♪ - From NJ PBS studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vanozzi.

- Hello, and thanks for joining us tonight.

I'm Brianna Vanozzi.

- Coming up as we reflect this week on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we look at the state of the Empty Sky Memorial in Jersey City and what's being done to maintain and repair the site.

Plus, hear from one Rutgers astrophysicist about a new project that may change our understanding of the universe.

First though, we get the latest on the reported internal investigation into Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell amid allegations of inappropriate behavior.

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.

- Well, nine months into Governor Sherrill's first term, two investigations are creating a political headache for the administration.

Her Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell is under investigation over allegations of inappropriate behavior and potential ethics violations, while the administration is also in the midst of a probe over how thousands of non-citizens were mistakenly added to the state's voter rolls.

The governor says she's committed to a fair and thorough review, but critics of course are calling for more transparency.

I'm joined by veteran political columnist, Charlie Stile.

Chas, good to see you.

A lot to dig into here.

Let me just ask you the obvious question.

How politically damaging is this for Governor Sherrill?

Is it politically damaging for Governor Sherrill to have this investigation into her number two, particularly because this is someone she personally chose as her running mate.

I think it is damaging to her just as a given.

I think the real concern for her is how she manages it going forward.

There is an investigation right now led by Chris Perino, who is a former Attorney General under Chris Christie.

And he's widely respected.

And the substance of that report will, I think, be pretty determinative.

It'll be pretty much will guide the -- be crucial as to how this plays out and how she manages this.

So I think yes, to your question, yes, there's some initial damage.

This is, you know, something she picked.

And it's early in her administration.

It raises questions about how early they learned about this.

And there's been a report, a separate report, about, you know, some concerns raised during the campaign last year that were not given audience, not given attention, and were shut out.

So there's a lot about that, but I think the real issue is how this is managed in the next couple of weeks, maybe months.

And I wonder how she threads that needle of the transparency that she's promised, but also the fact that she's now come out in a statement and defended her decision not to discuss the investigation in detail, basically saying there's a responsibility to protect the people who may have made complaints and Dale Caldwell's rights.

Is there a playbook for this, for threading that needle of giving the people the transparency that they want while also having to protect that?

Well, that's a good and difficult question.

I mean, right now she seems to be handling this like an internal HR matter involving a subordinate employee.

But let's not forget, this isn't your run-of-the-mill employee as of state government.

This is someone who's second in command and has run the state in her absence and has been elected for this particular role.

So I think this is one of these issues where the traditional rules of HR really may not apply here.

And again, I'm looking forward to the future probe or investigation, whatever word you want to use.

I think that's going to, we'll see through that, the results of that, that I hope, that I assume will be made public, we'll kind of throw those old rules out the window, but I can't imagine her going much further with this traditional HR treatment.

I mean it's just too, he's too visible, too important of a figure.

And Secretary of State as well, we should add, you know, the center of the election, we should have a big one coming up.

Let's not forget, that's a whole another dimension here that hasn't really gotten played out, which is right now, every state election official is feeling the heat of Donald Trump's conspiratorial attack on, or pretextual attack on the voting, and particularly when it comes to mail-in ballots.

Now, and on top of that, you have the whole separate probe regarding 6,600 non-citizens who are registered through the Division of Motor Vehicles, or Motor Vehicles Commission, excuse me.

Right.

And that is still an active investigation, and there's going to be a lot of tension.

How does that compound the political problem, Charlie?

Is it surmountable?

Well, it compounds it because it's really unclear what role the division of elections has in vetting the citizen, whether these voters are actual citizens or not.

And so that's all gonna get tangled up into this next week.

We understand in Congress, Republican Congressman Jeff Van Drew wants to make an issue of this in a public hearing.

And this is coming right, can't ignore the political timing of that.

This is all sort of dovetailing into the Republican attack on the, and the Trump-led attack on the election system.

But in the middle of all this is Dale Caldwell, from a New Jersey perspective.

So you have that on the side, and you have this examination into him at the same time.

So there's a lot that's gonna, you know, that's potential for a real combustible situation.

- I wanna broaden this out very quickly, because you've also been looking at another potentially significant shift happening within the Democratic Party.

You wrote about what you called a left tsunami or a potential left tsunami, the working party's family recruiting and training candidates to challenge the more established Democrats, especially without the county line.

In the little bit of time that we have left, I mean, how do Republicans kind of seize on all of this, these controversies, while also maybe some restructuring within the Democratic Party, or is it too soon just call it a restructuring?

- I think it's a little too soon to call it a restructuring, but I think though, a lot of this new division, this new tension is gonna play out in the primaries.

And there's, you know, so this is going to be an internal Democratic Party matter.

But, you know, Republicans can kind of stir the pot on the sidelines by trying to promote candidates from the far left that they think are less electable in the general election.

We've seen this around the country where the Republicans have played that card, and Democrats too, in key primaries, trying to advance MAGA candidates that they think, for example, are unelectable in a general election.

So that's where they could exploit those divisions, but that's way down the horizon.

- The horizon is always closer than we think it is.

- It's closer than it looks.

It's always shifting.

You're 100%.

- Charlie Stile for us.

- Great to see you.

- Good to see you.

- Thank you.

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

- 25 years ago this week, 750 New Jerseyans died in the September 11th attacks.

The state's memorial to them, the Empty Sky at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, opened in 2011.

But 15 years later, it still isn't finished.

And advocates say the state has neglected even basic upkeep.

The co-designer, who we interviewed in August, has called on Governor Sherrill to finish the job, and her administration says it's working with families on the memorial.

So last month, the Gary Sinise Foundation pledged about $40,000 to clean the names on the memorial's walls.

with the foundation's executive vice president, Jim Rivela, about the project, the foundation's ongoing efforts to ensure a new generation never forgets.

Jim, thank you so much for being with us.

I want to start by asking you, what is the Gary Sinise Foundation and what is its mission?

- Our mission is to just honor and serve those veterans, active duty guard reserve, their families, and the first responders.

So we do that through multiple programs.

We were started by Gary Sinise, the actor and philanthropist, and through his family connections, he just felt called to take his life and his platform and use it to to bring attention to these families that serve and the sacrifice they make.

Yeah, for those who don't remember, Gary Sinise famously played the role of Lieutenant Dan in the 1994 film "Forrest Gump," right?

And I, we know that that changed the direction of his life in terms of the work that he's done to support veterans.

I want to ask, how did you connect with the Empty Sky Memorial in Jersey City?

Well, we do a lot of educational trips and we focus a lot on the 9/11, the events of 9/11.

So, we take schools and students to the three sites, Shanksville, the Pentagon, and New York City.

And during, through that program, we just saw the awareness needed of that memorial.

It had kind of fallen a little bit at this rate, wasn't ever completed after Hurricane Sandy caused some damage out there.

And we just saw the 20th anniversary coming up that this is a great time to bring attention to that, but also honor the families and let them know that they are not forgotten and the sacrifices that they made.

Sorry for interrupting you.

I want to just set the stage a bit more.

Thank you for explaining that.

The Empty Sky Memorial was built about a decade after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but was never completed, right?

And so we've spoken to one of the co-designers, Jessica Jamras, on our air.

There are two exterior walls, right, that still haven't been completed.

One is supposed to say, "Always in our hearts."

The other says, "Should say, 'Never forget.'"

And then she's also told us that much of the memorial has fallen into disrepair and just hasn't been upkept.

How much did the Gary Sinise Foundation pledge to help either finish or sustain this memorial?

>> So we gave a donation of around $41,000 that went to the cleaning of the memorial for the anniversary coming up.

>> Do you know specifically how those funds will be used?

>> Yes, to clean the memorial.

So ServicePro is the contract that went out there and they're currently in the process of just completing, cleaning the memorial.

>> You talked about your educational programs a bit.

I wanna better understand what it is that you are teaching these high school students who were not alive when 9/11 happened.

What's the message?

What are you hoping they walk away with?

>> Well, we feel it's important that each generation understand the sacrifice that was made for the country that they live in, for the freedoms that we have.

So that's a big part of it.

We've taken students with World War II veterans to the World War II Museum for over 10 years, and then we expanded into the 9/11 history of those events, seeing that there were generations coming up that were not alive during that time.

So it's important that we take these kids out to these places and not only teach them just the facts of what happened but introduce them to people who were involved.

So we take spouses of fallen first responders and military members who were responded after that and served this nation and we take them there to kind of talk to the kids so also just bring a personal connection of what happened that day.

What do you see, what do you hear from students when they have those personal connections for the first time?

Yeah, it's obviously very moving for them.

One, they've heard of 9/11, obviously, but to see someone before, maybe a disabled veteran who lost his legs, maybe in service to this nation, or a spouse who lost her husband, a first responder that was there that day, it's pretty powerful for the students.

It makes history come alive.

I mean, you have to have context to understand history, and while we have people alive that experience this, it's very important to let the generations meet these people so they have not only just the stories, but the reality of what happened in people's personal lives of what they did and the sacrifices they made.

You know, there are folks who may say, "Look, we, you know, if you lived through that day, those memories are etched in our minds.

Why is a memorial so important?

Why is it important to have a space where people can go to remember their loved ones or to remember the events of that day?

Well, it's important for the nation and the communities to go see those places, to take a moment to pause and reflect on what happened, but also for the families that lost someone.

I mean, these memorials are a testament to their loved one who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

And I think it's important for them to have that place to go, but also for the general public to go out there.

We hope to, you know, through our education program, that we inspire people, children, and the people in the schools to go out and do something within their community, thank a first responder or veteran, just to understand the price that was paid.

And, you know, perfect example of that is one town high school up in New York who we took to the museum, but their school wanted to fundraise to build a memorial at the school to people that were lost in 9/11 and that's kind of the perfect example of what we hope to have happen with the program.

Not only show them but also inspire them to take action.

Yeah, that's really beautiful and it's inspiring a whole nother generation to really carry on the memories of those who were lost that day.

Just bringing it back to the Empty Sky Memorial in New Jersey, what will you consider success for this memorial with the use of your funds and and beyond?

First of all, we hope the families who lost someone know that they're not forgotten.

They know that the Gary Sneed Foundation, which represents hundreds of thousands of Americans across this country that support us, that they're not forgotten, that their sacrifice is not forgotten.

That would be the first thing.

The second thing is to inspire the community to get involved and see that memorial and see that it needs to be completed.

That it takes all of us to pitch in to accomplish these things.

So we hope to inspire maybe other corporations or local people just to kind of go, "That should be fixed."

Yeah.

You are doing incredible work, not just for those of us here in New Jersey on this 25th anniversary who are pausing to remember, but all the work you do all year round across the board.

Jim Rivela, Executive Vice President of the Gary Sinise Foundation, thank you for your contribution and thank you for being on the show with us today.

Thank you so much and we are in our thoughts and prayers this coming week.

Well, NASA's newest space telescope is now on its way to its new home, a million miles from Earth.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched just days ago, beginning a mission that scientists hope will transform our understanding of the universe.

Rutgers astrophysicist Kristen McQuinn is the mission head of Roman's Science Operations Center and Joanna Gaggis recently spoke with her to learn more about the telescope, the technology behind it and what scientists will use it to see.

Kristen, it's so great to have you with us.

For all those who are not sure, what is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope?

The Roman Telescope is NASA's new flagship mission that just launched on Sunday, August 30th, and it will bring us a view of the cosmos that we've never seen before.

Explain how.

What is this telescope able to do?

Roman has, will give us images that are similar to Hubble in its crispness and its image quality.

But Roman sees a field of view that's 100 times larger than Hubble.

And it can also move across the sky quite quickly.

So it can it can survey areas a thousand times faster than Hubble.

So you can think of Roman as being able to see a panoramic view of the universe where Hubble's more of a zoom lens.

They're also a little bit different in the colors of light that they see.

Roman is able to look at infrared wavelengths where Hubble sees more at optical wavelengths and an ultraviolet.

And the universe looks quite different at different wavelengths or colors of light.

And so the view that Roman is going to give us is going to be really different than what we see from Hubble.

It's hard to talk about this without first talking about its namesake, Nancy Grace Roman.

Who was she and what you're mentioning Hubble, tell us about the telescope that she created.

Nancy Grace Roman was a pioneer in science and astronomy.

She was born in 1925, where there were not a lot of opportunities for women in science.

And despite having many doors closed to her, she was able to chart a path forward in astrophysics and became NASA's first chief of astronomy.

She had a vision for astronomy that went beyond what most people could dream of back then, charting a way to put telescopes in space.

And she's got earned her the nickname of the mother of Hubble because it was really through her vision and hard work and dedication that we actually have the Hubble Space Telescope and a number of different flagships from NASA that were put into space that came after Hubble as well.

So she's really a model for many of us and I'm really proud to work on a telescope that's been named after a pioneer like that.

So given what we've been able to see and now the upgrades and the advancements that you're talking about with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, what exactly can we see what are you looking for in space?

Yeah, you know, Roman is giving us this different view of the universe.

And with that new view, it's going to change how we understand what the universe is made of.

We don't really understand what's out there in the universe.

The majority of stuff out there is something we can't see and we call it dark matter.

And then there's this other mysterious force that's causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

We call it dark energy.

We don't really know what either of these things are, although they make up the majority of what is in the universe.

All of the models that we have to understand cosmology are leading us to think that we have something not quite right in our fundamental understanding of physics.

And so ROMAN is designed to be able to measure and study dark matter and dark energy in a unique way to help us understand that.

It's also designed as a planet hunter.

So Roman will discover, we're expecting more than 100,000 planets that orbit other stars.

And some of which, which are just some of which that are free floating within our Milky Way galaxy.

We currently know about 6,000 planets that orbit other stars but very few of them are earth-like.

And that's mostly because of our ways of detecting planets so far aren't really that attuned to detecting something that is this far away from its star and this small.

And Roman's going to change that.

It's got special designed techniques that will allow us to detect earth-like planets around other stars in our galaxy and to be able to determine how common planets like Earth actually are.

And there's a whole host of other types of astrophysics it can do, but that's what it's designed and made to do are those things.

In the simplest of terms, I can't help but think about how the early explorers didn't understand our globe and we're setting out to better understand what this Earth was made of and looked like.

I can't imagine years from now when there's just a deeper and broader understanding that we don't know right now.

But you actually compared this type of advancement to how we watch and consume movies.

Can you explain that analogy?

Absolutely.

So there's a couple parts to that.

And this is a lot of the work that I lead in my work on on Roman.

Imagine taking thousands of photos every day on your phone and say you want to post and share them immediately.

But first you want to maybe remove imperfections or balance the light.

And then you want to tag all of the people, events, or you know photos of your cat in these images and make them searchable for people.

Well in order for scientists to really realize the scientific potential of Roman, there are a lot of things that we need to do to support that process.

So Roman will take thousands of images every day.

They need to be calibrated, aligned, and made searchable so scientists can jump right in and be able to use the data.

We're basically turning raw starlight into something scientists can use.

But it's more than that because there's so much data available.

Traditionally, astronomers would download images to their laptops to analyze, but you just can't do that with these data volumes.

So instead, we have built a digital workspace called the Roman Research Nexus, where researchers can log in on a simple web browser and do deep analysis on Roman images.

And this is really a transformation for how astronomy research is done.

And I really think of it like the evolution of watching movies at home, where back in the day, for those of us that remember, we would get movies at blockbusters and bring them home.

And then later, we'd have DVDs mailed to us by Netflix.

But now there's so much content that we have streaming services that bring the content right into our home.

And so I think what we're doing for Roman is a little similar.

We are processing all of the data to make it as science ready as quickly as possible, and then giving scientists a very quick and intuitive way to stream the data, access the data, and make discoveries.

We're also adding capabilities for scientists to not only explore the huge images, but find particular types of exoplanets or stars or galaxies quite quickly.

And this is a little like the functionality on Google Maps, where you can see the entire world, you can zoom in to your local neighborhood, you can search for, you know, a coffee shop near me, and then you can order a custom coffee online.

We're doing something similar for users.

The most simple, simplest of terms.

You just explained that so clearly, and I know this is the most complex technology that you're working with.

We have to leave it there.

But Kristen Wingfield McQuinn, astrophysicist with Rutgers University, and of course the mission head at NASA's Roman Space Operations Center.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

- That's gonna do it for us tonight.

I'm Brianna Vannosi for the entire team at NJ Spotlight News and they are the best team.

Thanks for being here.

We'll see you again tomorrow.

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