxes to an entirely new level and an exciting new level where we abolish the Internal Revenue Code.

We abolish the 70,000 page Internal Revenue Code, get it off the backs of our business community, and we abolish the IRS as we know it, and we have a simple flat tax.

Very flat.

We keep standard generous deductions for families, mortgage and charitable interest, mortgage interest deductions and charity deductions, large deductions for families, and we simplify the tax code.

And we make people's lives easier.

When you send a new generation of Americans to Washington that really wants to make your life easier, this is how you start.

The system of taxation -- -Let me ask you this.

When you say a flat tax, I've seen 10 to 12%.

Is that a percentage of income?

-This is a federal income tax, yes.

It has nothing to do with the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.

So that's untouched.

This is federal income tax, absolutely.

I see also that you want to end capital gains state and death taxes as well, but I want to switch to homeownership.

Lots to get to.

You say that we need to have more homeownership across the country.

Truthfully, that's a platform that I've heard from Democrats and Republicans.

What makes your plan different?

How would you increase homeownership?

Well, the first thing we need to do as elected officials is realized that the best and most effective home ownership policy that we can implement is being gainfully employed with low interest rates.

That's the best home ownership policy we can offer our young people for tomorrow and for our middle class.

Low interest rates for obvious reasons.

You have a high interest rate.

It really crushes the home ownership dreams of people.

But we need people to be gainfully employed more than anything.

They need to be.

Yes.

Go ahead.

Let me ask you this.

The president has taken up this issue.

He had announced that he wanted to end these private equity firms buying up single family homes.

He did pass an executive order but set the standard pretty high for what that threshold is.

Would you go further than that?

Would you agree with the president's move?

Where do you stand in terms of that issue of private equity buying up single family homes?

Private equity buying up homes in large numbers, okay, certainly concerns me.

It's a concern everyone.

We want our market to work.

We want it free of monopoly and things like that.

Now, as far as the numbers, there's a lot of fluctuation.

When interest rates were very low, say, go back to President Trump's first term, that really brought private equity into that market.

Now, they're a little bit higher, but they're still lower than they were under Joe Biden.

So it may not be as pressing a concern.

The real concern is gainful employment with low interest rates.

But I do believe as a market watch and things like antitrust and monopolies and all of that, that we do have to be careful that private equity firms are not gobbling up the housing market.

Because right now, one reason housing prices are so high is we have a supply and demand issue.

So the supply needs to expand.

We should be homesteading urban areas and facilitating home ownership policy through homesteading.

We've done it out west years ago.

It worked.

We can do it in our urban communities.

I just want to make sure that as policymakers, home ownership doesn't mean shoving everybody into a multi-housing complex and saying, "Here, you're in a concrete box.

You want a home."

Home ownership is a home.

It's land.

It's real estate.

It's wealth creation.

It's a place to raise a family.

It's economic security.

Let me jump in here because there's a lot to get to.

We've got, you have a strong position on ICE and what you call sanctuary cities.

In states you say that you'd like to see federal funding stopped to any city or state that declares itself a sanctuary.

Here in New Jersey, under Governor Sherrill, the state did pass the Immigrant Trust Act.

Would you like to see funding stopped and halted to New Jersey because of that act?

There has to be some penalty for sanctuary status.

It is utterly insane to incentivize illegal immigration that way and then to obstruct federal law enforcement efforts to enforce federal existing federal immigration law.

There should be punishment on sanctuary cities and sanctuary states.

It bring it's a magnet for illegal aliens, for criminal illegal aliens.

It obstructs federal government from enforcing federal law.

And we have to say something about citizenship in this election.

And I will.

President Trump secured our border, because the Republican Party is the party that values legal immigration.

And we value citizenship.

We also value safe streets and low crime rates.

So yes, there should be, there should be some consequence to declaring yourself a sanctuary city, sanctuary state.

To be clear, to be clear here in New Jersey, that act requires that there's no cooperation without a criminal warrant.

And so the governor and those who supported the bill say that this just requires that there be correct due process for any type of criminal criminal proceeding.

Do you think that that qualifies New Jersey as sanctuary?

Well the words that Mikey Shirell used were sanctuary.

They boast about it and you know this is what it's an incentivizes illegal immigration and we have to stop incentivizing.

We need immigration policies in place that control our border, control our immigration system, reward legal immigration and then can celebrate the assimilation of people from different cultures coming here to want to be part of the greatest nation in the world which is America.

Just a few seconds left.

Have you sought the endorsement of the president?

Do you have the endorsement of the president?

Well right now we don't have the endorsement of President Trump but I'll be working on that very diligently and in a couple weeks I hope to know more.

All right we have to leave it there but Justin Murphy, Republican candidate for the U.S.

Senate, appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about your campaign.

Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

Anytime.

Bruce Springsteen's music has always been rooted in New Jersey but his impact reaches far beyond state lines.

Now a new $50 million center is working to preserve that legacy while also telling the broader story of American music.

The 30,000 square foot facility is on the campus of Monmouth University in Long Branch.

It's called the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music and we're joined now by its founding executive director Bob Santelli.

Bob it is so great to have you with us.

Thanks so much for taking some time.

I want to just start with I guess the easiest question.

What is the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music?

Well we're really a hybrid of a museum and an archives as well as a performance theater.

So we try to make certain that we accomplish all three dimensions in the actual fan experience.

So when you come here you're gonna learn the story of Bruce Springsteen but learn that story through the sounds and sights of American music.

Talk to us about some of the sounds some of the sights that we'll see that folks will see when they walk in.

You know the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music is really divided into two places.

First floor is all about American music.

We have a permanent gallery that tells the story of American music and all its diversity and exuberance and history.

There's also a temporary exhibit gallery and that temporary exhibit gallery today will open with an exhibit called Chimes of Freedom, Patriotism, Protest, and the Power of Song.

And that exhibit will essentially explain how music has acted as an agent for political social change in this country, like it's starting to happen today again with Bruce's Streets of Minneapolis.

But if you go up on the second floor, that's all about Bruce Springsteen's legacy.

It's a legacy, of course, that is steeped in American music, from gospel, blues, jazz, soul, punk, etc.

All of that in one floor, but with a series of opportunities to explore the creative process.

So it's not just the history of Bruce Springsteen, it's the story behind the making of Bruce Springsteen and the great music that he made.

So many different points I want to follow up on, but let's just stay with the last one, because you've had a prolific career yourself, but you started as a music journalist.

You were there covering the rise of Bruce Springsteen.

You were there as he became Bruce Springsteen, starting in at the Stone Pony and covering him beyond that.

How do you explain that kind of meteoric rise through the work that people will see there?

- You know, every journalist, and at the time I was just that, a journalist, you know, you hope for the chance to be at a place where history is being made.

And, you know, I was fortunate enough, writing for the Asbury Park Press, was music critic for the Asbury Park Press, and living right on the Jersey Shore.

I was a musician myself, and you got to see, if you paid attention, this incredible thing that I've not seen since, which is the rise of someone who's not just a rock star, someone who's not just an important musician, but someone who had a story to tell.

And of course, all of Bruce's music relates to stories.

They're stories about the common man, the working man, about love lost, love gained.

and to see that happen is really a great opportunity and an honor.

The goal here for me, both personally and professionally, was to make sure that narrative, that grand narrative that Bruce Springsteen tells about himself and about America in general, is not only preserved but celebrated.

There's so much music that touches on the politics of the day, as you're explaining right now.

Bruce Springsteen's done it throughout his career.

So many others have as well.

And when I try to think about what is American music, it touches so many genres.

There are so many influences.

Talk us through some of those voices and some of those greatest impacts.

You know, folks who've had the greatest impact on American music.

Yeah, the thing about American music is that it's really not American anymore.

It's the world's right.

You can go to Chile and hear blues.

You can go to Iceland and hear soul.

You can go to Russia and hear hip hop.

It is predominant throughout the world.

And the reason why it is is because this American music is our most important cultural resource.

It's the national identity, I think, that speaks to the loudest and the clearest to most Americans and even those who aren't Americans but who look to America for its creative ideals.

I think when we talk about why American music, it's really because it's diverse.

It takes from all different walks of life.

If you go all the way back in time, as we do in our exhibits, you'll find that there was this incredible creative, I don't know if you would call it action or what, but the idea was black and white.

You had music from Africa, you had music from Europe, and it comes together in America in sometimes a very turbulent way.

And what happens is, well, soul, blues, gospel, folk, jazz, rock, funk, hip hop, and I could go on.

The 20th century is just America's music century.

And so this has been something that's unique to our country.

No country, I don't think, has ever had the musical impact on the world that we have had.

And so our hope here is that we just tell a little bit of that story, get you a little bit jazz, so to speak, to go out and find more information, to listen to more music, to understand how this great American music form reflects the American experience.

Yeah, it's hard to talk about all of that without talking about your role in preserving some of this history.

You helped to create the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

You are also the founding director, executive director of the Grammy Museum.

Do you see yourself as a visionary and maybe as someone now who was, forgive the pun, born to run this Bruce Springsteen Center?

You know, we made a film here.

It's called "The Ties That Bind," Bruce Springsteen's American Music Journey.

And in that film, Bruce encourages everyone who's watching it to become a musical messenger.

And I take that literally.

You know, it's an opportunity to send a message, to send a story to younger generations, yes, but also for people who might not be well aware of just how important and how great our music is.

Sometimes, you know, when we get, we have so much music available to us that we don't appreciate it as much as we ought to.

But for me personally, I've been involved in music, you know, I saw the Beatles in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show, like so many baby boomers like myself, and it changed my life and it gave me my direction for the rest of my life.

And so now what for me what this is all about here is really to give back.

You know, I'm from New Jersey.

I'm from the Jersey Shore.

I went to Monmouth University as a student, undergrad.

I taught here and well, let's face it as a music journalist, I wrote Bruce Springsteen's Coattails for a Long Time, so this is a chance to not only tell the story, but to give back to the people who made that story.

Well you're giving back in a big way.

This is going to be, I know, just a huge and iconic place where so many folks are going to come to visit, feel a little bit of peace of that history, that New Jersey history, and of course Bruce Springsteen.

Bob Santelli, Executive Director of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, thank you so much.

Thank you.

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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