(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vannozzi.

- Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Monday night.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories will get into later in the broadcast.

Digging out as residents shovel out from the weekend winter storm will get you the latest on snow total school closing roads, rail conditions and more.

Then, as deadly ice activity ramps up across the country, we talk with Congressman Robin Nendez about what, if anything, Congress can do to hold the agency accountable.

And later, a game-changing new law regarding care for perimenopause and menopause will tell you how it'll impact women's health care in the state.

First, though, a few of today's top headlines.

And of course, New Jersey is digging out after that powerful winter storm buried large parts of the state under more than a foot of snow, with the heaviest totals in the north, some nearing close to 18 inches.

The storm brought travel to a standstill and shut down schools all across New Jersey.

Hundreds of flights have been canceled or delayed at Newark Liberty and other nearby airports as airlines scramble to recover on the ground.

Crews are still battling slick roads and dangerous black ice from sleet and refreezing.

New Jersey Transit slowly restored service today after suspending it on Sunday with rail light rail and dozens of bus routes coming back online under modified schedules.

Governor Cheryl today said it was the worst winter storm New Jersey's seen in a decade.

But she also lifted the state of emergency saying we've moved from crisis to cleanup mode.

The cold though is not helping and temperatures are expected to plunge even further.

We'll have more on that though later in the show.

Also tonight, New Jersey officials are reacting to a second fatal shooting of a U. S. Citizen by a federal officer in Minneapolis.

This of course was over the weekend as clashes with demonstrators and ice intensified.

Federal officials say Alex Pretty, a 37 year old I. C. U. Nurse approached agents with a gun, but eyewitness video shows he was holding a phone and that an agent removed the gun from Preddy's holster just before he was shot.

Local officials say Pretty had a license to carry that gun.

Governor Mikey Sherrill in a statement called Preddy's death quote, a tragedy and the result of a reckless operation where federal leaders have clearly lost control.

These untrained, masked agents aren't making communities safer, they're occupying cities, inciting violence and violating the Constitution.

And there must be accountability for their lawless actions.

Cheryl today in a radio interview accused the Trump administration of lying about the incident and called for the impeachment of U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Meanwhile, in Jersey City, Mayor James Solomon signed an executive order on Friday barring ICE from using city-owned property for federal immigration enforcement operations.

The order also includes outreach to immigrant communities on their rights and how to access legal help if approached or detained by ICE.

And nearly two dozen former inmates of Mercer County Correction Center have filed lawsuits alleging inhumane conditions at the jail, including lack of access to clean water, clothing and adequate meals.

Now the complaints stem from incidents dating back to 2024 outlined in three separate lawsuits filed this month.

Problems at the jail complex, which some parts are more than 100 years old, include asbestos, black mold, rodents and bugs, according to one lawsuit.

Those echo similar complaints made in previous lawsuits against the center.

Another suit was filed on behalf of a former inmate who died after he was found hanging in his cell in 2024.

The complaint alleges Keith Stroman Jr.

was harassed and assaulted prior to his death and that staffers left him unattended.

And a third suit comes from former inmate Tehran Williams, who alleges he suffered second and third degree burns from a scalding shower.

The claim says Williams, who is paralyzed, couldn't feel the extreme heat from the water.

says they don't comment on pending litigation.

Coming up, the latest on the impact of the winter storm and his more snowy weather on the way.

That's next.

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

Well, from ab Seacon to Sparta, no area of this state was spared from the winter storm only made more difficult from the sleet and freezing temperatures, turning everything into a slick sheet of ice.

Raven Santana has the latest and just how long we should expect to be in this deep freeze after being buried under tons of snow in a storm that started early sunday morning and lasted for hours, canceled schools statewide and triggered code blue alerts.

Jersey is now digging out from what state climatologist dr Dave Robinson calls a messy mix of heavy snow sleet and freezing rain.

It was about six inches 56 inches in the far south and then about 6 to 9 inches from south of Atlantic City Expressway up to about route 195 like to break things up by roadways from 1 95 to 80.

It was about 9 to 12 inches of snow and sleet with a little freezing rain atop it in some spots and then north of route 80.

It was about 12 to 16 inches.

Robinson says storms this widespread don't come around often to get the last time the whole state had a lot of snow and ice in a really substantial event.

One that was more snow statewide than this one.

You have to go back 10 years to a storm the third week of January of 2016.

What was so unusual about this storm was the size, the magnitude of this storm, and how many people were impacted by it.

But again, that perfect combination of polar air colliding with subtropical moist air and you had a powerhouse of a storm.

Ahead of the Arctic blast, Governor Sherrill emergency and this aftern the state of emergency.

W to check in on everyone, cleanup and making sure w this cold weather we are enduring.

State police say even as conditions improve the risk isn't over.

From 6 p.m.

Saturday January 24th until 9 30 a.m.

this morning troopers have responded to 206 motor vehicle accidents.

Thankfully nothing was serious.

They also responded to 1130 motorists.

These are essentially flat tires.

People that spun out nothing serious.

The storm may be over but the hazards are not.

Our roadway crews are still working to clear and salt the roadways.

So we are asking that if you can stay off the roads and allow them to perform their duties.

Transit service is also coming back online with officials urging riders to expect adjustments as crews continue recovery operations.

We have, as the governor said, already resumed light rail service as of 4 30 this morning.

Bus service, 85 lines, connecting major terminals.

As of 20 minutes ago, we have started a majority of our train lines.

Tomorrow, operate on a modified schedule.

That means it's a weekend schedule.

And the Department of Transportation says major roadways are in better shape, but the cold could quickly change that.

I'm pleased to report that all state highways, interstate highways, the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway, and Atlantic City Expressway are back to black pavement and running water.

restrictions have been li for refreezing with the c while snow may be done fa in Mount Holly says, free make things very dangerous especially when you talk about, you know, we were worried about the potential for freezing rain and ice and with that you always worry about losing power.

And so if you combine that with the cold conditions, then that increases the risk for increased cold illnesses, hypothermia, frostbite, because people may not have as much readily access to heat.

Robinson warns we aren't out of the woods yet.

Another snowstorm could be here sooner than you think.

Right now, the long-term forecast models, the reputable long-term forecast models, see a storm along the East Coast late this week, I should say, into the weekend.

storm, one coming out of roads, residents are stil are urging everyone to sta braces for an arctic blast News.

I'm Raven Santana.

The voting of Alex Pratty in Minneapolis this weekend is also reverberating in Washington as Democrats in the Senate say they plan to vote against a spending bill that includes funding for immigration enforcement.

New Jersey's two US Senators, Andy Kim and Cory Booker say there are no on the bill, which provides billions more for DHS and ice.

It faces a Friday deadline, and if the bill fails to get 60 votes, we could see a partial government shutdown.

We spoke with Congressman Rob Menendez late last week before the latest fatal incident in Minnesota after the House just narrowly passed funding for DHS and ICE.

(upbeat music) - Congressman, thank you so much.

Welcome, of course.

This spending bill, you had a concerted effort along with a lot of other Democrats to block this funding bill for Homeland Security.

It included basically flat funding, but $10 billion for ICE.

But there were a lot of calls for more reforms than the bill included.

And yet beyond that, more progressive members of the caucus who said, "We're done with reforms.

This is beyond repair.

It's time to abolish ICE."

What's your position on that?

So we vote against the Homeland Security component of the appropriations bills.

We've seen what's happening throughout our communities here in New Jersey.

I visited Minneapolis last week.

ICE is out of control.

DHS is out of control.

There's no accountability.

Secretary Noem is not fit for that position.

So we did not believe, as you mentioned, that the reforms went far enough.

Now, again, we're in the minority and I felt like our appropriators did a good job of getting concessions from the Republicans, who have no desire to have accountability oversight of DHS.

But overall, when you're looking at the situation throughout the country, it didn't go far enough.

And ICE has been given an immense amount of money by Republicans in the House and the Senate.

And our view is they don't need any more money, they should have less funding, and there needs to be accountability.

If DHS is unwilling to do those things, then we have to think about a complete restructuring of ICE.

So, they need more accountability, they don't need more money, but they don't need to be abolished.

I think with what this administration is doing, it will be-- there's irreparable damage that's been done.

We do have immigration laws.

We need to enforce those immigration laws.

We need to re-envision the vehicle and entity that does that.

It can't be ICE.

There were also obviously seven Democrats who voted in favor of the spending bill.

And their argument, some, was do with it what they will.

What do you think about that and the leverage, if any, that's left for Democrats in Congress?

>> Well, one is the American people are on our side on this.

They didn't start there.

They gave the president the benefit of the doubt when they They gave the president the benefit of the doubt when they elected him.

But what they've seen from him taking office for his second term was beyond what he had sold the American people on the campaign trail.

And every day that people have a greater understanding of what this administration is doing, they are increasingly in opposition to it.

So the American people are on our side.

And when I say on our side, we're talking about U.S.

citizens being shot in broad daylight.

Renee was a mother.

We're seeing five-year-olds taken after they were being dropped off from school being used as bait to try to lure people out of their house.

And that is un-American.

It is not what people thought they were getting when they elected Donald Trump.

And so people are increasingly on our side, which is that this needs -- there needs to be accountability, there needs to be reform.

This is un-American.

And I do believe Republicans are seeing that and feeling that pressure.

And they should, in the majority party, take more action, more accountability of ICE and DHS.

Well, and you went to Minneapolis for a field hearing called by your colleagues there.

But there have been recent raids in New Jersey that have also caught national headlines, and of course, a lot of outrage from communities in here.

Some incidents involving children as well.

I wonder what you heard there and whether it reflected what constituents here are saying.

Yeah, I mean, thankfully, what's happening in Minneapolis is not happening here in New Jersey because that is using the federal government to go to war with its own citizens.

What you're seeing in the streets of Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and beyond, there's a lot of similarities.

Now, at the beginning of the administration, it was, what are we doing for our immigrant communities?

Now I say, what are we doing for our communities?

Because you're seeing U.S.

citizens who are impacted.

You're seeing black and brown people who are being targeted by ICE.

This is not targeted enforcement of violent criminals.

And the ICE's own numbers reflect this.

Over 70% of people that are currently being held in ICE detention here in New Jersey have no criminal records.

The people that have violent criminal records are single-digit percentage, right?

So we know that this has taken on and become a huge problem for our country, for our communities.

One of the things that really struck out to me when I was in Minneapolis was one of the witnesses, a U.S.

citizen, was apprehended by ICE because she was sort of doing organized protests to alert her neighbors that ICE was in the neighborhood.

They took her into an ICE facility.

When she got there, she saw sections of the ICE facility that were labeled for U.S.

citizens.

That's the environment that we're in.

And from the time that we were outside Delaney Hall to present day, what I've been trying to tell people is, this will arrive at your doorstep.

I don't want it to, but it will.

We need to speak out against it across the country, across all of our communities.

Well, the very example of that, the facility in Roxbury that folks are actively protesting now, the federal government says this is nothing definite, but it is on a list.

And we do know, confirm that ICE met with officials there on the ground in Roxbury.

I mean, what if anything, what power does Congress have to prevent these centers from coming into communities, even communities that are vehemently opposed to it?

Yeah.

So one is there, there needs to be accountability for all of these private detention centers.

And something that's extremely problematic about Roxbury is that it's a warehouse facility.

Which you had amendments that would have addressed that.

Those amendments though were blocked.

Correct.

So Republicans blocked our amendments.

One of the amendments, we thought it was relatively straightforward.

In our view, it was a good faith effort for Republicans to say, you are right that we need to do more oversight reform of ICE.

They blocked it.

But all that it would you cannot take warehouses which are not to were never intended to hold individuals right and use it to detain individuals.

That's it.

Right.

And they blocked it.

Now we've seen at the Elizabeth detention center which was a former warehouse factory.

The conditions there are not good.

We know there are problems with the drinking water at Delaney Hall.

These places are problematic.

And when you have people who are not criminals, when you have people who have been going through our immigration process, either through asylum or TPS or parole, who are being picked up and taken there, many of whom who have been here for over 15 years, and they're being put in a warehouse.

The question asked is do you want your neighbors to be put in a warehouse held by this version of ICE?

I think most people would say no.

>> Let me ask you, governor Murphy on his way out the door has caught quite a bit of heat from immigrant advocates in particular about that trio of immigrant protection bills, two of which he pocket vetoed which would have provided a little more guardrails in that sense.

What was your reaction to his decision to do that and have you talked at all with governor Sherrill about it?

>> Yeah, so I know governor Murphy's heart is in the right place and he has done an immense amount for our communities and for our immigrant communities.

My disappointment is that there were technical concerns that they weren't addressed earlier in the process.

We knew that these bills were moving through the state legislature.

They've been talked about for months.

If there were any technical concerns, I wish they had resolved them before they passed out of the legislature.

>> Which the bill sponsors said as well.

>> So they did.

And so my view is we see what this administration is doing.

We have to take that fight on.

We have to take risk because we see what's happening when we don't do anything.

Now one of the three passed.

That's great.

I know the legislature is going to go back to work on the other two.

We're also seeing things like Jersey City earlier today.

Mayor Solomon put out an executive order that will have the city be more protective of our immigrant communities and make sure the city works for its residents.

And so I think we have to take that fight on.

We need everyone at the local level, county level, state level, federal level to do everything that we can to push back against this administration.

In New Jersey, I think we're leading the way.

There's more to do and I look forward to working with Governor Sherrill and her administration to do that.

In New Jersey, I think we're leading the way.

There's more to do, and I look forward to working with Governor Sherrill and her administration to do that.

- And certainly, she set that tone, both in her inaugural speech, but also, she's been on quite a few cable news shows in the last couple of days, where she's come out swinging.

I wonder if that concerns you at all, knowing how the federal administration tends to view adversaries or folks who speak in adversarial ways about the president and whether that could do other harm.

Well, listen, I don't think they should view it as adversarial.

We're standing up for our communities.

We're standing up for what we believe in.

Anyone that's in an elective office right now has to be clear in what they envision for our communities, for our state.

And I'm proud to stand with Governor Sherrill and so many of my colleagues, including Congresswoman McIvor.

Talk about someone who's put it all on the line to protect her constituents, to fight for the right things, facing 17 years because of this rogue administration.

So we all have to work together.

I don't think we can be afraid of a fight.

I always tell people, you don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry, and you don't make decisions out of fear.

And in this moment, we can't make decisions out of fear.

We have to go straight to where the fight is.

And if the administration wants to push back, we're Jersey.

And I'm ready Congressman Robin and is coming and thanks for you it was great being with y New Jersey is breaking new health.

Before leaving of signed the menopause cove insurers to cover medicall both perimenopause and men say the new law recognize of women's lives as a real public health issue, not a private burden.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagas reports as part of our under the dome series.

Menopause is a real issue that impacts women sometimes significantly physically, mentally, emotionally, economically.

And yet for so many women, treatment for menopause and perimenopause symptoms has been unavailable or unaffordable.

But that's about to change in New Jersey with the passage of two bills that were championed by Assemblywoman Heather Simmons and signed into law just before Governor Murphy left office.

I can speak to my own experience where in the past I've been prescribed a service or treatment that my policy didn't cover.

But I could talk to a girlfriend or a relative with their policy and their policy may have covered it.

The first bill mandates health insurance companies cover a range of treatments that includes private health insurance plans, state plans for government workers and school employees, and New Jersey Family Care, the state's Medicaid program.

However, it excludes Medicare.

Those treatments include HRT, hormone replacement therapy, as well as bioidentical hormone treatments.

We're also looking at non-hormonal treatments and medications that support menopausal symptoms.

We've also included in here behavioral and mental health services, pelvic floor physical therapy, bone health and other screenings, as well as preventative services that are rated A and B by the U.S.

Preventive Services Task Force.

So in other words, things that insurance already covers, but when the determination is that the cause is menopause, it still has to be covered.

The second bill offers continuing medical education credits focused on menopause and women's health.

According to Simmons' office, many clinicians today receive little to no formal training on menopause or women's health during medical or nursing school.

That combined with a faulty study from NIH in the early 2000s recommending against hormone replacement therapy has led to many doctors not prescribing it over the last 20 years.

Dr.

Shefali Patel is an OBGYN in private practice who says HRT has tremendous benefits across all aspects of a woman's health.

In terms of cardio protection, in terms of metabolic protection, reducing the rates of diabetes, neuro and cognitive decline, and then we've always known about osteoporosis, like women who have been on HRT, you know, their bones are healthier, their bones are stronger.

And then there are the things that we don't always look at in studies, you know, things like sexual satisfaction, you know, the impact of, you know, having vaginal atrophy, the impact on libido, impact on your mood, impact on sleep.

We have receptors for estrogen and progesterone in our eyes and our ears.

So patients have dry eye, you know, some patients are complaining of itchy ears, ringing in the ears.

In November, the FDA removed the black box warning that's been on HRT since 2003, but Patel says many physicians are still not up to speed and will question her for prescribing hormone treatment.

Not only was I educating my patient, I was sometimes educating the doctors that they're being seen for other things for.

And I think that we really have to do this 20 years of damage to women's health by really educating all the doctors that are involved in women's health and especially the primary care doctors, the cardiologists, you know, the neurologists, like those are the doctors that often have overlap in most women's care.

Those two bills can really ensure that women don't have to, on the one hand, do so much research themselves.

So this will ensure that the doctors are more informed and hopefully keeping up on the latest developments in all the menopause symptom treatment.

Allison Kalschad is the co-founder of Not Your Mother's Menopause, an organization that educates women and connects them to resources around post-maternal health.

Now those things will be mandated to be covered under this Menopause Insurance Act, right?

So there's not going to be a barrier to getting the care that you need so that then they can continue on in the workplace.

I mean, the amount of money that is lost in the workplace due to women calling out sick or not being able to perform as well as they normally can because they feel brain fog or they're, you know, they're having a hot flash in the middle of a meeting.

These are real dollars and cents issues that that hit the economy as well as our lifestyle.

Insurance coverage will start in April and the continuing education takes effect in June.

Simmons says she's working to update medical and nursing school curriculum next.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Joanna Gagas.

Under the Dome is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

That is going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

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

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

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