♪♪ -Lawmakers in Washington have been locked in a battle over how to fund the Department of Homeland Security, leading to a partial government shutdown that's in its sixth week.

Meanwhile, a controversial package of immigration bills was just signed into law in New Jersey by Governor Mikey Sherrill.

Hi everyone, I'm Joanna Gagis.

This is Reporters' Roundtable.

We've got a panel of journalists with us to help break down all that's happened in the last week of New Jersey news.

Let's meet our panel.

We have Aaliyah Schneider, political reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dustin Raciopi, editor for Politico NJ, and Ben Hulak, Washington DC correspondent for us at NJ Spotlight News.

So immigration policy is still dominating the headlines.

We see a real stark difference between what's happening in Washington and here in New Jersey.

Governor Sherrill made news this week when she signed that package of three bills that were designed to protect immigrants in our state.

One of them codifies the immigrant trust directive.

Aaliyah, can you tell us just what exactly does that bill do codifying the immigrant trust directive?

It basically makes the existing policy that restricts law enforcement from working with federal immigration agents, very much restricts the amount that they're able to work with them.

This has been an existing policy since 2018, and this basically makes it law.

And advocates had wanted to have this happen for a long time while expanding protections in this policy, but the governor made pretty clear that she was more interested in just kind of keeping the existing policy and making that law versus trying to tinker with it which she thought could land it back in the courts and that is also a concern that former governor Phil Murphy had.

It did go through a couple rewrites.

This and two other bills had some rewrites right?

The two other bills, the Privacy Protection Act and the bill that would unmask officers.

Before we talk about those rewrites, just quickly kind of tell us what those two bills do.

Yeah, so one of the bills basically says that law enforcement agents on all levels of government cannot wear masks and need to identify themselves some way before arresting or detaining someone, and that includes ICE agents and it also includes local law enforcement.

There are a lot of exceptions in this bill for, you know, if there's cold weather, if there's risk of disease, even for the identification part, if a supervisor deems that being stealthy is necessary.

So I am kind of curious to see how much this one does.

But it definitely is something that Governor Sherrill spoke out against a lot during her campaign, the kind of lack of identification that ICE agents have and the concerns that come with that.

- Yeah, Dustin, we saw, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead.

- Sorry, talked a lot about the mask bill.

I just want to mention about the privacy bill as well, which basically it protects, it seeks to protect immigration data from kind of needlessly getting out there and maybe for the federal government to be able to access it.

So for government agencies and healthcare facilities, it limits kind of when they're collecting information that would determine someone's immigration status and, you know, only taking it when it's necessary and only releasing it when it's necessary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Thank you for that.

Dustin, we did see strong opposition to these bills from Republicans.

Only one Republican crossed the aisle when it came to the mask bill.

That was Senator John Bramnick.

They had an amendment, though.

A couple of senators in the state had an amendment.

Dustin, what can you tell us about what they were asking for, which Democrats left on the table?

They did not move.

Right.

Republicans wanted to amend the bill to have a policy of notifying, I think it was local law enforcement or local community at least, when somebody who is, who has been convicted of serious crimes is released back into the community.

It sounds like that's a fair, you know, rational sort of idea.

But at the same time, as Aaliyah said, you know, this is a bill that has been vetted.

And basically, they wanted, they wanted to withstand legal challenges.

So I don't think that Democrats really wanted to tinker too much with it and start attacking different things on.

Republicans have a different view of that, obviously.

They think that, you know, this is Democrats just, you know, you know, completely being irrational.

But this is more so, I think, about withstanding potential legal challenges.

-Yeah, I want to get into legal challenges, but I couldn't help but think, you know, if somebody is released after being convicted of rape or murder or pedophilia, they would be released after time served, yes?

This isn't like we're releasing hardened criminals back out onto the streets.

- Right, and the Immigrant Trust Directive and the bill that Governor Sherrill signed has provisions in it, like where local law enforcement can and will work with federal agents when somebody is convicted of a serious crime.

- Or if there is a judicial warrant, right?

If someone has been charged and there is a warrant for their arrest.

- Correct, correct.

So it's not as if Democrats are just like completely, you know, letting criminals, you know, run free and buck wild, you know?

- Yeah.

When we talk about potential legal challenges, there have been legal fights over the immigrant trust directive when it was a directive under the Attorney General's office.

They have withstood that legal challenge.

However, Governor Murphy was afraid to sign these bills because he said it could potentially mean a loss of federal funding.

Dustin, do you see that as a potential recourse here from the Trump administration?

I think it's very plausible.

The Trump administration has taken actions so far to punish, so to speak, some of these states withholding federal funding, and the position that Governor Sherrill has taken, which is, you know, taking on the federal government, it is somewhat of a provocation, and I wouldn't be surprised if the administration reacted.

Yeah, and of course there's an ongoing legal battle over the executive order that Cheryl signed that prohibits ICE from staging any operations on state property.

That is still ongoing.

Ben, when we look at the federal government, we are in the sixth week of a government shutdown.

At the time that we are speaking right now, there have been some developments.

We don't know what the rest of the day brings, but what can you tell us as it stands right now in terms of Democrats and Republicans coming together to try to find some type of deal here?

Yeah, the power of the congressional recess is mighty and strong.

Congress is supposed to be out for the next two weeks, basically the first half of April.

And I bring that up because I went to bed last night thinking there was no immediate path to a shutdown, to end this shutdown and woke up.

Having learned like a lot of people that the Senate brokered a deal that would fund DHS.

They passed by voice vote, meaning no one objected on the Senate floor last night.

This happened about 2.20 in the morning.

The bill now goes to the House, where Mike Johnson, the Speaker, will have to maneuver around a lot of his right flank to get this legislation passed.

But in some ways, it's a win for both political parties.

Democrats get to say they don't, that this bill does not fund ICE or CBP, and that's accurate.

That is true.

It also doesn't reform those agencies.

And Republicans and Democrats, to the same extent, can say, hey, American public, we have funded TSA during spring break.

And a lot of massive lines that have developed in our nation's airports will, in theory, now be cleaned up pretty faster.

Faster.

So.

So let me let me ask you this.

How does how does this compromise move the bill forward?

You said it doesn't fund ICE, but there are no reforms.

Are there any other kind of capitulations that either party made here?

Well, this is basically as clean a piece of legislation as had been proposed since the shutdown began.

It's basically straight funding across DHS.

So that's Secret Service, Coast Guard, TSA, critically, through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September.

So both parties can say those were largely non-controversial agencies to fund.

Both parties are in favor of funding those government bodies.

Really, the crux, the whole sticking point in this entire debate exploded into public view after the killings of Alex Pretty and Renee Good in those Minnesotans earlier this winter.

And those were killed by DHS agents.

So those two people were killed by DHS agents.

And after that, Democrats on the Hill were pushing hard for some sort of reform, which, critically, they didn't get here.

They wanted, for example, judicial warrants to be approved by a judge for DHS to conduct searches.

They wanted masks to come off of ICE and CBP agents.

That won't happen under this bill, assuming it becomes law.

It still needs to clear the House, and the president needs to sign it.

But at this point, that is likely to happen.

Yeah.

While Congress tries to finalize their budget here in New Jersey, budget hearings have begun.

Aliyah, one of the programs that is on the chopping block is Stay NJ.

I spoke with Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin earlier this week.

That's his baby.

That's his program.

He says, "Look, this is law, but a provision in that law says that if the state resources are not high enough, if there's not enough in our fiscal reserves, then you can't fund stay NJ."

What do you think happens as these proposed changes roll out with this legislature?

Who has authority to approve or not the budget that the governor has proposed?

I think it's all a negotiation.

I think this is something that people are going to be fighting a lot about.

And I'm not really sure at this point what we're going to see with this program.

I think there's going to be a lot of kind of disagreements over this.

And this is something that people are going to be watching a lot as the negotiations play out.

Can you just talk us through what are some of the proposed changes to Stay NJ?

Yeah, so Governor Sherrill proposed lowering the eligibility for how much people make to be able to get this and also the amount of money that people get.

And so people were pretty, there was definitely a reaction to her just kind of even proposing touching this program because this was, as you said, one of the legislative leaders kind of baby and something that people on both sides of the aisle supported.

But at the same time, there has been criticism of the program that, you know, why are we giving this tax relief to people who are getting half a million dollars in income already?

And so it's definitely going to be something where they're going to have to look at, you know, who are the people that we want to be benefiting from this budget?

And how do we feel about taking away a brand new tax relief program that people just start getting checks for?

Dustin, interestingly, you know, we're all kind of in the media watching to see if there if this kind of battle heats up between Cheryl and the legislative leadership, given the fact that she did propose cuts to stay in J, that they didn't look too happy during her budget address.

She said she wants to eliminate what we call Christmas tree items or pork barrel spending, which are these deals that are made often at the end of the budgeting process.

It gets legislators to vote yes.

I asked Kauflin, Speaker Kauflin, about that, and I said, you know, these tend to be backroom deals.

He was very defensive about that.

He said, whoa, this is how we fund our priorities in the state.

Do you think Cheryl's going to have a hard time really eliminating that process from the budget overall?

Yes, I do think that because it's something that's kind of hard to take away.

And lawmakers like Coughlin, they do have sound defenses of the spending items because, you know, we're talking about like renovating parks or, you know, doing some sort of big project.

Mostly they benefit people in the legislature in their district.

It helps them out and it helps them to go sell to their constituents, like, look at what I did for you.

So that's all good for them.

I think what the problem has been traditionally is the process part of it is we don't find out about this.

The public doesn't find out about it until the last minute.

They are, you know, you can use the term backroom or whatever, but the budget gets negotiated really in earnest in like the last week of the fiscal year and people just don't see what's happening.

So there's, it's the, it's a transparency issue for people.

It's not necessarily on the merits of the spending.

And these are all add-ons that come at the end.

They're not part of kind of that big overall budget negotiation, the big pieces of the pie, so to speak.

But I do want to ask, just in terms of how we see the relationship right now between Cheryl and Senate President Nix Katari and Assembly Speaker Coughlin, she did just sign this pretty controversial package of immigration bills.

Do you think that we're making too much of a battle where actually maybe legislation is going to move easily through this administration?

It's possible.

It's always possible that we're making too much of whatever the issue is.

But this is something that lawmakers did agree on as far as the immigration bills go.

They sent it to her desk.

So I don't think there's too much controversy around that, except what may happen as it relates to how the White House reacts.

Yeah.

Bringing it back to the White House.

Thank you for that segue.

Ben, we saw the president really tried to tie any DHS spending bill to spending deal to passage of the Save America Act.

What has happened there?

Just kind of give us the at the moment current layout of where that bill stands.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Last week, it seemed like the only path forward was for Republicans on the Hill to essentially do a run around an end run around Democrats in both chambers by using this really arcane budget process called budget reconciliation.

That's how they passed on a party line vote this massive tax and spending cut bill last summer.

That allows them to go through to avoid the filibuster.

That's been the key hurdle in these spending fights in this Trump administration.

Anything to get out of the Senate, anything needs 60 votes, just about anything.

And reconciliation lets you go under that margin, under that threshold of 60.

So does save America this bill that would completely rewrite and change how voting registration happens in our country?

Does that have 60 votes?

It doesn't have 60 votes.

I was getting there.

Basically, the Republican plan last week was to bundle parts of the SAVE Act, DHS funding, and funding for the Iran war, perhaps $200 billion in military funding for that war, all in one package, do it through reconciliation, and basically to hell with the Democrats.

There'd be no input from them at that point.

You wouldn't need them if you're the Republicans.

Remember, Republicans control all of Washington, the House, the Senate, the White House.

So they could do this in theory.

There would have been a lot of technical hurdles.

This would have taken a long time.

But at this point, the filibuster still stands.

And so in turn, the SAVE Act is not going to become law unless something massive, truly seismic, happens.

The risk here for Republicans, especially of the old guard, is enormous.

Folks like John Thune, the leader, Senate Majority Leader, and Mitch McConnell, the previous leader of Republicans in the Senate, have long warned, "Hey, we cannot kill off the filibuster because if that happens the next time Democrats control the Senate, bam, they're going to push for D.C.

statehood and things like stacking the Supreme Court, which you could do in theory if you have a straight majority, you could do because again you don't have that filibuster in the way anymore.

So Republicans tamped down their right flank in the Senate and said we cannot pass the SAVE Act, pass this voting restriction law bill, rather, because it would lead to all these massive repercussions.

Yeah, that's a great point.

One of those senators who's involved in these discussions is Senator Cory Booker.

Booker's on a book tour, huh, Leah?

What's happening there, and is this really just a tee-up for another presidential run?

Yeah, he was in Philly last night.

I talked to him earlier this week as well.

You know, his book is very philosophical.

It's organized by virtues, and he talks about personal stories as well as stories of Americans who have inspired him.

And, you know, last night he was talking a lot about wanting to be part of the national conversation, you know, ways the Democratic Party should act differently.

But you know, the last question of the night was, are you going to run for president?

And he just went off telling this story that had nothing to do with the question.

And I'm just waiting and waiting, like, okay, when's he going to give like a semblance of answering the question?

Because when I asked him that earlier this week, you know, he said, basically, I'm focused on running for Senate right now and didn't answer.

>> He's up for re-election.

>> Yes, he's up, sorry, he's up for re-election.

He said, I'm just focused on my re-election, of course, which isn't ruling out running for president.

But he didn't even say that, he just kept going.

He was really on a roll and just never even, I feel like he just didn't even try to answer the question and he was like, "Thank you everyone, good night," and everyone clapped.

So just, you know, it's not a no.

So I think it's pretty clear that he's at least heavily considering running for president.

If it's not a no, it might be a yes.

We don't know.

Yeah.

Just quickly, Dustin, I know Governor Sherrill signed an executive order this week.

She wants to clean up NJ Transit.

What can you tell us quickly about what she's asking for, demanding really, 45 days and then another 45 days for all of this to happen?

Yeah, it just boils down to she's essentially asking the agency to come up with a plan to improve the rider experience, which I don't think anybody can argue with.

Anybody who takes NJ Transit will tell you that it's not always great, it can be, but it's an agency that has long needed to be addressed and improved.

And it's an executive order.

It's mostly a symbolic thing.

So we'll have to see over the next few weeks what sort of plan they come up with.

And most importantly, how they're going to put it into action.

Yeah, and we know it's like fixing lights and getting more cameras and cleaning dirty stations and dirty buses.

All things that people who are on NJ Transit every single day will appreciate.

We know that.

But that's all the time we have.

Alia, Dustin, Ben, thank you all for being with us today.

You can follow me on Instagram @joannagaggisNJ and go ahead and scan that QR code on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

For all the crew here at Gateway Center in downtown Newark, I'm Joanna Gaggis.

Thanks for being with us.

Have a great weekend.

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