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

>> Hello, and thanks for joining us.

I'm Joanna Gagis, in for Briana Vannozzi.

Some topics we'll get into later The race to replace retiring Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman heats up in the 12th District.

We'll talk with Democratic candidate Sue Altman.

Plus, proposed reforms in the Save America Act could impact federal elections here in New Jersey.

And later, a new report looks at abortion access in the state since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

But first, Governor Mikie Sherrill is scaling back a controversial Turnpike expansion plan that would have widened an extension of the highway to eight lanes on the portion of road that connects Newark to Jersey City across the Newark Bay between exits 14A and 14C.

Instead of the proposed four lanes on each side, Governor Sherrill has recommended that the New Jersey Turnpike Authority Board move forward with a complete rebuild of the bridge, but with two lanes on each side, the same number of lanes that exist right now.

The old Newark Bay Bridge would be demolished.

The project will cost $6.7 billion and, according to the Governor, create 19,000 jobs.

Last year, the National Transportation Safety Board, the NTSB, listed the 70-year-old bridge as one with a potentially higher-than-acceptable risk of collapse.

Sherrill says the project will shift traffic off the existing bridge by 2031, which is consistent with NTSB concerns.

Hudson County lawmakers and environmentalists are celebrating the announcement after railing against the initial expansion that they say would have worsened road congestion and further polluted the surrounding area.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor James Solomon said in a joint statement that this is smart transportation policy that upgrades aging infrastructure while addressing the needs of impacted communities.

Coming up we'll talk to Sue Altman about her campaign for New Jersey's 12th congressional seat amid a field of nearly 20 candidates.

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

Making public schools great for every child.

As we inch closer to yet another election a crowded field has developed in New Jersey's 12th congressional district to replace Democratic Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman who's planning to retire after decades of service in both DC and New Jersey.

Democrats have come out of the woodwork with 18 candidates in the primary race and two Republicans.

A few are shaping up to be the front runners.

Democrat Sue Altman is among them as the head former head of the New Jersey Working Families Party and more recently the state director for U.S.

Senator Andy Kim.

She's here with us now to talk about her campaign.

Sue, so glad to have you on the show.

Thanks for taking a minute.

Why should voters in the 12th Congressional District vote for you?

What will be your key priorities if they send you to Washington?

Well, thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, I mean, this is an incredible moment in time.

I mean, what we're seeing out of the Trump administration, the chaos and the cruelty and the sort of capricious nature of decision making, some of it very much illegal.

It has I had no choice but to jump in.

I mean, it is an incredibly, an incredibly important time in our American history.

And I think as Democrats, we're united in our need to beat back Trump and to win back the House.

But then what happens?

Then what happens?

We're not going to be in an incredibly vulnerable moment as Americans.

We're going to have to rebuild our country and our party and our government.

And I want to be part of that conversation.

How would you do that?

What would be your initiatives that you would push for?

Yeah, I've fought against powerful people my entire career.

I fought against Chris Christie when he was cutting school funding.

I fought against South Jersey party bosses when they were doing shenanigans on the Camden waterfront.

And I fought against Elon Musk in the NRCC when I ran against Tom Kane Jr.

So for me, what that vision looks like is that we have to deliver for people.

That means Medicare for all.

That means regulating AI.

That means fixing our antitrust legislation.

I mean, we have some of the most antiquated rules on the books right now for how we handle large monopolies.

And that has to change.

Our economy is rigged and our democracy is hanging in the balance.

And so I want to make sure we also overturn Citizens United because the big influx of money that's coming into our races is just completely cataclysmic for our democracy.

And we have to fight back if we care about our American ideals.

We know that AIPAC, the American Israel organization that supports a lot of campaigns has also had a big influence on campaigns here in New Jersey.

You've called yourself a pro-Israel progressive.

Given all that's happened right now, what is your position on the U.S.

supporting Israel?

Yeah, it's a really, really tough moment right now, obviously in the Middle East.

And I'm somebody who believes that Israel was attacked on October 7th and Hamas is a terrorist organization.

And what's happened since then, though, and I completely thought that Israel should be able to wage a war.

But what's happened since then, I think, has been really atrocious.

I think Netanyahu and his cabinet and his military have crossed the line.

The amount of civilian death and suffering is completely, completely beyond the pale.

And it concerns me greatly.

So I believe Netanyahu is a war criminal.

I believe he needs to be held accountable.

But I also believe that the Israeli-U.S.

relationship is an important one.

And I think as Democrats, we need to be able to hold both of those truths in our mind at once.

I don't like any big money in our politics.

I don't like it at all from any outside organization.

I think what we're seeing around the country is that AIPAC and AI and crypto are all spending big bucks in these primaries, which is a real problem for me.

And it's all coming to a head right now with this is the War Powers Resolution regarding the war in Iran.

Yeah, that was my next question.

Would you support a War Powers Resolution?

And if so, given the fact that there are now two proposed in Congress, one that is up for a vote this week, which would you support?

I would support the one that has been endorsed by Kana and Massey.

I believe that's the one that has the firmest accountability in place for Trump.

I don't want Donald Trump to be waging wars at whatever, like, capricious reasons he wants to.

He needs to make the case in front of Congress as to why we need to have these wars.

And that includes here in Iran.

And so I would be very -- and I called upon all the other candidates in this race to be as vociferous as I am about that.

I believe in checks and balances.

I believe that the president has to make the case to Congress about whether or not he's going to go to war.

And that's something that we need to hold firm on as Democrats.

If we want Congress to have any power at all, this is the moment we have to stand up to Trump.

Otherwise, why are we even here?

- So, many in the Democratic congressional delegation have called for the abolishment of ICE.

Would you support that?

Do you call for reforms?

Where do you stand?

Oh, yeah, we need to get rid of ICE.

ICE is done.

Abolish it.

I think it's toxic beyond repair.

And what we need is a comprehensive immigration reform.

This has been immigrants and immigration has been a political football my entire adult life, and it's all coming to a head now.

And so Democrats need to look in the mirror and say, why haven't we been able to pass comprehensive immigration reform since we -- when we've had power?

And that's a very good question.

We need to make sure there's a path to citizenship.

We need to codify DACA, the American Promise Act.

So we have to, from soup to nuts, make sure our immigration policies are reformed.

And that also means funding the asylum courts and making sure the visa process is one that's seamless, because right now people are caught in bureaucratic nightmares and we're paying the price.

And what happened in Minnesota and what's happening around the New Jersey is egregious.

The increase in these warehouses that are being turned into detention centers is just appalling.

And I am completely on the side of the protesters in Roxbury, which is not in the 12th, but certainly indicative of a pattern around the country.

Well, Roxbury is in the 7th, where you previously ran for Congress in 2024 against Congressman Tom Kaine Jr.

You did not win that.

Why shift over now to District 12?

Some people have called that political opportunism.

Yeah, I mean, it's not.

I mean, I was busy running the Senator Kim's office the entire year.

We made it through the Doge fiasco, through all these incredible cuts, through the stuff happening with detention.

We had thousands of cases in our constituent services department that we were working on here in New Jersey, and then of course the shutdown.

So I was really busy and I had no intention of ever running again until around the holidays when the opportunity in the 12th opened up because I had actually moved there to be closer to my commute where Jersey City was the senator's office.

And so when the opportunity arose, I decided that I couldn't sit on the sidelines anymore and that I had to jump in.

I feel ferociously defensive of all of the state of New Jersey and I have deep ties to the 12th and yeah, it feels like a seamless venture into the 12th and I'm fired up to stand alongside all of us in this fight against Trump to deliver for people.

Your campaign came out quickly with strong fundraising, but, and you've, you've gotten some key endorsements, Princeton Community Democratic Organization, New Jersey College Democrats.

You did not, however, win the Mercer County Democratic Convention just last week.

That went to Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds Jackson.

You do still have three more, though.

You've got Middlesex, Somerset, and Union conventions still to go.

One, do you think you'll win?

And two, does it matter, given that there's no more party line?

Well, so that's such an interesting question.

Your second question is really fascinating.

So I worked really hard when I was at Working Families on the litigation that ended up tappling the county line through Senator Kim's work at the very end of it.

So I think this is the dream we were all fighting for.

We wanted a robust primaries.

We wanted to be able to hold elected officials accountable through the primary system.

And here we are, we have that right now.

Yeah, I didn't win Mercer, I didn't expect to.

These are old county organizations that have ties to these candidates.

And that's gonna be true in all three of the main counties, including the fourth and Union, which has already endorsed Adrian Mapp, one of their mayors.

So I would expect that the hometown candidate in all four of these counties, the county organizations are gonna go with those hometown candidates.

But I think that carries with it a lot less oomph than it used to.

And so I trust the grassroots organizations that we've gotten the endorsements from.

The Princeton Democratic Community Democratic Organization is known for its grassroots energy.

College Dems, also an incredible organization that just turns out people to doorknock.

So I will, in the match between the old county organizations and the grassroots, I pick the grassroots every time.

All right, we have to leave it there.

Sue Altman, candidate in Congressional District 12.

Thanks for your time today.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Take care.

The Republican National Committee is suing the Bergen County Board of Elections for failing to provide information about its poll workers in the last election.

The RNC filed an OPA request, that's an Open Public Records Act request, asking for the names and poll locations of each worker assigned during early voting in the county, including the worker's political affiliations and any vacancies.

They filed the OPA request for this info in all 21 counties and have filed suit against Bergen for failing to provide it.

But the county cited a New Jersey exemption of emergency security information that would jeopardize the safety of the facility or persons.

A judge has ordered that they turn over the records if they cannot show cause in oral arguments scheduled for later this month.

Meanwhile, a bill is making its way through Congress that could fundamentally change how elections are carried out in our state and nation.

Called the SAVE AMERICA Act, which stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, Republicans say the changes are a no-brainer to safeguard elections and ensure that only American citizens are voting.

Democrats say our elections are already secure, and this is a clear attempt to suppress voter access.

and projects editor Colleen O'Day is here now to explain the changes in the bill.

Colleen, thanks so much for taking a few minutes to talk.

What tangible changes will we see if this Save America bill ends up going through passing through Congress?

I mean, there would be some really significant ones for New Jersey because of the way that our laws are currently structured.

Every new registrant and anytime you're re-registering, and that means so you move and you have to re-register to vote in a different county.

Every time you do that, you would have to provide proof that you are a citizen.

And that means a passport, a birth certificate, essentially, or, you know, if you were not born in the country but became a citizen, those papers, you know, our driver's license don't indicate that we are citizens, that we were born in the United States, that we have citizenship.

So that would no longer be acceptable.

This would also likely have to be done in an elections office, not at the DMV, which is where a lot of people do it these days, or online, which is another way that it's become easier to register to vote.

So some really big changes there.

We know that there's a particular part of this that would impact women who've gotten married and changed their last name, which applies to millions of women here in the US.

What would what would need to be proven there in order to register to vote?

Right.

So if you were born, you know, Susie Smith and you marry Johnny Jones, your birth certificate is going to say you're Susie Smith.

But if you now have a passport, it might say and maybe you got your passport before you got married.

You know, a lot of women change their names, but you can never change your birth certificate.

Some other documents don't get changed, or it may take a while to do that.

So a woman who gets married might also have to show her marriage certificate.

You know, in a lot of these documents, particularly the paper documents like the birth certificate or the marriage certificate are just not things people have, you know, lying around the house handy that they could easily use to register.

So the bill would also require states to provide their voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security that said they would then run it through this citizen verification tool.

Right now there is a lawsuit against 29 states and the District of Columbia.

New Jersey is one of them.

This was filed by the DOJ because these states have refused to turn over their voter rolls.

Let me just ask you in terms of this bill actually moving through the Senate, does the fact that 29 of those states include a mix of red and blue leadership maybe indicate that this bill is going to have a tough time in the Senate?

Yeah, so from what we've been hearing, it takes 60 votes essentially to pass anything in the Senate because of the filibuster rule.

And Democrats are absolutely in opposition.

And there are at least a few Republicans who are either against the bill or against changing the filibuster rule to allow for just 50 votes.

So it looks like at least at the moment the bill is not likely to move, but you know, things can change on a dime in Washington.

What is the pushback or the concern about handing over the voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security?

So, you know, the information that's in the voter rolls contains a lot of private information, particularly in the case of New Jersey and probably every other state, driver's license information.

That's not information that the federal government has right now.

I mean, obviously, if you've got a social security number, that's something that did come through the federal government, but it may not be completely lined up with where you are.

There are a bunch of other reasons.

For instance, there may be domestic violence survivors on the voter rolls.

And there are some very specific state laws that say no personal information about them, including addresses and license information can be shared.

And officials really in blue states, in particular like New Jersey, as well as a lot of voting rights advocates say that, you know, the reason behind this is really because the federal government is trying to come up with these cases of immigrants or undocumented folks voting when they're not allowed to because they're not citizens.

And everyone says that that's just not the case.

I mean, these things do happen on occasion, but the number of instances are very rare.

And so they they really see this as kind of a fishing expedition.

Let me ask you this.

Federal law dictates that states oversee their own elections.

Would this law, if it became law, change that?

So, you know, the question is, there are different parts of the Constitution that require that provide for different rights.

Congress can make changes or can make laws that oversee federal elections alone.

So if this were to pass, it would, however, likely have many consequences on state elections because, you know, are you going to just register to vote?

Is the state going to have, you know, separate files or separate information on your registration information that says can vote in a state election, can't vote in a federal election?

But in addition to that, you know, it's just lawyers are saying that the part of the Constitution that says that every citizen has a right to vote.

That's something that they say this act might not be able to overcome because you're supposed to have the right to vote without an undue burden being imposed.

And lawyers say that this would be an undue burden.

Just finally, if this is something that if there's not widespread fraud or widespread numbers of undocumented people voting, why not turn over the rolls?

For the very reason that the state officials don't want to, I think, become part of this, this discussion, what they see as this narrative that is coming out of the federal government that that elections are not something to be trusted at this point, because, again, of these claims of fraudulent voting, as well as the privacy concerns that I talked about a little earlier.

You know, but what advocates say people with like the Brennan Center in based in New York City, say that the tools that the federal government has to kind of run these databases through are very faulty.

And there are there are coming up with false positives when states go back and then do their own checking.

Again, they're coming up with maybe a handful.

I think in one state, I was told, I think it was Utah zero, there were zero immigrants found who were not citizens on the rolls.

All right, Colleen O'Day, our senior writer and projects editor.

Thanks for your reporting there.

Really appreciate it.

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, New Jersey cemented itself as a safe haven state for abortion and reproductive health care services, putting policies in place to further protect access to care and those who seek it.

In the years since, research has shown that abortion in New Jersey has seen a sharp increase with thousands of patients traveling from out of state to receive services here.

A new report outlines how the state has managed that surge and where disparities exist across the state.

Here to talk more about it is Laura Lindberg, professor at the Rucker School of Public Health and co-author of that report.

Professor, so great to have you with us today.

That report was prepared for the New Jersey Family Planning League.

But I just want to ask, your report looks at how the rates of abortion have changed here in New Jersey.

What did you find?

We found that the number of abortions in New Jersey have increased markedly since 2020.

In fact, they increased 25%.

There are other states in the country where the number of abortions is going up, but we're really increasing at a faster rate.

And this increase in the number of abortions has coincided with an increase in the number of abortion providers.

So that's important as the landscape for the ability to obtain abortion care has expanded.

I want to talk about the numbers just a bit.

Close to 60,000 total.

59,780 abortions in 2024.

That's the number that's up about 25%.

3,000 of those were out of state.

So does that then show that New Jersey has become a safe haven state for abortions?

We definitely have people traveling from out of state to New Jersey.

The majority of that is from nearby states such as Pennsylvania, Delaware.

But our clinics are telling us that people are traveling from as far away as Florida and Georgia as their access and ability to get care in states outside of New Jersey has really weakened.

You also looked at where abortions are taking place in the state, where clinics exist and the difference between those clinics.

Break down some of that data for us.

With the expansion of the number of providers in the state, we see that more counties have a provider.

But we have six counties in New Jersey that have no abortion provider.

And most of those are in our southern part of our state.

So if you live in South New Jersey, if you live in Cape May, Ocean County, and you have to travel to receive your abortion care, we're talking about challenges in getting transportation, time off from work, cost.

There's not a great infrastructure for public transportation.

So the lack of clinics in the southern part of our state is really detrimental to the ability of people in our state to get the care that they want and need.

>> Do you talk to any patients?

Are you hearing from anyone who was able to express what that lack of access has meant for them?

Yes, when we talk to patients and we talk to the providers who work with patients, what we hear are the pain, the emotional pain, the insecurity, the anxiety about having to get information to make plans that fall apart as maybe the means of transportation.

You thought you could borrow a friend's car and now you can't do that or you realize you can't have the appointment the day you were planning and you have to ask work for another day off or how are you going to arrange child care.

So everything that pushes people to travel even within your own state makes abortion harder.

You did one thing.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I was going to say balancing that or offering some escape valve on that is that we have expanded the number of telehealth providers.

So that lets people get medication abortion online and not without a need to travel to an in-person appointment at a clinic.

Who is paying for these services?

We know that anti-abortion proponents have said that using state subsidies for these types of services is a misuse of taxpayer dollars.

Who is paying for it?

We didn't get into that deeply in this report, so I can't give you specifics, but it's certainly a mix of payer types.

That may be people's private insurance, that may be that they have public insurance such as Medicaid, that may be philanthropic donations, whether to specific clinics or more broadly even to patients that are coming from out of state.

Your report does detail a number of recommendations for the state and federally too I guess because one of those is an increase in Medicaid reimbursement rates.

What would you like to see there specifically?

Is this for the clinicians?

Is this for the patients?

This is to facilitate patients being able to get the care they need by making providers able to provide care at later gestations and for more complex cases and get the reimbursement that matches what it actually costs them to provide that care.

Because the later the service, the more costly?

Yes, it's more time consuming and involves more staff, etc.

You also would like to see No Clinic operating at a loss for offering abortions.

Is that happening right now?

Certainly.

I mean, we have clinics that are able to provide their care to people who need it because of donations.

And that is a difficult path to go down and is not secure in the future.

You also want to see no patients having a delay in care.

You got into what it means and what it takes for patients to get to clinics.

But based on their inability to pay, you don't want to see those delays happen.

Explain what's happening there and why that's a recommendation you made.

Because what we don't want is where patients call up or worse yet even get to a clinic and discover what the cost is and say, I don't have that money.

I'm going to have to go home and figure out how to get that.

It's going to take me a week or two.

Or I have the money to travel and I may have to take a day off from work and I'm going to lose my income for that day.

But now I don't have enough money to pay for the service.

And these are the daily struggles and tradeoffs that patients have to make.

How much does it cost and is it different for a procedural operation versus medication abortion?

It really varies clinic to clinic how it's how cost is done.

So I can't really answer that specifically.

And of course, you mentioned the counties, six in New Jersey that still don't have a clinic.

Did your report detail how those those counties could open clinics or expand what they're offering?

Yes, so we know there has been some expansion.

So one method that that's happening is an existing clinic has been able to open a satellite clinic.

So that's helpful.

We have a provider who's going to be opening a clinic in Hudson County where there is no clinic now.

And think about how many New Jersey residents live in Hudson County and yet we have no provider there.

So the ability and drive to open a new clinic will help to meet that need.

Laura Lindbergh, professor at the Rucker School of Public Health.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you for your interest.

And that's going to do it for us.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

For the entire team here at NJ's Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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