♪♪ >> 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, the final state budget bill has officially been signed into law.

We'll get you the latest.

Plus, as temperatures climb into the triple digits ahead of the holiday weekend, we'll hear from the new state climatologist on how to stay cool.

But first, the U.S.

Supreme Court released a number of landmark decisions this week, including birthright citizenship.

We talked to New Jersey's Attorney General Jen Davenport about that and more.

That's next.

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

-Tuesday marked the last day of the U.S.

Supreme Court's term, and with it came some of the most highly anticipated decisions of the year, like the decision to uphold birthright citizenship, a rule that was written into the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, but challenged by President Trump at the start of his second term.

I spoke with New Jersey's Attorney General Jennifer Davenport shortly after that decision came down to get her reaction to it and to several other decisions that will have significant impact here in the state.

Here's that conversation.

Attorney General, it's so great to have you on the show.

Such a significant time as the Supreme Court comes to the end of its term.

We see a lot of decisions that have come out in the last week, including perhaps the most consequential birthright citizenship.

This is a case that you led a coalition of 18 states started by your predecessor, Matt Plotkin.

What do you make of the Supreme Court's decision to allow birthright citizenship, regardless of where a person's parents are from or are residents of?

Excuse me, are citizens of.

>> It was a victory today.

The Supreme Court affirmed what we've known for over a century in our country, which is, if you are born on American soil, you are an American.

And that's been the law of the land.

It also confirmed that the president, with the stroke of a pen, can't rewrite the Constitution.

And our office and the coalition of attorneys general will always stand up to protect the rights.

And that's what we did here, with New Jersey leading -- actually, in all, we had 23 attorneys general who fought from day one to make sure there was an injunction, to make sure that this never became anything more than something that was written by the president and, again, did not take effect, and then with the Supreme Court's decision today just affirmed what we've known for well over a century.

The decision came on the heels of the Supreme Court giving the president broad power to revoke certain temporary protected status of immigrants, particularly from Haiti and from Syria.

350,000 Haitians, about 6,000 Syrians nationwide would be affected by that.

How do you interpret those two decisions kind of concurrently?

So the TPS decision is wrong on the law and harmful for New Jersey.

And what's really important is anytime there's unconstitutional actions taken by the administration or by anyone that harms New Jerseyans, we're going to take action.

So we're going to continue to fight and work to protect every day the rights of New Jersey's immigrant communities.

With the Haitian and Syrian neighbors who have temporary protected status here in New Jersey, they've lived here lawfully for years.

And as we and the attorneys general told the court, you know, stripping their status does not make anyone safer.

It splits up families and it actually really instills fear and value members of our communities.

So that decision is wrong and harmful for New Jerseyans as well as others.

I know that you, along with Governor Sherrill, have said that you will fight to protect New Jerseyans.

Do you have a sense of how many individuals would have been protected, one, by the birthright citizenship case if it had not gone this way, and two, by the TPS decision and the way that it was ruled.

So we have, every single day we are trying to make sure that, again, when there's unconstitutional actions, that we're fighting for all New Jerseyans.

And with birthright, it has been the law of the land for over a century.

And certainly with our Haitian and Syrian neighbors, again, making sure that we stand up to protect them and knowing that New Jersey will fight for you is just so important.

Also some news coming out this week about your legal battle to stop a detention center from coming into Roxbury.

We saw news come out that came in response to a suit that you filed together with the town council there, that is a Republican town council in Roxbury.

What can you tell us?

So we were alerted yesterday that DHS through its council represented in writing to the federal court that it no longer intends to move forward and intends to sell the Roxbury warehouse.

So from our account and what's been been told to the court, then we are happy to see that result.

You say that this case was never partisan in nature.

Can you explain that?

Sure.

As you said, you know, we brought this action together knowing that there were so many issues with what DHS was trying to do here and with their own words.

This was a warehouse facility.

They were treating humans like packages.

So everyone knew that this was not a suitable place and that this was something that we all had to get behind to make sure that this did not go forward with DHS.

Another very significant decision that came out this week affects the way that elections can move forward and whether mail-in ballots can be counted if they're received after Election Day so long as they're postmarked on Election Day.

The court decided yes, that is fair.

Obviously New Jersey, many New Jerseyans vote that way.

Had this case not been decided that way, what impact could that have had on our elections here?

It could have had significant impact because what is most important to know and to have a reminder for New Jerseyans is that our elections are fair and secure.

And the Supreme Court confirmed once again that they are.

So it's really important when we say this all the time, the work that we do to make sure that New Jerseyans know when they're going to the ballot, when they're going to the ballot, that they know it's fair, they know it's secure, they know that we're doing everything that we can to protect their rights.

So the Supreme Court confirming that is exactly what's happening, that our elections are fair and secure, is really a fantastic way for everyone to have that assurance in our elections.

Another decision we saw, the ban on transgender athletes participating in women's sports.

The Supreme Court said that that ban can continue in states that decide that that is their law.

What is the law here in New Jersey as it relates to those athletes?

Does not change the law in New Jersey at all.

New Jersey has the strongest civil rights law in the nation, and we continue to lose use that law to protect all New Jerseyans.

It prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.

And and here we will continue to use that law.

So despite the Supreme Court's ruling and their holding here it does not change anything in New Jersey.

Earlier this month you launched a campaign to go after companies that participate or use junk fees or what's called drip pricing.

Can you explain that.

Sure.

Governor Sherrill and I announced earlier this month that we really it's raising awareness to write with the fight the fees campaign that we have.

I think we've become so normalized and it's so routine that we have extra dollar, two dollars, sometimes thousand dollars, whatever it may be, that are added to your price that you're going to pay for something.

And what it really does is what we're trying to do is raise awareness, put everyone on notice, and folks on notice as to what junk fees really are, and to make sure that we hear about them from you so that we know how to use our consumer protection laws, which are quite strong, to make sure that we're protecting everyone's, everyone's rights and also to make sure that we're, we're really combating affordability at every turn.

So, so how do you catch that?

How do you catch that?

How do you penalize that?

What should consumers know?

So if you take a look at our, at the information that we've put out, we put out an enforcement statement that also has several common practices.

So there's bait and switch pricing, for instance.

It excludes mandatory fees from the advertised price and then tax them on at the end.

Sometimes you can have hidden costs in the fine print.

We've all seen, seen ads.

And then when you get to the bottom, you realize it's a different price and perhaps you might've missed something in the fine print.

There's also misrepresenting the purpose of a fee, saying it's mandatory, saying that it has to be charged, but we find out that no, in fact, it does not.

Or if it's vague or obscure when you're trying to buy something.

So we have all of this information at our division of consumer affairs website to share this information and really, again, raise this awareness so that we don't all just assume that it's business as usual and this is OK and that we learn more from all of you what exactly you're seeing with these junk fees these extra fees that are tacked on to each and every one of your purchases.

And just very quickly I know you also have a public awareness campaign about what we call red flag laws.

It's extreme risk protective orders.

What should folks be looking for?

How can they raise the red flag?

So I encourage everyone to visit njoag.gov/erpo and you can find a lot of information there.

What we're doing again is raising awareness about the extreme risk protective order law in New Jersey.

And what that is, it is the temporary removal of firearms from someone who poses a danger to either themself or to others.

It's temporary.

So you also find information that dispels myths about what this is.

And we want with this campaign to make ERPOs as recognizable as domestic violence protection orders to make sure that people understand that they're there, to know that they're a life-saving tool, to know what their options are, if they want to seek one, how to seek one, where to go, and what to do.

Because it can mean the difference between life and death.

So we want to make sure that everyone's aware of it.

Thank you so much, Attorney General Jennifer Davenport.

Thank you for your time today.

Thank you for all of your perspective.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Governor Sherrill's $60.7 billion budget has been signed into law.

It came down to the final hours of the budget deadline on Tuesday night.

The governor addressed the media last night before signing the bill to explain the funding priorities outlined in it.

Here to help us understand what was agreed to and what was added in the final stretch is our budget and finance writer, John Reitmeyer, who joins us as part of our Under the Dome series.

John, great to see you.

I know it was a late night for most journalists last night trying to keep an eye on when this budget got signed.

We did avoid a government shutdown.

It came down to the wire.

But Governor Sherrill calls this a fiscally disciplined budget, an affordability focused spending plan that she says finds solutions to cut costs without cutting services.

At the high level, can you just tell us what this budget accomplishes, what it funds?

Yeah, sure.

And it is great to be here today discussing this and not covering a government shutdown, that's for sure.

You know, from the big picture, there's a modest increase in spending.

And, you know, in some ways, it really depends on how you feel about incremental improvement.

And if that's something that you think is good, whether you want to fix all the problems right away, as some would also want.

But in this case, you know, the incremental improvement would be that, you know, the state's been trending spending wise at a very significant uptick over the last several years.

And in this case, spending is increasing, though lower than the rate of inflation.

So for those who want to see the governor and lawmakers hold the line, perhaps they're disappointed.

But, you know, it seems like the increase was curbed relative to prior years.

And while that's occurring, there's still full funding of the state's school aid law.

And there is a massive more than $7 billion contribution to keep pace with the state's public worker pension obligations.

This is notable because in years past, up until say the last half decade or so, the state wasn't fully covering that obligation.

And it created a huge accrued liability that lawmakers and the governor today are still paying off.

So on sort of the fiscal responsibility side, you could you could chalk those things up meeting obligations, while trying to do that, you know, increasing funding for direct property tax relief and some other things, expanding the child tax credit, all within that spending increase that's lower than the annual rate of inflation.

Yeah, we've seen a lot of feedback already from various groups, business groups, advocacy groups.

There's a lot of praise.

There's criticism for what was done in this budget.

You know, even AARP praising overall some of the high-level things, but critical that stayNJ did drop its eligibility requirements.

And of course, for those who think that fully funding the pension and schools is a good thing, there is probably equal criticism for this add-on that we saw, this supplemental spending bill.

And it's a nuance that maybe only journalists and folks who cover politics care about, but can you explain how the governor in this budget added on some of these, whether you call it earmarks or Christmas tree items or pork?

Sure, and those are all terms of art.

And we should say even with full pension funding, cost of living adjustments for retirees are frozen.

And so a lot of retirees will be upset about even what happened with pension funding.

And even with school, full school funding, many districts are seeing cuts.

So the overall amount goes up, but because of the way the formula is written, many districts see cuts.

And even on those, you mentioned business reaction, you know, there are changes in tax policies affecting businesses that are increasing the revenue generated from them.

So, you know, there are a lot of ways to look at this.

The specifics of a supplemental spending bill, so Trenton has sort of become notorious for added spending and, you know, last year we counted I think five or six hundred million in new spending and it comes into the budget at the very end and it's usually not funded.

So it widens or creates what's called a structural gap, meaning you're spending more than you're taking in and that's not sustainable because eventually the bill comes due, as we've seen with pension funding.

And so this year, a big chunk of that type of spending didn't happen within the budget itself.

It happened in what's called a supplemental spending bill.

And just in sort of the accounting way of how this works, that spending was scored to the prior fiscal year, the one that just ended yesterday.

And that's really the budget that Phil Murphy enacted in his final year in office.

So lawmakers are the ones who like to add in the main this type of spending at the very end of the process.

And again, going back to incremental improvement.

So this year the governor said she wanted to hold the line on top level budget spending and she largely accomplished that.

And she also wanted any additions to be offset with cuts.

And that was also largely accomplished in the spending bill.

However, when we take a look at this supplemental appropriation that moved right alongside the budget yesterday, so I count it as very much intertwined.

That added $360 million nearly in new spending that's not funded.

So there weren't cuts made.

And basically when we wash it all out, last year at this point we were looking at a structural gap of nearly $1.5 billion.

This year we're looking at a structural gap of a little less than $1.4 billion.

$1.4 billion.

So again, incremental improvement if that's going to make you happy, but not fixing the problem for those who want to see these problems solved.

I just want to play a clip of the governor responding to questions about the fact that they split that up and they put it into this year's current fiscal.

Well, I should say as of yesterday's current fiscal budget.

Here's what the governor had to say.

These legislators behind me put in some really good ideas and projects, but we couldn't balloon the budget.

When I keep saying it was 60.7 in March and it's 60.7 now.

Normally you see you know anywhere near a billion dollars that's been going on for about a decade.

But we are charting a path forward of affordability for the people of New Jersey and opportunity in the future and growth for our children.

So she gets to hang her hat on that 60.7.

It didn't move but less transparency this time around.

Just a few seconds left in that and what type of oversight there is of that additional appropriation.

Yeah, a little less transparency because when changes are made at the last minute to the spending bill itself, there's a written record, meaning somebody sponsors each change and they're supposed to include justification for the request.

When you do it through the supplemental bill, we only know the sponsor of the bill itself.

There's no written sponsor for each individual line item.

And so that's a step backward on transparency in this case.

Yeah, we've got to leave it there, but always great to have your insight.

John Reitmeyer, budget and finance writer.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

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

It's going to be hot.

A big heat wave is blanketing the state over the next few days with temperatures rising over 100 degrees according to the National Weather Service.

That's raising some big concerns around safety as we head into the Fourth of July weekend.

So what should we expect and what do we need to know?

Here with the answers is our new state climatologist, John Krasting.

John, great to see you.

Great to have you on the show for the first time.

Listen, you only have to step outside to know that we're in the middle of a heat wave, right?

What can you tell us about this weather event that's happening right now?

Yeah, it sure is toasty out there, Joanna.

This is not your run-of-the-mill heat wave that we see in New Jersey.

This is an extreme heat situation.

The entire state is under an extreme heat warning for the type of weather we're about to see in the next couple of days.

What makes this heat wave different is we're expecting back-to-back triple-digit temperatures, especially in the northeastern part of the state, up by New York City.

And this heat is going to peak on Thursday and Friday, and potentially last into the Independence Day holiday weekend as well.

I don't think we're going to see any relief from this heat until Sunday or Monday, when we start to fall back into the lower 90s and some 80s.

But again, the urban areas are really where we're going to feel a lot of heat the next couple of days.

Newark Airport, we're looking at records of 103 degrees on Thursday.

The National Weather Service forecast as of this morning has 105.

On Friday, the record at Newark Airport is 105 and we're going to come in just shy at 104.

So it's really going to be interesting as we get into the end of the week just what kind of records we end up setting.

Yeah, we know that these you mentioned the urban areas.

We get these urban heat islands, right, that are created when we see these high temperatures and the heat concentrates in these urban spaces.

It can be dangerous for people with health concerns.

We've heard those concerns over and over.

Who should be really concerned?

What should they do to keep cool?

What can you tell us?

Well, we all know the drill, right?

We've heard it over and over again.

Lots of water, air conditioning, get indoors, wear light clothing.

If you're in a sensitive health group, this is really your time to be careful.

The type of weather pattern that goes overhead not only traps the heat, it traps air pollution as well.

So we're looking at some unhealthy hair the next couple of days.

How do you cope with this?

Again, you just stick to your basics of what you do in an extreme heat situation, but you really want to pay attention to the overnight hours.

This is where this heat wave is going to be particularly dangerous.

Overnight lows are only going to drop down into the 80s.

That's typically where we see the high temperature for the day.

So in that case, you want to make sure you have your air conditioning on overnight.

If you have it not a good night to keep the windows open for the breeze, shut that shut the windows, turn on that air conditioner and take out some of that moisture that's in the air as well, too.

Now, if you don't have air conditioning or if you live on a high floor, you really need to make plans about how you're going to spend the next couple of nights.

One of the groups that isn't always listed in those with sensitive health concerns is pregnant people.

We know that these extreme temperatures, especially at night, can trigger preterm labor.

So I just want to point that out for our audience as well.

For those who want to be outside celebrating the Fourth, we know that celebrations will continue.

Some are starting today, will continue through the weekend.

What's your advice?

What should people look for if they're outside, if they're in those hot temperatures?

Signs of any type of health concern or what should they be doing to stay cool if they are outdoors?

You're right, Joanna.

This is such a big holiday weekend and this comes at a really unfortunate time.

America's 250th celebration.

People have all sorts of things planned this weekend, but you really do need to try to spend more time indoors.

You know, this is a case where if you're going to be out grilling, maybe you grill the burgers and the dogs and you take a safety break on the inside while you eat dinner, but the things you really need to be careful about are the signs of heat stroke.

That's where your temperature rises and your body can't cool off.

And one of the really dangerous signs, if you stop sweating, sweat is our natural way of trying to cool off.

That creates evaporation and cools off our skin.

If by some chance you end up finding yourself not sweating, that's a sign you really need to get water and get rehydrated.

What is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration?

I know NOAA is what we call it and you were there for a long time.

What are they saying about this summer overall and what type of heat we can expect?

Yeah, it's interesting this summer.

So for some context, the odds of hitting a hundred degrees on any one day in the state or roughly about 20% and we're about to see potentially two maybe three days of a hundred degrees plus.

now we only have to go back one month to see temperatures in the upper 90s.

we had a early season heatwave if you remember where temperatures got well into the 90s across the state.

now the forecast from NOAA for the summer which we have moderate confidence in is more of the same heat unfortunately for the next three months through September.

So what we're looking at is these ridges of high pressure which are causing that heat to trap they call the heat dome.

We could see more of those over the course of the summer unfortunately.

This is all great advice I just want to take a minute to congratulate you on becoming the state's new climatologist taking over for our longtime resident climatologist Dave Robinson but tell us about you know what you're looking forward to in this role.

Yeah this is a really exciting opportunity and I'm very grateful to Dave for the program that he's run here for well over 30 years at Rutgers and serving our state.

What I hope to bring to the office is a continued service of climate information and data to our state, to our public stakeholders, to general citizens around the state.

This is the place you want to go if you have questions about weather and climate data.

Our office is ready and willing to help everyone around New Jersey understand the environment that we live in.

All right, John Krasting, New Jersey State Climatologist, we expect to see you on our air much more often.

Thank you.

Great, thanks for having me.

That's gonna 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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