Announcer: Funding for "NJ Spotlight News" funded by the members of the New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

RWJBarnabas Health, let's be healthy together.

and New Jersey Realtors, the voice of real estate in New Jersey.

more information is online at nj njrealtor.com.

Brianna: Tonight, damage control.

prosecutors in the me den Dez trial try to clean up any doubt against any question of drugs and alcohol use are raised in court.

plus, as scenes of weekend teenage chaos ensue, they look to lay down the law.

>> I tend to believe that a lot of parents don't understand or want to believe what their kids are actually doing here.

Brianna: Also, broken promises.

$100 million and a robust plan promise 9 by the Murphy administration to eliminate lead in drinking water but reporting shows much of it never got off the ground.

>> When we ask to speak to someone from the department of education or the governor's office, they decline to give us an interview.

Brianna: And transit woes.

commuter frustration is at an all-time high after weeks of cancellations and delays.

lots of finger pointing but who's to blame?

>> Like a married couple that get divorced but still live in the same house.

Brianna: "NJ Spotlight News" begins right now.

♪ >> From New Jersey PBS studios, this is show show with Brianna Vannozzi.

Brianna: Good evening and thanks for joining us this Wednesday night.

another key witness took the stand today in the federal corruption trial of senator Bob me of Menendez.

this time his close friend and middle alley Phillip soldier.

New Jersey's powerful attorney.

he was questioned about how he got his job and whether he made any promises to senator Menendez in return.

he is try being tried of trying to influence the state's top prosecutor from burr suing a case against his codefendant, Fred Davies.

hiss testimony followed a long day of work by the defense as they tried to discredit the prosecution's other star witness.

Brenda has been inside the Manhattan courtroom all day and joins us live with the details.

Brenda?

Brenda: How you doing, Brianna?

today was the Dana essentially the defense took its final potshots as at the star witness for the prosecution, Jose Uribe and tried to wins the jury that not only thank you rebound a liar but they tried to convince him that he's also a drunk who adduces xanex.

the defense attorney essentially challenged the accuracy of everything that Uribe has testified to in terms of his liking to drink.

they showed credit card receipts that he had racked up at a bar and also claim that he was box Cadeed on the fight night that he -- intoxicated on the night that he made this agreement with senator Menendez.

sat behind the couple at their home and made the ask, please, can you help me with this situation and that Menendez said I will look into it.

Menendez allegedly also told Uribe that you better be careful because there are cops looking for drunk drivers out here.

the inference to the injury is that you right back was too intoxicated to know what he was doing, to remember what he was doing and to accurately represent this to the jury.

Uribe shot back.

he said I'm not sitting with a U.S. senator to U.S. and a serious matter when I'm intoxicated.

Brianna: Did the prosecution get another chance at sort of saving the reputation of their witness?

Brenda: They did.

they happened obviously to do some cleanup and on redistrict that's what they did.

they took Uribe point by point through this entire litany.

yes, it was a deal in exchange for Menendez's influence that Menendez in a phone call did confirm, that thing you asked about, it's nothing.

I give you peace and the pales is cold word for this is resolve ised.

Uribe has told the jury my only job while on there witness stand is to item thank you truth and he just reaffirmed things.

that he was not stretching things, just there to give them the true story.

Brianna: Another prominent official, Phillip sellinger, what's happened so far in his testimony?

Brenda: The sitting U.S. attorney for New Jersey has known Robert Menendez for a long time.

he helped him combine for congress.

he's been a fundraiser and friend of the senator's for years and years.

they would golf together but apparently the senator told him at one point that he was unhappy about how a former U.S. attorney in New Jersey was handling a case involving Fred Davies, a developer who is a codefendant in this case and Menendez indicate that had he wasn't happy about how the U.S. attorney was handling the case.

when they were discussing whether sellinger would be nominate to be the new U.S. attorney, there was not an ask about any case involving Davies, however, he did indicate in a phone call afterwards that I might have to recuse myself because I've been involved in Latz that had clients involving Davies and therefore I might not be able to do anything for you and that apparently convinced -- the inference is that it convinced Menendez not to nominate him.

that's the ongoing discussion.

Brianna: Brenda, thanks so much.

wildwood's police department issued a warning to the public on social media today about an unsanctioned beach pop-up party being promoted for this weekend.

it's the time of event shoretown mayors say they're having to deal with more frequently, along with teen rowdiness on board walks that's gotten worse.

how to handle this was the topic of local and state leaders.

senior political correspondent David Cruz reports.

>> Tourism at the shores is a $50 billion industry and scenes like this aren't good for business.

public officials from ocean city and wildwood vented their frustration in what it times sounded a little bit like a scene out of" footloose."

>> Young individuals who were openly smoking Christophe deMargerie, openly drinking alcoholic benches that are illegal for them to consume.

especially in places of public.

>> I tend to believe that a lot of parents don't want to understand or want to believe what their kids are actually doing here.

some of the kids are almost naked.

>> But officials ping-ponged between things are out of control to things are not that bad.

the hearing was long on hand wringing but short on specifics.

is I'm the breakdown of social enormous?

are the parents to blame?

are police being handcuffed?

yes to all according to shows on the virtual hearing like the councilman in ocean city where someone was stabbed in a boardwalk fight over the memorial day weekend.

>> It is the perception.

the perception is 100 times worse than the reality, of course.

the reality is we were a safe town.

this stabbing was amongst a group of people who knew each other, they had an altercation.

it had nothing to do with the safety of our town.

it wasn't a random incident.

>> I saw two parents put in prison because their kids took a gun and snot somebody.

>> Used to be on the side of every police car to protect and to serve.

we have to give the tools to law enforcement to allow them to protect us, to serve their communities.

>> Which locals and tourists alike would likely agree with but Jim Sullivan of the A.C.L.

i says not fit means up pin a criminal record on every kid who acts like a jerk on the boardwalk.

>> Criminalizing youth, study after study shows how damaging that is to United States.

it one, doesn't solve the problem that we want to fix and you of but it also leads to worse outcomes for youth that that are criminalized.

many of them end up in the adult system and that's not the route we want to go.

I think there are attive to criminalizing youth when we're having problems down the shore.

>> Officials from republican districts can't help but have a partisan sheen.

democratic senator Vin gopal said hoe passed on an invite to join in.

>> They were there a couple of weeks ago to praise the boardwalk funds.

>> How much do you think is politics to this?

>> Probably all of this.

>> He says the committee will mite again and he'll push for machine haul and try to make parents more responsible for the actions of their children but for the age-old question what's the matter with kids today?

no one on the mostly middle-aged panel seemed to have an answer.

Brianna: Former president trump's New Jersey businesses could take a hit from his recent conviction.

the attorney general's office is reviewing whether to revoke liquor licenses at his three golf clubs now that he's been found and thought of 34 felony charges in the New York mashman case.

a state law prevents anyone convicted of what's called a crime of moral term today to be owning liquor licenses.

in a response the trump organization said in a statement, the former president is not the holder of the licenses which are still in good standing as of today.

trump's golf courses are locationened in bidminster and pine him.

they said quotes like that do nothing but hurt hard-working Americans.

governor Murphy unveiled a strategy to affords alarming reports of lead con it will nation exposing hundreds of thousands of students to toxic metals.

the administration pledged $100 million to eliminate the problem so the public could access test results in each and every school but an investigation found that plan never got off the ground and nose students are still at risk.

Ian joins me in the studio for the latest.

Ian, this was a fascinating report about the state's as you call is, war on lead.

what did the governor promise that day he took to the podium?

Ian: You pretty much summed it up.

he said that this is a big problem and we have to get all hands on deck and I have a three-pronged solution that could become a national model when I'm done.

one, we have to do more testing.

test every three years in the schools instead of every six years.

number two, we have to Crete a centralized state-run Data base that has all of the testing results in it so that parents and public can easily access what's going on at their school and, third, I am dedicating $100 million from a recently secured bond act, $100 million to start fixing the problems, physically remediating the problems in the schools.

Brianna: What out of any of those prongs has the state achieved?

Ian: Prong one, testing.

he achieved testing.

they've been testing in the schools but prongs two and three never really happened.

Brianna: So they're testing but as a parent I can't necessarily access that information easily or look at a big database.

Ian: There's no centralized database.

you can go to your local school district but that is a bit of an Easter egg hunt.

Brianna: How much of that money has been spent?

Ian: $6.6 million.

Brianna: What was the state's answer as to why that little has been usinged?

Ian: They told us we can't make the school districts apply for these grants.

the money is there but we can't make them asked for it.

Brianna: That seems to be ironic because wouldn't it be the state to hold their feet to the fire?

Ian: Yes, the state D.E.P., the department of health is charged with protecting the safety of your schoolchildren and our citizens.

Brianna: So how pervasive of a problem is it?

Newark for New Jersey became the poster child of here's an issue, we're going to replace the water service lines to Tomas Holmstroms.

we're on it, ahead of schedule.

how pervasive is this and is it outside just urban areas?

Ian: It is.

this was coming right after Newark had become a national story with itself lead water contamination problems.

it was right up there with Flint, Michigan in notoriety so in caused a bit of concern.

it was a bit of a public health crisis and so, with that backdrop, they started examining testing and saw that it wasn't just Newark, it wasn't just urban areas, as commonly believed but it was in suburban and -- it was all over the state.

Brianna: 250,000 students you wrote were potentially exposed to this and ever the state is saying, hey, not our faucet the schools don't want to participate.

Ian: Yeah, that was their answer and when we asked to speak to someone from the department of education or the governor's office just to get an understanding of this, they declined to give us an interview.

Brianna: Ian, great investigative reporting.

jersey vindicator to check it out.

Israel and Hamas are being accused of committing war crimes and human rights abuses since the October 7 attacks that spurred the war in Gaza.

two scathing independent reports to the U.N. human rights council say both sides have mounted attacks against civilians resulting in murder or willful kills.

great was called out for crimes against humanity because of the massive Palestinian depth teal.

they blamed those reports on anti-Israel bias.

meanwhile, a U.S.-backed plan for a cease-fire and hostage deal appears to be in limbo.

the coalition spoke out for the first time here in New Jersey.

the Gaza war protesters had been sleeping in tents on the lawn of Rutgers for 40 days.

it was the last remaining protests on college Kamel Gadhgadhi pulses here.

they reiterated their initial demands for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel and put more resours into the Newark community.

>> Because we believe Rutgers' knew, would jump at the opportunity to divest from genocide to reinvest in the community of Newark through land, housing, legal, educational and medicinal justice.

we have time and time again invited both Rutgers and the city of Newark to stand with us on the right side of history.

Brianna: In our spotlight on business report, call it another miracle on the Hudson.

the federal government on Tuesday signed off on more Atlanta -- 6.8 billion in funding for the grateway tunnel project to build new rail tunnels under the Hudson river.

the final piece of funding for the long delayed project and the large e ever federal commitment to a massive transit project.

planners for gate waive say they've passed the point of no return.

all systems are go to begin construction as soon as this year, wrapping up by 2035. it's a bit of good news following an otherwise maddening few weeks for transit riders who have seen commutes of massive delays and cancellations under scoring problems with the rail systems that have lingered for years and finger pointing from transportation agencies to two of counter reporters dug into what's to blame for the problem.

they join me now.

bunts and financier John Wright Meier and Ben hulack.

thank you both for being here.

Ben, there seems to always be confusion among the public about whose fault it is for these delays.

New Jersey transit is dual just a tenant, yeah?

Ben: Exactly.

it can be baffling, you're sitting on the platform and looking at an New Jersey transit sign on the side of a train going by.

really it is Amtrak that owns and operates the rail and to use an analogy that a source we talked to for the story told me, New Jersey transit/amtrak are sort of like a married cup that will get divorced but still live in the same house.

Brianna: Nightmare situation.

Bren Ben: Right, and there's a lot of finger pointing.

there's blame to go around.

a lot of these issues have been decades in the making.

Brianna: But it's also aging infrastructure that's the problem and John, there was a big infusion of federal cash.

where did the money get spent?

John: New Jersey transit has an operating budget and also has a capital budget and different levels of funding have come in and there's a lot of federal coming funding coming in because of a law pass a few years ago at the federal level.

New Jersey transit has received a lot of funds in recent years in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

what you saw is the ridership dropped off during the pandemic and as people continued to spend a lot of time working maybe on a hybrid schedule, working from home and at the office.

so New Jersey transit has inflation going on that's putting pressure on its operating budget but at the same time doesn't have ridership back to where it was at.

Brianna: That catch-22.

Ben: We're still digging out of the pandemic.

on the New Jersey side, I would pass over to John.

John: New Jersey transit faces those challenges.

there's a new state bunt about to get done in Trenton in the next few weeks.

that's always an issue and the governor has a proposal right now to try to get more money for New Jersey transit operations but a lot of this investment in the infrastructure itself, even when money has been allocated.

when is that new tunnel actually going to open and when will people start to see the benefits?

it's years away from now even though we celebrate the grants and things like that.

Brianna: What will be done to alleviate these pressures?

we are talking about a decade in the making.

John: On the functional side, anytime you're updating the infrastructure itself, that will probably translate into better service so that will help.

and when you're increasing capacity.

which is something that's the goal of the new tunnels.

even the portal bridge is supposed to increase capacity allowing you to move more people at the same time.

Brianna: Ben, what did our congressional delegation say about this?

you talked to a bunch of them.

Ben: I did.

and I really talked to folks in south jersey.

Menendez is part of that.

he says the transit authority needs to step up.

I'm paraphrasing, this was might be maybe a month ago.

I talked to exclusively southern state folks except for Menendez.

in general they said they all ride New Jersey transit pretty regularly and I would just your score this point.

federally this could be the last big cash injection from congress for the foreseeable future.

the thing which everyone voted for this 2021 in New Jersey.

it provided $6 billion nationwide for rail.

depending on how congress shakes out in the next congress or congress after that or who wins The White House, this could be it for potentially decade.

Brianna: Great reporting.

thank you both for coming in.

turning to Wall Street, the federal reserve today decided to hold interest rates steady, which means they'll remain at a 23-year high.

they also scaled back its estimate for the number of rate cuts we should expect, signaling just one is on tap before the end of the year.

here's how the markets reacted to the news.

>> Support for the business report is provided by halsey street.

a neighborhood built on heart and hustle.

visit the website for the 2024halseyfest schedule and by njmep, a partner to New Jersey's manufacturing industry.

focused on manufacturing, performance, and strategic development.

more on njmep.org.

Brianna: That does it for us but don't forget to download the "NJ Spotlight News" podcast.

thanks for being with us.

have a great evening.

we'll see you back here tomorrow night.

Announcer: Funding for "NJ Spotlight News" funded by the members of the New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

RWJBarnabas Health, let's be healthy together.

>> I'm Gloria monks.

2024 president of New Jersey Realtors.

whether guiding first time buyers through the home-buying process.

New Jersey owners have been he helping their clients but real estate transactions for more than a century.

no matter what your unique needs are, there's a flunk Realtor for you.

learn more 59njrealtor.com/find.

♪