New Jersey Crime Is at Historic Lows. Here Is What Actually Made Headlines This Week Anyway.

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

State data shows violent crime and gun violence falling to some of the lowest levels on record, a trend that rarely makes the same headlines as any single dramatic case. Here is both sides of that picture, the statewide numbers and the individual stories actually driving this week’s news.

New Jersey Crime Is at Historic Lows. Here Is What Actually Made Headlines This Week Anyway.

StatewideViolent crime at historic lows even as several major cases dominate headlines

New Jersey · Crime & Public Safety

New Jersey Crime Is at Historic Lows. Here Is What Actually Made Headlines This Week Anyway.

State data shows violent crime and gun violence falling to some of the lowest levels on record, a trend that rarely makes the same headlines as any single dramatic case. Here is both sides of that picture, the statewide numbers and the individual stories actually driving this week’s news.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Public Safety Desk

New Jersey’s overall crime picture and its news cycle rarely tell the same story, and this week is a clear example of why. State officials reported that fatal shootings fell 31 percent and auto thefts dropped 9 percent last year, continuing a multi year decline that has pushed both violent crime and gun violence to some of the lowest levels ever recorded in the state, with major cities including Newark, Camden, and Paterson each reporting sustained, multi year drops in homicides and major theft. By most independent measures, New Jersey now ranks among the safer states in the country.

-31%Fatal shootings, year over year

-9%Auto thefts, year over year

Multi-yearHomicide declines in Newark, Camden, Paterson

That statistical trend is real, but it is not what drives most crime coverage, which tends to focus on individual cases severe or unusual enough to cut through the news cycle. This week produced several of exactly that kind, spanning federal drug trafficking, alleged medical abuse, human trafficking, and a fatal police shooting now under state investigation. Understood together, they offer a more complete picture of where New Jersey’s public safety concerns actually sit today than either the raw statistics or any single headline could on its own.

A Record Meth Bust Ends in a Guilty Plea

The most significant drug trafficking case to resolve this week involved the largest methamphetamine seizure in New Jersey history. Marcos Cesar Acosta, 47, most recently of Chicago, pleaded guilty in federal court in Camden to conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, admitting his role in a scheme that brought more than 260 pounds of meth, valued at roughly 6 million dollars, into the state by truck this past April. Acosta traveled from Illinois specifically to oversee the delivery, and law enforcement arrested him and a co-conspirator, Carlos Cordero-Guiterrez, after the truck arrived and officers recovered three storage boxes, a duffel bag, and a garbage bag packed with the drug from the vehicle’s cab. Acosta faces a mandatory minimum of 10 years in federal prison and a possible life sentence, with sentencing scheduled for December 17th. FBI Special Agent in Charge Stefanie Roddy said the seizure represented an immeasurable number of lives potentially protected by the operation, even beyond its record breaking dollar value.

Allegations of Abuse Inside a Mercer County Medical Practice

A civil lawsuit filed in late July has drawn renewed attention to a case that first became public in 2024. Thirty one women filed suit in Mercer County Superior Court against Dr. Bruce Pierce, a former Lawrenceville obstetrician gynecologist, and his former practice, Delaware Valley OBGYN and Infertility Group, alleging a pattern of inappropriate conduct during medical exams stretching back more than a decade. The lawsuit follows the state Board of Medical Examiners’ 2024 decision to suspend Pierce’s license after two patients testified about his conduct in a hearing, with the board finding what it called credible evidence that Pierce had sexually exploited patients under the guise of routine care. It is important to note that these remain civil allegations, and Pierce has not been criminally charged in connection with the claims. The suit separately alleges that Delaware Valley OBGYN failed to act on warning signs despite Pierce’s decades at the practice.

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport described a separate case unsealed this week, a violent Camden area human trafficking operation, as a cycle of violence and abuse used deliberately to force victims into commercial sex work.

A Violent Trafficking Operation Unraveled in Camden

State prosecutors this week indicted four men on first degree racketeering, conspiracy to commit human trafficking, and related charges, alleging a scheme that used threats, physical violence, and drugs to force two women into commercial sex work across Camden area hotels. According to the indictment, lead defendant Keith Woodson, 40, of Camden, approached one victim as she stepped off a bus, offering to show her how to earn 1,000 dollars a day, then allegedly supplied her with narcotics, choked her until she nearly lost consciousness, and threatened to kill her and her family if she stopped complying. Woodson’s three co-defendants, Lee Byrd of Philadelphia, Raymond Cooper of Sicklerville, and Andre Lindsey of Woodlynne, are accused of transporting victims to hotels, standing watch, and collecting proceeds. All four defendants allegedly carried firearms throughout the operation. The case was investigated by the Attorney General’s Human Trafficking Unit, and no trial date has yet been set.

A 20 Million Dollar Healthcare Fraud Scheme Unwinds in Newark

Federal prosecutors in Newark have now charged six people, including a doctor and a pharmacist, in connection with a scheme that allegedly cost Medicare and Medicaid more than 20.6 million dollars. According to court documents, pharmacy owner Sherif Elmasri of Morganville paid illegal kickbacks to health care providers in exchange for issuing medically unnecessary prescriptions between October 2022 and November 2025. Five of the six defendants have already pleaded guilty, while the sixth, Ashlee Maixner of Lakehurst, has pleaded not guilty and continues to face trial on charges including conspiracy to defraud the United States and unlawfully distributing controlled substances. U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer said his office remains committed to aggressively pursuing doctors, pharmacists, and medical professionals who exploit insurance systems for personal gain.

A Fatal Police Shooting Now Under State Review

In Cumberland County, the Attorney General’s Office is investigating a fatal police involved shooting that followed an hours long standoff in Millville on August 6th. Officers responded to a reported domestic disturbance at a Hazel Boulevard residence around 8 a.m., and neighbors described officers using a loudspeaker to communicate with the man inside for several hours before the situation escalated. According to the Attorney General’s Office, Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office Sergeant John Borelli discharged his weapon during an encounter with the man inside the home, identified as 47 year old Shaun Murphy of Millville, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Law enforcement recovered a handgun inside the residence. Under New Jersey law, any death occurring during an encounter with a law enforcement officer automatically triggers an Attorney General’s Office investigation, and officials have said no further details will be released while that inquiry remains ongoing.

Localized Flashpoints Amid the Broader Decline

Beyond these individual cases, a handful of more contained local issues have drawn attention this summer without reflecting any broader statewide trend. Trenton implemented an emergency weekend curfew for businesses along East State Street after a summer surge in localized violence near City Hall, a response the city has used before during past periods of concentrated unrest. In Asbury Park, police are investigating hate symbols painted at multiple locations around the township, an incident being treated as a bias crime rather than a measure of general street crime. And in Paterson, an East Orange man remained hospitalized after being shot in the early hours of Saturday morning, one of several isolated shooting incidents reported around the state this week that, taken individually, do not point to any shift in New Jersey’s broader downward crime trend.

Taken together, this week’s cases illustrate a pattern that tends to hold true in most years, that a state’s aggregate crime statistics and its most visible headlines rarely move in lockstep. New Jersey’s violent crime numbers continue trending toward historic lows, even as federal and state investigators simultaneously worked through a record breaking drug bust, an alleged medical abuse case spanning decades, a violent human trafficking operation, a multimillion dollar healthcare fraud scheme, and a fatal use of force incident now under formal review, a reminder that a genuinely safer state and a genuinely active week for law enforcement are not mutually exclusive realities.

Note: Several matters described above, including the Mercer County civil lawsuit and the Camden human trafficking indictment, involve allegations that have not been resolved in court. Under the law, all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Middletown’s Community Theater Troupe Is Casting the Show Many Call Broadway’s Finest

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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The MAC Players are holding open auditions for Gypsy, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim’s landmark backstage musical, with roles available for performers of nearly every age ahead of an October run at the Middletown Arts Center.

Middletown’s Community Theater Troupe Is Casting the Show Many Call Broadway’s Finest

AuditionsMAC Players open casting for Gypsy on September 1

Monmouth County · Community Theater

Middletown’s Community Theater Troupe Is Casting the Show Many Call Broadway’s Finest

The MAC Players are holding open auditions for Gypsy, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim’s landmark backstage musical, with roles available for performers of nearly every age ahead of an October run at the Middletown Arts Center.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Arts Desk

The MAC Players, the resident community theater company at the Middletown Arts Center, are opening auditions for Gypsy on Tuesday, September 1st, taking on a musical many theater professionals regard as the finest ever written for the stage. Directed by Kathy Connolly, with musical direction from Nick Jupinka and choreography by Samantha Amaral, the production will run October 16th, 17th, 18th, 23rd, 24th, and 25th at the Middletown Arts Center on Church Street, next to the Middletown train station.

Auditions

Tue, Sept. 1, 5 to 10 PM
Callbacks: Thu, Sept. 3, 5 to 10 PM

Performances

Oct. 16, 17, 18
Oct. 23, 24, 25

Where

Middletown Arts Center
36 Church Street, Middletown

A Backstage Epic Built for a Deep Cast

With a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Gypsy draws loosely on the memoirs of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee to tell the story of an ambitious, overpowering stage mother pushing her daughters toward the success she never achieved herself. Set across America in the 1920s and 1930s, as vaudeville collapsed and burlesque rose to take its place, the show has earned its reputation less through spectacle than through the sheer depth of its characters, anchored by Mama Rose, widely considered one of the most demanding and rewarding roles in the American musical theater canon.

That depth extends well beyond its central role. The production calls for performers spanning nearly every age range, from adult leads to a dedicated set of preteen roles for Young Louise and Baby June, along with a substantial ensemble built around specialty burlesque performers, backup singers, and dancers. Rehearsals are set to begin on or around September 8th, running Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings in the lead up to the October opening.

All roles are available for this production, spanning adult leads, a dedicated preteen track for the show’s youngest characters, and a large ensemble built around vaudeville and burlesque specialty performers.

The Roles Up for Grabs

Mama Rose

30–50, Mezzo-Soprano with strong belt

Overbearing, charismatic, and driven. The show’s central force and one of musical theater’s defining roles.

Louise

18+, Mezzo-Soprano

Quiet and introverted at first, she transforms into a legendary stripper once thrust into burlesque.

June

18+, Mezzo-Soprano with high belt

A gifted, willful teenager who ultimately refuses to keep playing the “baby doll” she’s been since childhood.

Herbie

40–50, Baritone

A candy salesman turned manager with a heart of gold and a protective streak for those he loves.

Tulsa

18+, Baritone

An ambitious, charismatic dreamer and strong athletic dancer, especially in tap.

Young Louise & Baby June

12–15, Mezzo-Soprano

The show’s youngest leads, requiring strong singers and dancers, with Baby June needing ballet and gymnastics background.

Tessie Tura, Mazeppa & Electra

20–50, Mezzo-Soprano

The show’s iconic burlesque trio, each built around a signature stage gimmick.

Ensemble Roles

15–50, Various

Newsboys, Toreadorables, Uncle Jocko, Pop, and a full female and male ensemble round out the company.

How to Audition

Performers auditioning should prepare 32 bars of a song in the style of the show, with an accompanist provided or backing tracks welcome for those who bring their own. Callbacks, including dance auditions, take place September 3rd from 5 to 10 p.m. Self tape submissions will be accepted for the initial round, though anyone submitting a tape must still be available to attend callbacks in person. Anyone interested in auditioning or with questions about the process can reach the production team directly by email at auditionmac@gmail.com to schedule a time slot.

For a community theater program that has built a steady track record staging modern classics and demanding ensemble pieces, taking on Gypsy represents one of its more ambitious undertakings yet, both for the vocal and dramatic demands of its lead role and for the sheer scale of a cast spanning multiple generations of performers. With auditions opening September 1st and a two weekend run set for mid to late October, the MAC Players are giving Monmouth County performers a genuine shot at one of musical theater’s most enduring and challenging shows.

Montclair State Saves NJ Spotlight’s Archive, Even as Its Nightly Newscast Comes to an End

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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Montclair State University has acquired the NJ Spotlight name, website, and sixteen year archive from The WNET Group, keeping the state’s most cited public policy newsroom rooted in New Jersey even as its longtime nightly television broadcast is set to be retired and rebuilt from scratch this fall.

Montclair State Saves NJ Spotlight’s Archive, Even as Its Nightly Newscast Comes to an End

MontclairUniversity consolidates NJ Spotlight’s archive and brand under NJ PBS

New Jersey · Media

Montclair State Saves NJ Spotlight’s Archive, Even as Its Nightly Newscast Comes to an End

Montclair State University has acquired the NJ Spotlight name, website, and sixteen year archive from The WNET Group, keeping the state’s most cited public policy newsroom rooted in New Jersey even as its longtime nightly television broadcast is set to be retired and rebuilt from scratch this fall.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Media Desk

Montclair State University announced August 7th that it has acquired the assets of NJ Spotlight, the statewide public policy newsroom, from The WNET Group, folding the operation into NJ PBS, which the university has run since taking over New Jersey’s public television network on July 1st. The deal keeps New Jersey’s most established accountability journalism brand under local control after months of uncertainty triggered by steep federal and state funding cuts to public media.

Announced

August 7, 2026

Acquired

NJ Spotlight name, website, 26,000+ article archive

Leadership

John Mooney retained to lead transition

What Montclair Actually Bought

The acquisition covers the NJ Spotlight name itself, an editorial archive of more than 26,000 articles published since the outlet launched in 2010, and the njspotlightnews.org website. NJ PBS has said the archive will remain fully free and accessible without a paywall, and that existing article links will be preserved wherever technically feasible, a meaningful commitment given how frequently NJ Spotlight’s reporting on the state budget, schools, health care, energy, and the environment has been cited by other outlets and researchers over the years.

What the deal does not include is more revealing about how the two organizations had actually diverged in recent years. NJ Spotlight News, the daily on air newscast that WNET has continued producing and airing on NJ PBS and its New York flagship station Thirteen, is not part of this transaction and will end on September 30th. NJ PBS plans to launch a new program called NJ PBS News starting October 1st, effectively rebuilding the on air product from within rather than inheriting WNET’s existing broadcast operation. In practice, Montclair has acquired NJ Spotlight’s written journalism and its institutional legacy, while building its own new television presence around it rather than absorbing WNET’s broadcast team wholesale.

Keith Strudler, dean of Montclair’s College of Communication and Media, said integrating NJ Spotlight’s accountability journalism tradition into the NJ PBS News team under a single New Jersey based operator would help ensure residents get the news and information they deserve, reaching the broadest possible audience.

A Newsroom Built From a Simple Premise

NJ Spotlight’s founding editor, John Mooney, is staying on to lead the transition, a decision that matters given how closely his own career has tracked the outlet’s history. Mooney covered education for The Star-Ledger and The Record before launching NJ Spotlight in 2010, then led the newsroom for fifteen years, including through its 2019 acquisition by The WNET Group and its later pairing with the state’s nightly public television newscast. He has described the outlet’s founding premise in blunt, practical terms, that New Jersey needed someone permanently stationed at the Statehouse, at school board meetings, and at budget hearings to explain what state policy and politics actually meant for residents, rather than leaving that coverage to compete for space against faster moving daily news.

Mooney said he was thrilled the newsroom’s award winning coverage would continue without interruption and that it now has a permanent home rooted in New Jersey rather than under a New York based parent company, crediting Montclair specifically for stepping up to secure its future at a moment when that future was genuinely in doubt.

A Funding Crisis That Forced WNET’s Hand

The deal traces directly back to a funding collapse that hit public media nationally and in New Jersey specifically over the past year. Congressional cuts to federal public broadcasting funding cost NJ PBS roughly 1.5 million dollars annually, while New Jersey’s own state budget cut its contribution from 1 million dollars to just 250,000, a 75 percent reduction. Facing that combined shortfall, WNET, which had operated NJ PBS since 2011, chose not to renew its operating contract with the state’s Public Broadcasting Authority, a decision that closed NJ PBS’s Newark studio in early May and left the future of NJ Spotlight, which WNET had owned separately since 2019, genuinely uncertain for months.

Montclair State won a competitive bidding process over several other applicants to become the new operator of NJ PBS’s four statewide television stations, formally taking over on July 1st under a five year agreement with two potential five year extensions. The university has committed 1.2 million dollars annually in direct and in kind support, including access to broadcast studios, engineering expertise, IT infrastructure, and administrative resources, alongside student journalism internships through its College of Communication and Media. That same infrastructure, and Montclair’s existing relationship with Mooney through its Center for Cooperative Media, made the university a natural landing spot once it became clear WNET intended to exit New Jersey public media entirely rather than continue operating NJ Spotlight’s website and archive on its own.

With the acquisition finalized, New Jersey’s public broadcasting and its most established policy journalism brand are, for the first time in years, operating under the same New Jersey based roof, even as both sides of that operation, the archive Montclair inherited and the nightly broadcast it is building from scratch this fall, now begin the next phase of their history somewhat separately from how they arrived at this point together.

Pier Village’s Free Tuesday Jazz Nights Are Building Toward a Full Day Festival Finale

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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Every Tuesday evening in August, Pier Village’s oceanfront Carousel Stage turns into a free jazz club with the Atlantic as its backdrop, a warm up act of sorts for the far larger Long Branch Jazz and Blues Festival closing out the month with a full day of music and fireworks.

Pier Village’s Free Tuesday Jazz Nights Are Building Toward a Full Day Festival Finale

Every TuesdayFree live jazz continues on the Carousel Stage through August, building to a Labor Day weekend finale

Long Branch · Music & Nightlife

Pier Village’s Free Tuesday Jazz Nights Are Building Toward a Full Day Festival Finale

Every Tuesday evening in August, Pier Village’s oceanfront Carousel Stage turns into a free jazz club with the Atlantic as its backdrop, a warm up act of sorts for the far larger Long Branch Jazz and Blues Festival closing out the month with a full day of music and fireworks.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Jersey Shore Desk

Pier Village oceanfront boardwalk in Long Branch, New Jersey

Pier Village’s oceanfront promenade in Long Branch.

Every Tuesday evening this August, Pier Village’s open air Carousel Stage in Long Branch turns into one of the most low key, high atmosphere live music spots at the Jersey Shore. Jazz Evenings at Pier Village runs from 6 to 8 p.m. each Tuesday through the end of the month, right beside the boardwalk’s historic carousel and just steps from the sand, offering free admission to anyone willing to bring a lawn chair or blanket and settle in for two hours of live jazz as the sun drops over the Atlantic.

When

Every Tuesday in August
6:00 to 8:00 PM

Where

Carousel Stage
Pier Village, Long Branch

Cost

Free
Bring a chair or blanket

A Regular Rotation of Regional Talent

The series leans on a rotating lineup of regional jazz musicians rather than a single fixed act, giving each Tuesday its own character while keeping the overall vibe consistent, a mix of jazz standards and contemporary favorites suited to an easy summer evening rather than a formal concert setting. The Carousel Stage itself has become something of a hub for Pier Village’s broader entertainment calendar, also hosting a Monday night tribute band series featuring national touring acts and a Saturday artisan market packed with Jersey Shore crafters and vendors, making the stretch of boardwalk around the carousel a genuine seven day destination rather than a single night attraction.

The Month Builds Toward a Full Day Festival

Jazz Evenings is only the weekly appetizer for a much larger event closing out the month. On Saturday, August 29th, from 1 to 10 p.m., the Long Branch Jazz and Blues Festival takes over the Great Lawn and Promenade just steps from Pier Village, presented by the Jersey Shore Jazz and Blues Foundation as part of a community tradition that has run at the Jersey Shore for years under various names and locations. The free, all day event stretches across eight hours of live music spanning jazz, blues, soul, and beyond, with a full lineup of regional and national acts building toward a fireworks display over the ocean once the sun goes down.

1:05 PM Sweet Music Academy Youth Band
2:15 PM Jane Stuart
3:30 PM Soul Project
4:45 PM Nth Degree
6:00 PM Sharon Lasher & Jersey Blues
7:30 PM The Jimmys
9:00 PM Fireworks over the Atlantic

Between the weekly Jazz Evenings series and the Labor Day weekend festival finale, Pier Village and the city of Long Branch effectively turn the entire month of August into a running celebration of live music along the boardwalk.

A Boardwalk Built for a Full Evening Out

Part of what makes Jazz Evenings work as a destination rather than just a concert is the setting itself. Pier Village is a Victorian inspired oceanfront complex that blends beachside residential living with an active public boardwalk promenade, lined with boutique shops, bars, and some of the most highly rated restaurants on this stretch of the Jersey Shore. McLoone’s Pier House anchors the village with upscale American steakhouse fare and seafood, while Sirena Ristorante offers elevated Italian dining with panoramic ocean views for those looking to make a full night of it. Avenue Long Branch brings a modern French American brasserie and beach club to the promenade, and for something more casual, Piazza on the Pier has built a loyal following around its oversized garlic knot sandwiches and thin crust pizza.

Pier Village oceanfront promenade and shops in Long Branch, New Jersey

The Pier Village promenade, home to the Carousel Stage and the village’s boardwalk dining.

McLoone’s Pier House

$20 – $60 · American

Upscale steakhouse and seafood staple in the center of the village.

Sirena Ristorante

$50 – $100 · Italian

Elevated Italian dining with panoramic ocean views.

Avenue Long Branch

$50 – $100 · French

Modern French-American brasserie with a beach club and oceanfront bar.

Piazza on the Pier

$10 – $20 · Casual

Family-friendly Italian spot known for garlic knot sandwiches and thin-crust pizza.

Beyond the stage and the dinner table, the village functions as a full entertainment hub in its own right, with Pier Pins offering boutique bowling, retro arcade games, and golf simulators for anyone looking to extend the night indoors. Visitors hoping to turn a Tuesday night out into a full weekend have overnight options right on the property as well, from the ultra modern Wave Resort to the more boutique Bungalow Hotel, both putting guests within easy walking distance of the Carousel Stage, the beach, and everything else Pier Village has built along its stretch of the Long Branch boardwalk.

The Sourdough You Had to Chase Down on a Porch Is Getting a Storefront This Fall

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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Aimee Speas built A Labor of Loaf into one of South Jersey’s most sought after cottage bakeries from a home kitchen in Audubon, with loaves that regularly sold out within minutes of going up for order. This fall, the porch pickup gives way to a permanent bakery counter in Haddon Township.

The Sourdough You Had to Chase Down on a Porch Is Getting a Storefront This Fall

Opening Fall 2026A Labor of Loaf trades weekly drop windows for a permanent Haddon Township storefront

Camden County · Food & Dining

The Sourdough You Had to Chase Down on a Porch Is Getting a Storefront This Fall

Aimee Speas built A Labor of Loaf into one of South Jersey’s most sought after cottage bakeries from a home kitchen in Audubon, with loaves that regularly sold out within minutes of going up for order. This fall, the porch pickup gives way to a permanent bakery counter in Haddon Township.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Food Desk

Aimee Speas built a devoted following out of a home kitchen, and this fall, that following finally gets a storefront to walk into. A Labor of Loaf Bread Company, the Audubon based cottage bakery behind some of South Jersey’s most sought after sourdough, is opening its first permanent retail location at 811 Hopkins Road in Haddon Township, a shift that moves Speas from strict weekly pre-order windows into daily, walk-in bakery service for the first time since she started baking commercially.

New Location

811 Hopkins Road
Haddon Township, NJ

Opening

Fall 2026

Current Model

Weekly pre-order
Saturday pickup, Audubon

How a Home Kitchen Became a Scarcity Machine

Under New Jersey’s cottage food laws, home based bakeries like A Labor of Loaf operate under real production limits, and that constraint, more than any marketing effort, is what turned Speas’s bread into something people organized their Saturdays around. Each week’s menu goes up for pre-order with a hard deadline, currently Thursday at 5 p.m. for that Saturday’s pickup, and loaves have routinely sold out within minutes of orders opening. Customers place their orders, then drive to a designated pickup window, historically a residential address in Audubon, to collect fresh, hand-shaped bread paid for in cash or Venmo, a distinctly informal transaction for a product with genuine cult following behind it.

The menu itself has been part of the draw. Alongside a rotating cast of naturally fermented sourdough country loaves, Speas has built a reputation for creative, ingredient forward specialties, sourdough crackers, seasonal jams like strawberry jalapeño, and focaccias that shift with the seasons, all photographed and shared enough on social media to extend the bakery’s reach well past whoever could actually snag a loaf in a given week. That gap, between visible demand and a home kitchen’s hard production ceiling, is exactly what a brick and mortar location is built to close.

Cottage food regulations cap how much a home based bakery can produce, which is precisely why demand for A Labor of Loaf’s weekly bread drops consistently outpaced what Speas could bake from her own kitchen.

What a Storefront Actually Changes

The move to Hopkins Road represents Speas’s first commercial kitchen space, and with it comes the ability to scale production well beyond what cottage food rules allow for a home operation. Rather than customers racing to claim a spot during a narrow weekly ordering window, the new shop is expected to offer daily bakery counter service, letting customers walk in and buy bread the same way they would at any established storefront bakery, a meaningful shift away from the pre-order urgency that defined the brand’s first chapter.

That shift also puts A Labor of Loaf in the middle of a broader wave of small, chef-driven food businesses expanding into Haddon Township and the surrounding Haddonfield area this year, a stretch of Camden County that has quietly become a landing spot for ambitious, previously home based or market-only food operations looking to formalize into permanent retail space. For longtime customers, the trade off is straightforward, the porch pickup ritual and the frantic Thursday night order goes away, replaced by the simpler, if less dramatic, experience of just walking in and buying a loaf, any day the shop is open, once the doors on Hopkins Road finally do.

Nobody Actually Cares About the Fork Law. Plus It Saves Money For Businesses.

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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New Jersey’s Skip the Stuff law saves restaurants money, cuts down on real waste, and asks nothing more of anyone than saying the word please. The manufactured outrage over it says a lot more about who is looking for a fight than about the law itself.

Nobody Actually Cares About the Fork Law. Plus It Saves Money For Businesses.

OpinionThe fork controversy is manufactured, and it will be forgotten by Halloween

Opinion · New Jersey Policy

Nobody Actually Cares About the Fork Law. Plus It Saves Money For Businesses.

New Jersey’s Skip the Stuff law saves restaurants money, cuts down on real waste, and asks nothing more of anyone than saying the word please. The manufactured outrage over it says a lot more about who is looking for a fight than about the law itself.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Opinion Desk

Let’s be honest about what actually happened here. A law took effect requiring restaurants to hand out plastic forks and ketchup packets only when a customer asks for them, and for about a week, a small, predictable slice of New Jersey’s online commentary treated it like the state had seized private property. It hadn’t. It still hasn’t. And by the time Halloween decorations go up, almost nobody outside a handful of radio hosts and party press accounts will remember this was ever a topic of conversation at all.

Run the actual math, not the outrage, and there is barely a controversy here to begin with. Every takeout bag that used to get an automatic fork, a fistful of napkins, and three condiment packets nobody asked for now only gets those items when a customer actually requests them. That is not a burden on a business. That is the opposite of a burden. Every one of those items costs a restaurant real money, multiplied across every single order, every single day, whether or not the customer ever opens the packet. Cut that automatic waste and the owner keeps more of the margin on every transaction, with zero new expense, zero new equipment, and zero new labor required to make it happen. The New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association, an organization that exists specifically to represent restaurant owners’ interests, has said exactly that publicly, calling the law a genuine, ongoing cost saver rather than a burden imposed on its members. That is not spin from Trenton. That is the industry’s own trade group agreeing with the premise.

A law that saves restaurant owners money on every single order, reduces plastic waste heading into landfills and waterways, and requires nothing more of a customer than the word please is, by any honest measure, one of the least burdensome regulations New Jersey has passed in years.

So Who, Exactly, Is Upset?

This is the part worth actually examining, because the answer is a lot narrower than the headlines suggest. There is no organized backlash here. No boycott. No sustained grassroots movement of angry diners showing up at township meetings. What exists is a familiar pattern, conservative media outlets and a handful of Republican political accounts treating a low stakes regulation as proof of government run amok, because manufacturing outrage over something trivial is cheaper and easier than building an actual policy argument around something that matters. The New York Post ran a piece about diners fuming. Talk radio gave it airtime. The Assembly GOP’s social media account framed four days of adjustment period as evidence of dysfunction. That is not the same thing as a genuine public backlash. That is a small number of people with microphones deciding a fork is worth a news cycle.

Meanwhile, the actual lived experience of most New Jersey residents has been almost aggressively unremarkable. Restaurant workers have described a short adjustment period, some initial confusion at the counter, and then people simply remembering to ask, the same way anyone adapts to literally any small change in a routine transaction within a couple of weeks. That is not a crisis. That is Tuesday. The gap between how loudly this has been covered and how little it has actually disrupted anyone’s life is, frankly, the entire story here, and it is a story about media incentives and political theater far more than it is a story about plastic utensils.

Pick Your Fights

New Jersey has genuinely difficult, genuinely contentious policy fights happening constantly, on housing, on property taxes, on energy costs, on any number of issues where reasonable people actually disagree about real tradeoffs. This is not one of them. A rule that reduces unnecessary plastic waste, saves business owners money on every transaction, and requires a customer to say four extra words if they actually want a fork is about as close to a policy free lunch as government regulation gets. Treating it as an outrage requires either not understanding the actual mechanics of the law, or understanding them perfectly well and manufacturing a grievance anyway because outrage performs better online than nuance does.

Either way, the shelf life on this one is short. Nobody is going to remember the Skip the Stuff law as a defining controversy of 2026, because there is nothing underneath it to sustain the attention past the initial adjustment period. The people currently getting mileage out of mocking it know that too. That is precisely why the smart move is to stop pretending this deserves the airtime it has gotten and call it what it actually is, a minor operational adjustment being loudly cosplayed as a crisis by a small number of people who picked the easiest possible fight to pick.

Note: Not every critic of the law is acting in bad faith. Some diners and drive-thru customers have raised a genuine, if minor, practical complaint about remembering to request items during a rushed order, and reasonable people can disagree about how much friction a regulation should add to an everyday transaction, however small. This piece reflects Explore New Jersey’s opinion desk and argues one side of that debate; readers are encouraged to weigh the law’s practical impact for themselves.

Haddon Township Approves a Scaled Back Brotherly Bud Dispensary After May’s Rejection

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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Three months after the Planning Board turned down a bid to bring a second Brotherly Bud location to Crescent Boulevard, the cannabis operator returned with a smaller, more narrowly tailored proposal and walked away with unanimous approval.

Haddon Township Approves a Scaled Back Brotherly Bud Dispensary After May’s Rejection

UnanimousPlanning Board approves revised Crescent Boulevard proposal after May denial

Camden County · Local Business

Haddon Township Approves a Scaled Back Brotherly Bud Dispensary After May’s Rejection

Three months after the Planning Board turned down a bid to bring a second Brotherly Bud location to Crescent Boulevard, the cannabis operator returned with a smaller, more narrowly tailored proposal and walked away with unanimous approval.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Local Government Desk

Haddon Township’s Planning Board has given unanimous approval to a revised plan from Brotherly Bud to convert a former automotive property along Crescent Boulevard into a cannabis micro-dispensary, reversing course three months after rejecting an earlier, more ambitious version of the same project. The approval clears the way for the township’s second licensed dispensary, joining an existing Brotherly Bud location the company already operates in nearby Mount Ephraim.

The turnaround traces back to a Planning Board meeting on May 7th, when Brotherly Bud co-owner William Sirois, represented by attorney Lou Cappelli, sought a use variance that would have allowed the Crescent Boulevard site to operate under Haddon Township’s standard dispensary designation rather than the more tightly restricted micro license category the property actually qualified for under the township’s cannabis ordinance. That ordinance caps the township at two total dispensaries, one operating under standard rules and one under micro rules, and the board ultimately denied the variance request, citing concerns from board members and nearby residents about the constraints of the site itself.

Under Haddon Township’s cannabis ordinance, only two dispensaries are permitted townwide, one under standard regulations and one under the more tightly capped micro category. The Crescent Boulevard site’s return to the micro designation is what ultimately cleared the path to approval.

A Second Attempt, Built Smaller by Design

Rather than appeal the May decision or abandon the site, Brotherly Bud returned to the board with a scaled back proposal that dropped the request for standard designation entirely, opting instead to move forward within the more limited scope the micro license already allowed. That change appears to have resolved the core objection that sank the original application, and the revised plan passed without opposition from any board member.

Sirois, who co-owns Brotherly Bud alongside his brother Matthew, brings direct operating experience to the new location. The company’s original shop opened on the Black Horse Pike in Mount Ephraim in the summer of 2024 and has since become a steady, popular destination for cannabis products in the area, operating daily from 10 in the morning until 10 at night. That track record, along with the brothers’ familiarity with the surrounding South Jersey cannabis market, likely helped make the case for a second location even after the initial setback in May.

Reusing a Property Built for Something Else Entirely

The Crescent Boulevard site itself carries an unusual history for a cannabis retail proposal. The building sits within the township’s West Collingswood Heights neighborhood, an area many residents associate more closely with neighboring Gloucester City due to a quirk in the municipal border that places the property inside Haddon Township despite its surrounding context. The structure includes a section that has functioned as automotive service space, giving the project the now familiar shape of a cannabis operator repurposing an existing commercial building rather than pursuing new ground up construction.

That reuse strategy has become something of a pattern in Haddon Township’s approach to cannabis licensing. The township’s other available dispensary license, under the standard designation, is already slated for a separate Route 130 corridor project involving the demolition of the former Whata-Weiner restaurant and an adjacent former adult bookstore, a considerably more involved ground up redevelopment. Brotherly Bud’s approach of adapting an existing structure could give the Crescent Boulevard micro-dispensary a real head start, potentially allowing it to open well before the standard licensed competitor across the intersection completes its own more extensive construction process.

With both of Haddon Township’s available dispensary licenses now formally spoken for, attention along the Route 130 corridor is likely to shift from zoning approvals toward construction timelines and eventual opening dates, as two very differently scaled cannabis retail projects make their way toward becoming the township’s first legal dispensaries.

Foie Gras Is Still Legal in New Jersey, But Lawmakers Are Trying to Change That

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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The fattened duck and goose liver delicacy remains legal to buy and serve in the Garden State, even as a pair of bills in Trenton, a tangled legal fight in New York City, and a growing list of international bans put its future on increasingly uncertain footing.

Foie Gras Is Still Legal in New Jersey, But Lawmakers Are Trying to Change That

TrentonBills S2648 and A2317 would ban force-feeding and restrict foie gras sales statewide

New Jersey · Food Policy

Foie Gras Is Still Legal in New Jersey, But Lawmakers Are Trying to Change That

The fattened duck and goose liver delicacy remains legal to buy and serve in the Garden State, even as a pair of bills in Trenton, a tangled legal fight in New York City, and a growing list of international bans put its future on increasingly uncertain footing.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Food Desk

Foie gras remains fully legal to buy, sell, and eat in New Jersey today, whether at a white tablecloth restaurant or a specialty food shop. That could change. State lawmakers have introduced companion bills, S2648 in the Senate and A2317 in the Assembly, that would prohibit the force feeding of ducks, geese, and other poultry for the production of foie gras within New Jersey, and would separately restrict the sale of any foie gras product unless it comes from a jurisdiction that already bans the practice. Both bills remain in committee as of this year, meaning the delicacy’s legal status in the state has not yet changed, but the political momentum behind restricting it has clearly been building.

The dish itself, French for fat liver, refers to the enlarged liver of a duck or goose, prized in haute cuisine for a rich, buttery texture that has made it a fixture on tasting menus from Paris to New York. Celebrity chefs including Gordon Ramsay have featured it prominently on upscale menus for years, and it remains a genuine luxury item rather than an everyday product, priced and portioned accordingly. What has made it increasingly controversial is not the flavor but the production method traditionally used to achieve it, a process called gavage, in which a tube is inserted into a bird’s throat to force feed it far beyond what it would eat naturally, rapidly enlarging its liver in the weeks before slaughter.

What New Jersey’s Bill Would Actually Do

The New Jersey legislation, if passed, would take a two pronged approach. It would ban the force feeding of birds specifically for the purpose of enlarging their liver beyond a normal size, while carving out an exception for force feeding done to improve a bird’s health rather than fatten it for slaughter. Separately, the bill would prohibit the distribution, sale, or offering for sale of foie gras or any foie gras containing product anywhere in the state, unless that product originated in a jurisdiction that already bans the underlying force feeding practice. Enforcement would fall to the state Secretary of Agriculture, with violators facing a written warning for a first offense and a 100 dollar fine for each offense after that.

It is worth noting that New Jersey has no foie gras farms of its own, so a ban on the production side would have little direct effect on any in state agricultural operation. The sales restriction is where the bill would actually bite, and it would directly affect distributors like D’Artagnan, a major national supplier of fresh foie gras and duck products that is based in Newark. Versions of this legislation have circulated in Trenton for close to two decades without becoming law, reflecting just how difficult it has historically been to move a ban through the full legislative process even when individual lawmakers have repeatedly reintroduced it.

New Jersey has no foie gras production of its own. The state’s proposed ban would primarily affect the sale and distribution side of the business, including major suppliers like Newark based D’Artagnan, rather than any local farming operation.

A Patchwork of Bans, and One Very Tangled Legal Fight

New Jersey’s debate is unfolding against a backdrop of growing restrictions elsewhere. California has maintained a statewide ban on the sale and production of force fed foie gras for years, surviving its own extended legal challenges along the way. Washington, D.C. voters are currently weighing a ballot initiative that would impose a citywide sales ban. Internationally, more than twenty countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Israel, have banned either the production or import of force fed foie gras products, reflecting a broader global shift in how the practice is viewed.

New York City’s experience offers the clearest illustration of just how difficult these bans are to actually enforce, even once they pass. The City Council approved a sales ban back in 2019, but the law immediately became tangled in litigation after New York’s state Department of Agriculture and Markets intervened, arguing the city was overstepping its authority by effectively regulating farms located well outside city limits. A trial court initially sided with the foie gras producers in 2024, ruling the ban violated state laws protecting agricultural practices. That changed this past March, when an appellate court reversed course and found the city had acted within its legal authority to regulate what gets sold inside its own borders. Even with that appellate win, however, the ban still has not gone into effect, since a separate lawsuit filed directly by the two upstate New York farms that produce most of the country’s foie gras has kept an injunction in place blocking enforcement until the litigation reaches a final, unappealable resolution. In other words, the city has won the legal argument so far, but restaurants there can still legally serve foie gras today while the fight continues.

The Case Against It, and the Pushback

Animal welfare organizations have built their opposition around several distinct arguments rather than relying purely on an appeal to conscience. Groups including PETA have argued that the force feeding process deliberately induces hepatic steatosis, a fatty liver disease, and that selling a product created through the intentional induction of disease in an animal raises food safety and agricultural standards questions beyond the ethics of the practice itself. Separately, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has pursued litigation targeting producers over marketing language like humane choice, arguing such labeling misleads consumers about standard industry practices. Advocacy groups have also pushed for accountability further up the supply chain, arguing that distributors and high end restaurants share responsibility when they source from producers who fail to meet their own stated welfare claims or attempt to route around regional bans entirely.

Producers and their allies in the farming and restaurant industry see the same set of facts very differently. Their central legal argument, the one that has actually succeeded in New York courts so far, rests on right to farm protections, the idea that state agricultural law exists specifically to shield established farming practices from being effectively outlawed by local or municipal governments that have no jurisdiction over where the farms themselves operate. Industry representatives have also argued that foie gras production represents a small, specialized, and already heavily regulated corner of agriculture, and that singling it out for a sales ban, while continuing to permit other forms of intensive animal agriculture, reflects cultural distaste for a specific luxury product more than a consistent, evenly applied animal welfare standard. Whether New Jersey’s own bills can clear that same legal and political terrain, after roughly twenty years of similar proposals failing to reach a governor’s desk, remains very much an open question as S2648 and A2317 continue working their way through committee in Trenton.

Hunterdon County’s Family Resource Fair Returns With Face Paint, Ice Cream, and a Real Support Network

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County is bringing its annual Family Resource Fair back to Flemington this September, pairing an afternoon of kid friendly fun with direct access to the maternal health providers, doulas, and therapists the nonprofit spends the rest of the year connecting local families to.

Hunterdon County’s Family Resource Fair Returns With Face Paint, Ice Cream, and a Real Support Network

Sept. 26Free family fair connects Hunterdon County parents with postpartum and maternal care resources

Hunterdon County · Community

Hunterdon County’s Family Resource Fair Returns With Face Paint, Ice Cream, and a Real Support Network

Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County is bringing its annual Family Resource Fair back to Flemington this September, pairing an afternoon of kid friendly fun with direct access to the maternal health providers, doulas, and therapists the nonprofit spends the rest of the year connecting local families to.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Community Desk

Family Resource Fair 2026 flyer, Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County

Family Resource Fair, Saturday, September 26, 2026

Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County is hosting its annual Family Resource Fair on Saturday, September 26th, from 2 to 4 in the afternoon at J.P. Case Middle School in Flemington. The event is free and open to the public, and it has become one of the nonprofit’s signature gatherings, blending a genuinely fun afternoon for kids with direct, in person access to the maternal health and family support resources the organization works to connect Hunterdon County families with year round.

When

Saturday, September 26
2:00 to 4:00 PM

Where

J.P. Case Middle School
301 Case Boulevard, Flemington

Cost

Free and open to the public

A Fair Built for the Whole Family, Not Just New Parents

The afternoon is designed to give kids just as much reason to attend as their parents. Planned activities include face painting, fairy hair, craft stations, a local ice cream truck, and vendor giveaways spread across the fair, giving families a genuine reason to spend the full two hours on site rather than making a quick pass through. That family first approach is deliberate, since the fair’s real purpose, connecting parents with resources like doulas, therapists, sleep consultants, photographers, and childcare providers, works best when there is no pressure to rush through the conversations that actually matter.

Local practices confirmed as part of this year’s vendor lineup include ProCare Pelvic Health, a Flemington based pelvic floor physical therapy practice that has partnered with the nonprofit on past community events, along with Evolution Mom, which focuses on maternal strength and postpartum fitness, and Fit2Push, a mobile concierge practice bringing prenatal and postpartum support directly to clients. Together with the fair’s broader roster of exhibitors, the lineup gives attending families a genuinely wide cross section of the maternal and family health resources available throughout the county in a single afternoon.

Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County raised more than 15,000 dollars in 2024 through its fundraising efforts, money the nonprofit has used to fund grants for therapy, postpartum doula support, and physical therapy for local families navigating perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. This year’s fundraising goal stands at 20,000 dollars.

A Nonprofit Born From a Chance Meeting

Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County traces its own origin to a handful of local mothers who met at a postpartum support event years ago and bonded over a shared desire to help other families in the county navigate the postpartum period, particularly around mental health. That informal connection eventually grew into a full 501c3 nonprofit built around three core goals, supporting and advocating for maternal mental health, working to create a stigma free environment for parents to talk about it, and connecting families directly to local resources rather than leaving them to search for help on their own.

Throughout the rest of the year, the organization runs smaller, recurring events that build toward the same mission the September fair represents at full scale. Its monthly Coffee and Crafts gatherings bring mothers together at the Hunterdon County Library alongside local providers for informal, judgment free conversations about postpartum health topics, while yoga classes, community fundraisers, and provider partnerships round out a calendar built around keeping new parents connected rather than isolated. The Family Resource Fair functions as the culmination of that year long effort, bringing the full network of providers, resources, and community support into one place for an afternoon that Postpartum Wellness of Hunterdon County has described as both a celebration of local families and a practical, hands on way for parents to walk away with real connections rather than just a list of phone numbers to call later.

New Jersey’s Craft Beer Scene Has Somewhere to Be Today, and Nearly Every Weekend After

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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From a Sunday morning yoga class in Brick to an emo night takeover in Denville, New Jersey’s breweries are functioning less like simple taprooms and more like the state’s most reliable venues for live music, community festivals, and the occasional sun salutation.

New Jersey’s Craft Beer Scene Has Somewhere to Be Today, and Nearly Every Weekend After

This WeekYoga, acoustic sets, and touring bands fill New Jersey taprooms today and into late August

Statewide · Craft Beer

New Jersey’s Craft Beer Scene Has Somewhere to Be Today, and Nearly Every Weekend After

From a Sunday morning yoga class in Brick to an emo night takeover in Denville, New Jersey’s breweries are functioning less like simple taprooms and more like the state’s most reliable venues for live music, community festivals, and the occasional sun salutation.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Food & Beverage Desk

Whether the plan is a taproom show tonight or a festival circled on the calendar for later this month, New Jersey’s craft beer scene has rarely looked busier. Breweries across the state have leaned hard into becoming genuine community gathering spots, hosting everything from acoustic trios to full scale cycling festivals, and this stretch of August offers a representative sample of just how far that trend has gone.

Happening Today, Sunday, August 9

Four very different ways to spend a Sunday at a New Jersey brewery, from a morning workout to an evening acoustic set.

Icarus Brewing Company

11:00 AM · Brick Township

All levels morning yoga on the patio, with a complimentary post class pour and food from Burger 25 available right in the taproom.

Slack Tide Brewing Company

3:00 PM · Cape May Court House

Musician Nicki Sbaffoni performs a casual, family friendly acoustic set as part of the brewery’s ongoing Harvest Tide Festival.

Stratosphere Brewing Company

12:00 PM · Mount Holly

The weekly summer live music series continues in the taproom, part of a regular Sunday tradition through the season.

Farm Truck Brewing

4:00 PM · Medford

A free, all ages outdoor performance from the Tell All Your Friends! trio on the patio, no cover required.

Both Farm Truck Brewing and Stratosphere Brewing Company maintain active listing pages in Explore New Jersey’s own brewery directory, alongside more than 160 other licensed breweries across the state.

Coming Up Later This Month

Beyond this weekend, the calendar only gets busier, with touring bands, a full pop punk night, and two of the month’s bigger community festivals all landing at New Jersey breweries before August ends.

Wild Air Beerworks

Mon., Aug. 10, 7:00 PM · Asbury Park

An indoor concert featuring touring acts Grumpy Plum, Girlbossanova, and Mar Stellium. $15 entry.

Diamond Spring Brewing Company

Fri., Aug. 14, 7:00 PM · Denville

“In Your Top 8 Emo Night” turns the taproom into a pop punk hub with live tribute sets.

Icarus Brewing Company

Sat., Aug. 22 · Ocean County

Anchors Bikes & Beers Ocean County, with 15, 30, and 45 mile coastal routes followed by an after party festival with live bands and food trucks.

Montclair Brewery

Sat., Aug. 22, 4:00 PM · Essex County

The 8th Annual Jamaica Independence Day celebration, with island inspired drinks, Caribbean food trucks, live music from Platinum One, and garden games.

Looking Further Ahead

Not every craft beverage event in the pipeline is happening at a brewery itself. One notable fundraiser lands on the calendar this fall.

Uncorked and Uncapped

Thu., Oct. 1, 6:00 to 9:00 PM · The Hanover Manor, East Hanover

The Arc of Essex County’s annual wine, beer, and food tasting fundraiser and silent auction, benefiting the Livingston based nonprofit’s support services for children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Taken together, the run of events shows just how much New Jersey’s craft beverage scene has expanded beyond simply pouring beer. Between a Sunday morning yoga session, a multi band touring bill, a full cycling festival, and a nonprofit fundraiser sharing the same general orbit, the state’s breweries have become something closer to community event spaces that happen to also serve exceptional beer, and this stretch of August is a fairly complete snapshot of that shift in action.

The Complete Guide to Every Pier Along the Jersey Shore

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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From a nearly three mile Navy trestle to a Ferris wheel that’s the third tallest in the country, New Jersey’s piers are where the state’s coastal identity has always been written. Here is every one worth knowing, mapped from the Raritan Bay down to Cape May County.

The Complete Guide to Every Pier Along the Jersey Shore

Definitive GuideEvery pier along the New Jersey coast, from private fishing clubs to record-holding thrill rides

Jersey Shore · Travel & Attractions

The Complete Guide to Every Pier Along the Jersey Shore

From a nearly three mile Navy trestle to a Ferris wheel that’s the third tallest in the country, New Jersey’s piers are where the state’s coastal identity has always been written. Here is every one worth knowing, mapped from the Raritan Bay down to Cape May County.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Travel Desk

Whether the plan is a quiet sunset walk, a serious afternoon of surfcasting, or a full day of roller coasters over the sand, New Jersey’s piers have shaped the coastline’s identity for well over a century. These structures have been built, flattened by hurricanes and fires, and rebuilt again and again, and today they range from strictly private fishing clubs to record setting amusement complexes that draw visitors from well outside the state. Here is the full run of them, organized north to south.

Bayshore Piers

The quieter, working waterfront stretch of the coast, where a federal installation shares the bay with some of the best community fishing in the state.

Most
Patriotic

Naval Weapons Station Earle Pier

Leonardo, NJ

A three pronged finger pier stretching an astonishing 2.9 miles into Raritan Bay, wide enough to carry both trains and trucks resupplying the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. It is among the longest finger piers on Earth and visible from orbit, though access is strictly limited to active duty, reserve, and retired military and current or former NWS Earle employees and contractors.

Fishiest

Keansburg Fishing Pier

Keansburg, NJ

A 2,000 foot wooden landmark and the ultimate barometer for Raritan Bay angling, complete with a daily recorded fishing report line. A section collapsed under ice damage last winter, but most of the pier remains open daily. Nearby, the Keyport Fishing Pier, the pier at Bayshore Waterfront Park in Port Monmouth, and the fishing pier at Atlantic Highlands Municipal Harbor round out the bay’s community fishing scene.

Sandy Hook to Belmar

A stretch defined by architectural silhouettes, music history, and one pier that has never let a stranger walk out on it.

Most
Photogenic

Belmar Fishing Club Pier

Belmar, NJ

Known up and down the coast for its length and unusually tall pilings, this pier creates one of the Shore’s most striking silhouettes from the horizon or from underneath. The Belmar Fishing Club owns and operates it as a private club, and membership has been closed with no new additions to the waiting list.

Musical
History

Asbury Park Convention Hall & Paramount Theatre Pier

Asbury Park, NJ

Once among the greatest music venues in the country, having hosted Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, the Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen. Long running structural and safety issues have closed the Paramount Theatre and the main Convention Hall auditorium indefinitely, though the connecting Grand Arcade still houses shops and bars. For live music today, the action has shifted across the street to the Stone Pony, its Summer Stage, and the Wonder Bar. Nearby, Ocean Grove’s cross shaped pier remains closed after severe structural issues, while a new pier is under construction in Long Branch, targeted for a 2027 opening on the site of the first Atlantic Ocean fishing pier, which dates to 1879.

Point Pleasant Beach to Seaside Heights

The heart of the Shore’s boardwalk nightlife and its most famous comeback story.

Booziest

Jenkinson’s Boardwalk & Amusement Park

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ

A family focused boardwalk anchored by the two level Adventure Lookout ropes course, a classic train ride, the Shark Escape coaster, and a year round aquarium, alongside multi tier arcades and mini golf. After dark, adults head to Jenkinson’s Club, or Jenks, and neighboring Martell’s Tiki Bar, both extending directly off the boardwalk with live music and crowds that linger well into the night.

The
Comeback

Casino Pier & Breakwater Beach

Seaside Heights, NJ

Storm story credibility to match its thrill rides, given that its Star Jet Coaster famously ended up submerged in the ocean after Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Today the rebuilt pier features the Hydrus steel coaster, the Skyscraper ride, midway games, a state of the art arcade, and a multi level go kart track, with Breakwater Beach Waterpark right across the walkway offering major slide complexes and a lazy river. Entry to the pier is free, with rides paid individually.

Atlantic City & Absecon Island

The undisputed heavyweight of Jersey Shore piers, plus a members-only fishing club and a pier still searching for its identity.

World
Famous

Steel Pier

Atlantic City, NJ

Stretching 1,000 feet over the Atlantic, Steel Pier has hosted everything from diving horses to vaudeville legends since opening in 1898. Its current headline attraction is The Wheel, a 227 foot observation wheel with 40 climate controlled gondolas, the third tallest in the country. Thrill seekers gravitate to the Slingshot, which launches riders 225 feet in the air at more than 100 miles an hour, while the pier also offers a helicopter tour, the Crazy Crab spinning coaster, and a beachside Tiki Bar with live music.

Most
Romantic

Ventnor City Fishing Pier

Ventnor City, NJ

A quieter blend of serious angling and coastal charm just south of Atlantic City. The far end holds a paid public fishing platform, but locals know the real draw sits midway, before the admission gate, where benches invite couples and solo strollers to watch sunrise or unwind at day’s end with the sea breeze. Nearby, the Central Pier Arcade and Speedway competes with Steel Pier on family entertainment, while the long struggling Million Dollar Pier, most recently home to ACX1 Studios before its bankruptcy, continues searching for a new purpose. The private, members only pier of the Angler’s Club of Absecon Island in Margate rounds out the island, accessible only through sponsorship by an existing member.

Ocean City to Avalon

Where a 1928 concert hall still out-books modern venues, and two of the oldest fishing clubs in the country guard their piers closely.

Most
Musical

Ocean City Music Pier

Ocean City, NJ

Built in 1928 as a concert hall, this architectural landmark still runs a full summer concert series today, hosting tribute bands, musical theater, and orchestral performances with guest artists including Lee Greenwood, the Righteous Brothers, and Broadway’s Lea Salonga. Nearby, the Ocean City Fishing Club, the oldest continuously operating fishing club in the nation, built its own private pier at 14th Street and the Boardwalk back in 1916, distinct from the public Ocean City Fishing Pier on the bay side. Farther south, the private Avalon Fishing Pier, built in 1933 and extended in 2016, does not actively seek members or public visitors.

The Wildwoods

The largest family owned pier system in the world, a resort style newcomer, and a fishing pier stranded on dry land.

Most
Amusing

Morey’s Piers

Wildwood, NJ

Spanning 18 acres across six beach blocks, Morey’s is the largest family owned boardwalk amusement pier system in the world, split into Surfside Pier, Mariner’s Pier, and Adventure Pier. Between them sit classic wooden and steel coasters including the Great Nor’Easter and the Great White, a towering Ferris wheel, a walk through Ghost Ship, and two full water parks, Raging Waters and Ocean Oasis Water Park and Beach Club, delivering some of the most complete seaside amusement offerings anywhere on the East Coast.

The
Coolest

Seaport Pier

North Wildwood, NJ

Trading roller coasters for resort vibes, Seaport Pier anchors the boardwalk with a sun splashed pool, cabanas, a lively stage, and a sprawling bar scene that turns the pier into a mini festival with ocean views once the sun goes down.

The
Saddest

Wildwood Crest Fishing Pier

Wildwood Crest, NJ

Originally built in 1919 by the private Wildwood Crest Fishing Club and acquired by the borough in 2006, this pier, also known as the Heather Road Fishing Pier, no longer lives up to its name. Decades of sand accretion have left the structure stranded on dry land, unable to reach the water at all. With Cape May County funding secured, the borough plans to extend the deck in the coming years so it once again sits above the ocean.

Taken together, these structures trace the full range of what a pier can be along this coastline, from a federal supply line stretching nearly three miles into the bay to a private club that has not opened its waiting list in years to a thrill ride complex that has become one of the most visited amusement destinations on the East Coast.

New Jersey’s piers have survived hurricanes, fires, ownership changes, and long stretches of neglect, and yet new ones keep rising in their place, from the Long Branch pier now under construction to the extension planned for Wildwood Crest. Whatever draws a visitor to the water, whether it is the pull of a fishing line, the drop of a coaster, or simply a bench at sunset, there is a pier somewhere between Sandy Hook and Cape May built for exactly that.

A World Premiere in Long Branch Turns a Trailer Park Survival Story Into Must-See Theater

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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Jeffrey Sweet’s A Change of Position, now running at New Jersey Repertory Company, has drawn strong early reviews for finding real humor and heart inside a story about a mother, a daughter, and an offer that upends both their lives, all built on characters a late Pennsylvania writer left behind.

A World Premiere in Long Branch Turns a Trailer Park Survival Story Into Must-See Theater

World PremiereLong Branch run continues through August 23

Monmouth County · Theater

A World Premiere in Long Branch Turns a Trailer Park Survival Story Into Must-See Theater

Jeffrey Sweet’s A Change of Position, now running at New Jersey Repertory Company, has drawn strong early reviews for finding real humor and heart inside a story about a mother, a daughter, and an offer that upends both their lives, all built on characters a late Pennsylvania writer left behind.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Arts Desk

New Jersey Repertory Company’s world premiere of A Change of Position has arrived in Long Branch to some of the strongest early notices the Lumia Theater has drawn in recent memory, with critics praising playwright Jeffrey Sweet for finding genuine comedy and real emotional depth inside a story that could easily have tipped into pure melodrama in less careful hands. The production runs through August 23rd, with performances Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.

Set in a small Pennsylvania town in 2021, the play follows Sally, a guarded teenager living in a trailer with her mother Emma, who supports them both through sex work, a fact of their daily life that shapes everything from Sally’s after school routine to the emotional armor she has built up by the time the curtain rises. The plot turns when one of Emma’s regular clients, a wealthy, seemingly ordinary man named Vic, approaches Sally directly with an unexpected and morally complicated proposition, one that threatens to upend the fragile, survivalist equilibrium mother and daughter have built together.

Playing

Through August 23
Thu 7pm, Fri/Sat 2pm & 7pm, Sun 2pm

Where

New Jersey Repertory Company
Lumia Theater, Long Branch

Creative Team

Written by Jeffrey Sweet
Directed by James Glossman

Reviewers Praise a Story That Never Loses Its Grip

Jay Lustig, reviewing the production for NJArts.net, described it as a modest but genuinely affecting piece of work, one whose characters and their small, hard won steps forward feel authentic rather than manufactured for effect. Lustig singled out the play’s handling of Vic’s arrival specifically, noting that Sweet gets ahead of the story’s biggest credibility hurdle by having Sally herself directly question why a wealthy, unremarkable looking man would need to pay for company in the first place, a moment of sharp, character driven humor that Lustig credited with earning the audience’s trust before the plot’s more serious turns arrive. He also highlighted Éilis Cahill’s performance as Emma as the production’s standout, describing her as funny and sharp but also rough edged and quick to anger, a woman whose self destructive choices never once put her fierce love for her daughter in doubt.

Broadway World’s review took a similarly enthusiastic view of the production’s pacing, calling it a finely produced and enthralling comedic drama whose 90 minute runtime moves without a single slow stretch. That review praised Sweet specifically for populating the story with rich, distinct, memorable characters capable of hooking an audience’s empathy almost immediately, and predicted the play has a real future ahead of it, suggesting it is well positioned to be picked up by regional theaters well beyond Long Branch once its world premiere run concludes.

Both reviews single out the ensemble’s chemistry as central to the production’s success, with Sandy Clancy’s portrayal of Sally, cynical and surly on the surface but visibly vulnerable underneath, drawing particular praise for how convincingly it captures a teenager who has had to grow up faster than she should have.

A Cast Built on Real Range

Alongside Cahill and Clancy, the production features Todd Cerveris as Vic, bringing Broadway and national touring credits from shows including South Pacific and War Horse to a role that requires balancing the script’s underlying humor against real dramatic weight, given how much of the plot’s tension depends on the audience actually believing Vic’s motivations. Ephraim Birney rounds out the cast as Trent, Sally’s coworker at a local food mart and the closest thing she has to a trusted confidant outside her own home, giving the play a grounded, plainspoken counterweight to the heavier material playing out between Sally, Emma, and Vic.

The Story Behind the Story

Part of what gives A Change of Position its particular resonance is where its characters actually came from. Sweet based the play on characters originally created by Michael Kosarowich, a Pennsylvania writer who found a creative home during the pandemic in Zoom playwriting workshops led by Sweet himself. Kosarowich died suddenly in July of 2022, and Sweet has continued developing the characters Kosarowich left behind, carrying the work through a 2023 staged reading at NJ Rep and now into this full, fully realized world premiere production. Kosarowich’s family has described being moved by how thoroughly Sweet embraced and preserved his characters, giving the production’s central story about survival, unexpected opportunity, and the choices that alter a life a quiet parallel in its own real world origin story.

Founded in 1997 by SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas, New Jersey Repertory Company has built its identity specifically around developing and premiering new work rather than staging established scripts, and A Change of Position fits squarely within that mission. For theatergoers looking to catch a genuine world premiere before it potentially makes its way to stages across the country, as Broadway World’s review suggests it will, the Lumia Theater’s run through August 23rd offers a rare first look at a script still very much on its way up.

A Democrat Read Reagan’s Farewell Address to Open His Campaign Against Van Drew

Don Lichterman

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9 August 2026

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At the opening of his campaign’s new Atlantic County office, Democratic congressional nominee Zack Mullock built his pitch to South Jersey voters around an unlikely source, a 37-year-old speech by Ronald Reagan, as he tries to do what only one Democrat has managed in the district since 1995.

A Democrat Read Reagan’s Farewell Address to Open His Campaign Against Van Drew

CD-2Cape May mayor opens Atlantic County office in bid to unseat four-term incumbent

South Jersey · 2026 Election

A Democrat Read Reagan’s Farewell Address to Open His Campaign Against Van Drew

At the opening of his campaign’s new Atlantic County office, Democratic congressional nominee Zack Mullock built his pitch to South Jersey voters around an unlikely source, a 37-year-old speech by Ronald Reagan, as he tries to do what only one Democrat has managed in the district since 1995.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Politics Desk

Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock opened his campaign’s Atlantic County office this month with a speech built around an unusual centerpiece for a Democratic candidate, extended passages from Ronald Reagan’s farewell address as president, delivered on January 19, 1989. Speaking to a packed room in a suburban South Jersey community, Mullock read from Reagan’s closing message about immigration and national renewal, using the Republican icon’s own words to frame the stakes of his challenge against four term incumbent Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey’s 2nd Congressional District.

The passage Mullock chose focused on Reagan’s description of immigration as central to American vitality, the idea that each wave of newcomers had kept the country perpetually renewed and at the forefront of the world, and his warning that closing the door to new arrivals would cost the nation its leadership position globally. Mullock’s decision to build a campaign moment around that specific message, delivered with the current administration’s immigration enforcement posture clearly in mind, was a deliberate contrast, an attempt to position his campaign as more aligned with a version of Republican philosophy that predates the party’s current direction than Van Drew himself is.

Mullock’s event doubled as a policy pitch and a electability argument, built around treating people with basic respect and civility while protecting health care access, framed explicitly against Van Drew’s voting record on safety net programs.

A District That Has Only Flipped Once Since 1995

Mullock secured the Democratic nomination in June, defeating three primary opponents to earn the right to challenge Van Drew, who is seeking a fifth term representing a district that stretches across Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, and Salem counties along with parts of Gloucester and Ocean counties. The matchup carries real historical weight for Democrats hoping to flip the seat, since the only time the party has won the district since 1995 came with Van Drew himself as their nominee, back when he still identified as a Democrat.

That history captures the central irony running through the race. Van Drew was first elected to the House as a Democrat in 2018, then announced his switch to the Republican Party less than a year into his term, going on to become a close ally of President Trump. He won reelection in 2024 by a solid margin, carrying roughly 58 percent of the vote against Democrat Joe Salerno, underscoring the uphill nature of Mullock’s challenge in a district that has trended reliably Republican under Van Drew’s tenure despite its Democratic voting history before him.

Framing the Race Around Affordability and Health Care

At the Atlantic County event, Mullock argued that significant portions of the district remain economically struggling by New Jersey standards, and he used that framing to launch his central line of attack, that Van Drew has supported cuts to Medicaid, a program he described as directly serving the same working class residents he says his campaign is fighting for. That characterization of Van Drew’s record reflects Mullock’s own campaign messaging rather than an independently adjudicated assessment of the congressman’s voting history, and it echoes language Mullock used throughout his primary campaign, when he pledged to oppose what he called efforts to slash Medicare and Medicaid rather than protect them.

Mullock also addressed the attacks he expects to face as the race intensifies, predicting that Van Drew’s campaign will eventually label him and his supporters as extremists. That prediction arrived alongside an attack already in circulation, after Van Drew’s campaign called Mullock a liar in a statement responding to remarks Mullock made regarding municipal taxes in Cape May years earlier. Mullock has said that attack took his comments out of context, pointing out that municipal taxes were not, in fact, raised during the period in question. Van Drew’s campaign did not offer additional comment on the Reagan focused event specifically.

Local Democrats See an Opening, if a Narrow One

The energy at the office opening reflected genuine enthusiasm from local Democratic organizers, even as they acknowledged the challenge ahead. Atlantic County Democratic Chair Walead Abdrabouh noted that the crowded room reflected real excitement rather than simply a small venue, though the optics of an overflowing crowd at a campaign kickoff are hardly new in politics. Whether that enthusiasm translates into a genuine shot at unseating an incumbent who has now won three consecutive elections in the district remains the open question hanging over Mullock’s campaign, one that both sides will spend the coming months trying to answer as the general election campaign moves into full swing.

New Jersey’s Muggy, Stormy Stretch Isn’t Done Yet, and Today Brings the Sharpest Threat

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

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Saturday brings the most active severe weather day of the week, with watches covering both northern and southern New Jersey and a warning already fired off in South Jersey, all while the state stays locked in a run of oppressive heat and humidity that will linger well into next week.

New Jersey’s Muggy, Stormy Stretch Isn’t Done Yet, and Today Brings the Sharpest Threat

AlertSevere thunderstorm watches cover both ends of the state through this evening

Statewide · Weather

New Jersey’s Muggy, Stormy Stretch Isn’t Done Yet, and Today Brings the Sharpest Threat

Saturday brings the most active severe weather day of the week, with watches covering both northern and southern New Jersey and a warning already fired off in South Jersey, all while the state stays locked in a run of oppressive heat and humidity that will linger well into next week.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Weather Desk

Active this afternoon: Separate severe thunderstorm watches are in effect for northern New Jersey (Bergen, Morris, Passaic, Sussex, and Warren counties) until 8 p.m., and for eight southern and central counties (Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Ocean, and Salem) until 6 p.m. A broader regional watch spanning New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania is also in effect until 8 p.m., covering more than 9.6 million people. Damaging wind gusts up to 70 mph, isolated hail, and localized flash flooding are the primary threats.

Saturday has turned into the most volatile weather day New Jersey has seen this week. With the atmosphere primed by several straight days of intense heat and humidity, the National Weather Service issued back to back severe thunderstorm watches covering opposite ends of the state Saturday afternoon, while a severe thunderstorm warning already fired for parts of Atlantic County as a line of storms raced east at 40 miles per hour, packing wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour capable of damaging roofs, siding, trees, and power lines.

Forecasters have warned that today’s storms could gain extra fuel from the same intense heat and high humidity that has defined the pattern all week, with some cells capable of dropping rain at a rate of two to three inches an hour. That kind of downpour raises real concern for flash flooding, particularly in urban areas and along creeks and streams, where the National Weather Service’s regional office has specifically warned that rapid flooding is possible even outside the storms’ immediate path.

Any severe thunderstorm today could cause tree damage leading to power outages, road closures, or structural damage, according to the National Weather Service’s New Jersey forecast office. Residents in either watch area should have a way to receive warnings quickly as storms develop through the evening.

A Pattern Driven by Heat and Humidity, Not Any Single Storm System

What’s notable about this stretch is what is not driving it. There is no major upper level storm system or dramatic weather maker parked over the region. Instead, a Bermuda High sitting off the Atlantic coast has been steering a steady stream of hot, humid air into New Jersey, and the atmosphere has responded with repeated rounds of afternoon and evening thunderstorms as that heat and moisture builds each day and then releases. Temperatures alone have not been especially extreme by August standards, generally running from the high 80s into the low 90s, but dew points sitting above 70 degrees have pushed heat indices to or above 100 on multiple days this week, and today is no exception.

That combination, uncomfortable rather than record breaking heat paired with genuinely oppressive humidity, is expected to persist through at least Tuesday of next week. Sunday looks mostly clear across the state but no less muggy, with highs climbing into the low 90s and heat indices once again pushing past the 100 degree mark. Monday continues the same pattern with mostly cloudy, humid conditions, before a more unsettled stretch moves in Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday, which forecasters expect to finally begin breaking the heat and humidity.

Sunday, Aug. 9

Mostly sunny and humid. High near 90 to the low 90s. Heat index near or above 100.

Monday, Aug. 10

Mostly cloudy, still humid. High near 91. Muggy overnight lows in the low 70s.

Tuesday, Aug. 11

Scattered thunderstorms return. High near 89 with a good chance of rain by afternoon.

When Relief Actually Arrives

Looking further out, the pattern does appear ready to break, at least temporarily. Forecasters expect the unsettled period arriving Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday to usher in a period of relief for Thursday and into next weekend, with temperatures and humidity both easing back from the oppressive levels the state has dealt with for much of the past week. That relief looks to be short lived, however, with early indications pointing to heat and humidity building back into the region again once that brief cooler, drier stretch passes.

For today specifically, the practical guidance is straightforward. Anyone in the northern watch area should stay weather aware through 8 p.m., and anyone in the southern and central watch area should do the same through 6 p.m., with the broader regional watch extending across the wider Northeast corridor until 8 p.m. as well. Storms have already proven capable of producing damaging winds and localized flash flooding today, and given how quickly cells have been intensifying in the current pattern, conditions can shift from a routine summer thunderstorm to a genuine severe weather threat with little advance notice.

Hourly Forecast (Tonight)

From the Accounting Office to Executive Director, a Parsippany Law Firm Promotes From Within

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

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Einhorn Barbarito has named Rudolf Lys its new executive director, filling a role that had sat vacant since before he joined the firm nearly six years ago as director of accounting.

From the Accounting Office to Executive Director, a Parsippany Law Firm Promotes From Within

LeadershipEinhorn Barbarito fills a long-vacant executive director role from within

Morris County · Legal Services

From the Accounting Office to Executive Director, a Parsippany Law Firm Promotes From Within

Einhorn Barbarito has named Rudolf Lys its new executive director, filling a role that had sat vacant since before he joined the firm nearly six years ago as director of accounting.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Business Desk

Einhorn, Barbarito, Frost, Botwinick, Nunn and Musmanno has promoted Rudolf Lys to executive director, elevating him from the firm’s accounting department into a role overseeing daily administrative operations across the Parsippany based practice. The firm announced the promotion in an August 5th press release, capping a nearly six year run in which Lys steadily expanded his responsibilities well beyond the scope of the role he was originally hired for.

Lys joined Einhorn Barbarito in November 2020 as director of accounting. According to the firm, he took on responsibilities extending well past traditional accounting duties over the years that followed, gradually becoming an integral part of the firm’s broader operations. As executive director, he will now formally oversee the firm’s daily administrative functions and supervise its administrative professionals, filling a position that had remained vacant before his promotion.

Einhorn Barbarito co-Managing Partner Matheu Nunn credited Lys directly with onboarding new teams, reorganizing the firm’s Hackensack office, and implementing more efficient processes firm-wide, calling his operational contributions instrumental to the practice’s recent growth.

A Track Record Built Across Multiple Offices

The firm’s leadership was direct in crediting Lys with tangible operational wins rather than framing the promotion purely as a reward for tenure. Nunn said Lys had demonstrated exceptional dedication and consistently stepped forward to take on complex operational challenges, specifically pointing to his role in onboarding new teams, reorganizing the firm’s Hackensack office, and implementing more efficient processes across the organization. Co-Managing Partner Gary Botwinick echoed that assessment, saying he and Nunn had come to rely on Lys’s judgment and his ability to drive meaningful change, calling the firm fortunate to have him on its leadership team.

Human Resources Director Melissa Schmieder framed the promotion as recognition of trust built over time, saying Lys had earned the confidence of the firm’s leadership through a collaborative approach, operational expertise, and consistent commitment to excellence. Lys, a graduate of the State University of New York at Old Westbury, shared his own reaction on LinkedIn, expressing excitement about formally stepping into the new role at what he described as one of the best law firms in the state.

A Firm With Deep Roots and Recent Momentum

The promotion arrives at a moment of broader recognition for Einhorn Barbarito’s leadership. Co-Managing Partners Nunn and Botwinick were both recently named to the 2026 NJBIZ Law Power List, adding to a run of positive attention for a firm that has called Morris County home since its founding in 1961. Beyond its Parsippany headquarters, Einhorn Barbarito maintains offices in Hackensack and New York City, and its team of more than 60 attorneys covers a wide range of practice areas, including business and corporate matters, employment law, commercial litigation, personal injury and workers’ compensation, family and matrimonial law, real estate and zoning, estate planning, special education, assisted living issues, criminal law, and tax law, along with a well established appellate practice handling high stakes legal issues.

For a firm operating across that many practice areas and locations, filling a long vacant executive director role with someone who had already spent years learning the operational details of the firm firsthand represents a fairly low risk, high confidence promotion. Einhorn Barbarito’s leadership has framed Lys’s elevation not as a reaction to any single event but as recognition of work already done, betting that the same operational instincts that helped reorganize an entire office and streamline processes firm-wide will scale effectively into a formal leadership role as the practice continues to grow.

New Jersey’s Unemployment Rate Just Hit a Two-Year Low, But the Job Market Tells a More Complicated Story

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

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The state’s jobless rate fell to its lowest point since March 2024 last month, even as overall payrolls barely moved, layoffs kept mounting at major employers, and a new Rutgers forecast warns the coming two years will bring some of the slowest growth New Jersey has seen in years.

New Jersey’s Unemployment Rate Just Hit a Two-Year Low, But the Job Market Tells a More Complicated Story

Labor MarketUnemployment falls to 4.5% even as payrolls hold flat and layoffs continue to mount

New Jersey · Economy & Jobs

New Jersey’s Unemployment Rate Just Hit a Two-Year Low, But the Job Market Tells a More Complicated Story

The state’s jobless rate fell to its lowest point since March 2024 last month, even as overall payrolls barely moved, layoffs kept mounting at major employers, and a new Rutgers forecast warns the coming two years will bring some of the slowest growth New Jersey has seen in years.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Business Desk

New Jersey’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.5 percent in June, its lowest level since March 2024 and a decline of two tenths of a percentage point from May, according to preliminary estimates released by the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. On paper, that continues a fairly steady downward trend in joblessness that has closed much of the gap with the national unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. Look one line down in the same report, though, and the picture gets considerably murkier. Total nonfarm payrolls actually fell by 300 jobs over the month, leaving the state’s total employment at 4,387,100, essentially flat rather than growing.

That combination, a falling unemployment rate alongside stagnant payroll growth, is not necessarily a contradiction, since the two figures come from different surveys and can move independently of each other, but it does complicate any simple reading of the report as unambiguously positive. May’s employment estimates were also revised downward in the same release, from an initially reported gain of 2,200 jobs to a more modest 1,400, a reminder that preliminary monthly job figures tend to get revised as more complete data comes in.

A Divided Picture Across Industries

The state’s month over month employment changes broke down unevenly across sectors. Five of New Jersey’s nine major private industry categories posted gains in June compared to May, led by professional and business services, which added 3,700 jobs, and private education and health services, which added 3,600. Construction, manufacturing, and other services each posted smaller gains of 500 jobs apiece. On the losing side, trade, transportation, and utilities shed 4,200 jobs over the month, while leisure and hospitality lost 3,700 and the information sector lost 900, with financial activities also posting a monthly decline.

Over the past twelve months, private education and health services alone added 31,000 jobs statewide, essentially carrying the state’s entire employment growth. Nearly every other major sector, including manufacturing, trade and transportation, leisure and hospitality, and financial activities, posted year-over-year losses during the same span.

That annual pattern is the more telling story buried inside the monthly noise. Over the twelve months ending in June, New Jersey added a total of 8,000 nonfarm jobs, with private sector employment up 10,100 and public sector employment down 2,100. But that modest net gain masks a lopsided reality, since private education and health services grew by 31,000 jobs over the same period, meaning virtually every other corner of the state’s economy either stagnated or actively contracted. Trade, transportation, and utilities lost 8,400 jobs over the year, manufacturing lost 4,600, leisure and hospitality lost 3,900, and construction, information, financial activities, and other services all posted losses as well.

A Steady Drumbeat of Layoffs

That underlying softness shows up clearly in the state’s WARN notice filings, which have continued piling up through the summer. New Jersey has recorded well over 9,000 announced layoffs so far this year, with pharmaceutical and life sciences companies among the most consistent filers. Novartis alone has filed multiple WARN notices at its East Hanover headquarters this year, including a 322 person reduction, part of a broader pattern of staged restructuring at the drugmaker’s New Jersey operations that has cut hundreds of positions since the spring.

Other notable filings this summer include Notions Marketing, a Michigan based creative arts wholesaler that laid off 179 remote New Jersey workers after a warehouse fire halted its operations, and the Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel, which cut roughly 99 staff members as part of a redevelopment plan converting part of the property into senior housing. Combined cuts from Samsung, International Paper, and ADP added several hundred more layoffs to the total, contributing to what several outlets tracking the state’s WARN filings have described as one of the more active layoff years New Jersey has seen in recent memory, even as the headline unemployment rate continues to fall.

Rutgers Projects a Sluggish Two Years Ahead

Looking further out, a new economic forecast from Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy suggests the state’s growth is likely to remain subdued through 2027. The report, released by the New Jersey State Policy Lab, projects New Jersey’s economy will expand by just 0.9 percent annually in both 2026 and 2027, a full percentage point below the projected national growth rate. Employment growth is expected to slow even further, to just 0.2 percent this year before improving modestly to 0.5 percent in 2027.

Report authors Will Payne and Tarun Arasu wrote that the state’s labor market, while stabilizing, remains under real pressure, pointing specifically to tighter federal immigration enforcement and reduced in-migration as factors likely to weigh on the state’s population and labor force growth going forward. The report’s authors do expect New Jersey’s growth to eventually catch up to and slightly exceed the national pace over the medium term, but not before another year or two of comparatively sluggish performance.

The Hiring Continues Anyway

None of that slower macro picture has stopped major New Jersey employers from continuing to hire for serious, high paying roles this week, spanning everything from advanced robotics to craft beer sales.

Embodied AI Engineer

LG Electronics · Englewood Cliffs

Designs and deploys AI models for LG’s next generation home robots as part of its “zero-labor home” push.

$150,000 – $210,000

Senior Brand Manager, Equity

Tate’s / Mondelez International · East Hanover

Full ownership of Tate’s Bake Shop’s growth strategy, from campaigns to P&L.

$140,300 – $192,940

Manager, Studio Security Operations

Netflix · Fort Monmouth & Brooklyn

Oversees physical security across Netflix’s two major studio hubs.

$165,000 – $250,000

Lead Data Engineer, VP

Citi · Jersey City

Builds the data infrastructure behind Citi’s AI and machine learning strategy. Hybrid schedule.

$142,320 – $213,480

Product Manager, InnovateNJ

NJ Innovation Authority · Trenton

Public-interest product work connecting residents to state programs and services.

Up to $144,813

Creator Marketing Manager

Audible · Newark

Multi-channel campaigns growing Audible’s ecosystem of authors and narrators.

$120,000 – $179,600

Rounding out the week’s notable openings, craft brewery Icarus Brewing is hiring a brand representative to grow its accounts across bars, restaurants, and liquor stores throughout Northern New Jersey, a full time, salaried, on the road sales role for anyone who knows the regional beer scene. Between a robotics lab in Bergen County, a data science team inside one of the world’s largest banks, and a brewery looking to expand its footprint one bar at a time, the range of roles actively hiring right now offers a useful reminder that even a cooling labor market keeps generating real opportunity for job seekers willing to look for it.

The Metro Division Just Got Real, and New Jersey Is Right in the Middle of It

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

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Carolina still owns the top of the Metropolitan Division, but the rest of the conference spent the summer closing the gap, none more aggressively than Washington. Meanwhile in New Jersey, the Devils’ own rebuild is generating as many headlines off the ice as on it.

The Metro Division Just Got Real, and New Jersey Is Right in the Middle of It

Metro WatchWashington’s aggressive retool headlines a division on the rise, with Devils rumors swirling daily

NHL · New Jersey Devils

The Metro Division Just Got Real, and New Jersey Is Right in the Middle of It

Carolina still owns the top of the Metropolitan Division, but the rest of the conference spent the summer closing the gap, none more aggressively than Washington. Meanwhile in New Jersey, the Devils’ own rebuild is generating as many headlines off the ice as on it.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Sports Desk

The Metropolitan Division still runs through Carolina, but the gap behind the defending Stanley Cup champions closed considerably this summer. While the Hurricanes largely stood pat, several teams that finished well outside a playoff spot last season used the offseason to overhaul their rosters aggressively, and the result is a division that looks meaningfully more competitive heading into training camp than it did in April.

Washington Reloads at the Top

No team in the Metro, and arguably no team in the league, had a louder offseason than the Washington Capitals. After winning the division in 2024-25 only to miss the playoffs by three points last season, general manager Chris Patrick responded with the most aggressive retool of any Eastern Conference club. Washington acquired forward Jordan Kyrou from St. Louis in exchange for Connor McMichael, prospect Milton Gastrin, and a first round pick, then added winger Alex Tuch in a trade with Buffalo before signing him to an eight year extension, and rounded out the forward group by signing veteran center Boone Jenner as a free agent. Defenseman Vincent Desharnais joined as well, giving the Capitals both top six scoring punch and useful depth up and down the lineup.

The additions carried real offensive weight with them. According to fantasy analysts tracking the moves, Kyrou, Tuch, and Jenner combined for 188 points last season across their previous teams, while Washington’s offseason departures accounted for only 106, a net gain the Capitals badly needed after finishing near the bottom of the league in goals scored a year ago. Perhaps just as notable, Washington re-signed Alex Ovechkin to another one year deal, keeping the NHL’s all time goal scoring leader in the lineup at 40 years old as the team leans into a genuine win now approach built around a veteran core still capable of contending in the Eastern Conference.

The Capitals’ additions carried 188 combined points from last season, against just 106 points lost through departures, a net offensive gain few teams in the league can match from a single offseason.

Rangers and Devils Bet on the Bounce Back

Behind Washington, two Metro teams that badly underachieved last season used the summer to reshape their rosters with an eye toward a significant statistical turnaround. The New York Rangers, who finished at the bottom of the division, saw general manager Chris Drury aggressively retool the forward group in an effort to maximize the team’s remaining competitive window under head coach Mike Sullivan.

New Jersey followed a similar script under new general manager Sunny Mehta, who inherited a Devils team that finished 42-37-3 last season, good for 87 points and a miss of the playoffs by 10 games, a considerable disappointment for a roster many expected to contend. Mehta has spent the offseason reworking both the team’s depth and its goaltending situation, moving off Jacob Markstrom’s contract, bringing in veteran David Rittich to round out a crease rotation alongside Jake Allen and Nico Daws, and adding proven complementary forwards on short, team friendly terms. The bet across both New York and New Jersey is the same, that last season’s results reflected underachievement and injury as much as any fundamental roster problem, and that a healthier, better constructed lineup can push both teams back into playoff contention.

Philadelphia’s Bet on Its Own Prospects

Not every team in the division improved primarily through outside additions. The Philadelphia Flyers have instead leaned heavily on internal growth, banking on continued development and full health from young forwards Porter Martone, Owen Tippett, and Tyson Foerster to help push the team’s pace. Analysts covering the division have generally credited Washington’s additions as a more immediate upgrade, while noting Philadelphia’s younger core gives the Flyers a longer runway, with some suggesting the Capitals’ aging roster could decline in coming years even as Philadelphia’s talent base continues to mature.

The Devils’ Daily Rumor Mill

Beyond the broader division picture, New Jersey has generated its own steady stream of headlines this week. Quinn Hughes remains unsigned to a contract extension with the Minnesota Wild as training camp approaches, and NHL insider Elliotte Friedman has continued to report that talks between Hughes’s camp and Wild general manager Bill Guerin remain unresolved. Hughes is entering the final year of his current contract and would become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2027, and speculation connecting him to New Jersey, where his brothers Jack and Luke already play, has persisted throughout the summer. It is worth being precise here: no trade talks between the Devils and Wild have been reported, and Minnesota’s own management has continued to describe an extension as its top offseason priority, meaning the entire storyline remains speculative rather than an active pursuit.

Closer to home, defenseman Dougie Hamilton’s status with the team remains genuinely unsettled, with insiders offering conflicting reads. Some coverage has described Mehta as a real fan of Hamilton’s two way game and unlikely to move him barring an overwhelming offer, while other recent reporting continues to list Hamilton as the Devils’ most plausible trade candidate heading into the season, particularly given his 9 million dollar cap hit over the next two years. Both takes have circulated within the same week, underscoring how unresolved the situation actually is rather than pointing to any clear direction from the front office.

The following item involves a reported personal relationship between a Devils player and a public figure. It is included as sports and entertainment news that has been widely reported, with sourcing noted directly, not as confirmed fact from either party involved.

On a lighter note, Devils center Jack Hughes and pop singer Tate McRae have reportedly ended their relationship after several months of dating, according to a Page Six report published August 7th. The pair never publicly confirmed the relationship despite being photographed together repeatedly over the past year, and accounts of who ended things differ depending on the source. One report indicates Hughes told friends he ended the relationship after noticing what he described as red flags and has since moved on, while sources close to McRae told the same outlet that she was the one who ended it. Neither Hughes nor McRae has publicly commented on the reported split, and for a player entering a season in which the Devils are counting on him as a top line difference maker, the personal news is likely to remain a brief footnote once training camp actually begins.

Tony Skips the Legend and Finds Anthony Bourdain Washing Dishes Instead

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

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A24’s new biopic makes a deliberate choice most life stories about famous people avoid, refusing to tell the whole story at all. Tony stays locked inside a single summer in 1975, well before the fame, the television shows, or the persona anyone actually remembers.

Tony Skips the Legend and Finds Anthony Bourdain Washing Dishes Instead

Now PlayingA24’s Bourdain origin story expands nationwide August 21

Arts & Entertainment · Film

Tony Skips the Legend and Finds Anthony Bourdain Washing Dishes Instead

A24’s new biopic makes a deliberate choice most life stories about famous people avoid, refusing to tell the whole story at all. Tony stays locked inside a single summer in 1975, well before the fame, the television shows, or the persona anyone actually remembers.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Culture Desk

Most biopics try to cram an entire life into two hours. Tony, A24’s new film about Anthony Bourdain, does the opposite, and it is a considerably better movie for it. Directed by Matt Johnson, the filmmaker behind Blackberry, the film opened in limited release in New York and Los Angeles on August 7th and expands to theaters nationwide on August 21st, and it never once shows the version of Bourdain most audiences actually know, the tattooed television host narrating his way through kitchens and street markets around the world. Instead, it plants itself entirely inside the summer of 1975, when Bourdain was a brash, insecure nineteen year old who had just washed out of Vassar and had no idea yet that food would become his life’s work.

Director

Matt Johnson (Blackberry)

Setting

Provincetown, Massachusetts
Summer 1975

Release

Limited Aug. 7
Wide Aug. 21

A Coming of Age Story, Not a Career Retrospective

The film draws its material from the early chapters of Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain’s 2000 memoir, focusing squarely on the summer he took a grueling job washing dishes and cooking at the Flagship restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. That single summer, long before culinary school, long before Brasserie Les Halles, long before any television camera ever pointed at him, is where Tony locates the moment Bourdain actually fell for professional kitchen culture, its chaos, its camaraderie, and its total disregard for the polite version of adulthood he had been failing to grow into.

Dominic Sessa, who broke out in The Holdovers, plays the young Bourdain, and critics have specifically praised him for resisting the instinct to soften the character into someone likable from the start. Sessa’s Bourdain, or Tony, as the film calls him, arrives on screen as an arrogant, undisciplined kid, closer to insufferable than charming, long before the leather jacket and the worldly narration audiences would later associate with the name. Antonio Banderas plays Chef, the restaurant owner who becomes the film’s real center of gravity as a mentor figure, with Leo Woodall, Emilia Jones, Rich Sommer, Dagmara Domińczyk, and comedian Stavros Halkias rounding out the kitchen and family that shape Tony’s summer.

A24 released a statement describing the film as an interpretation rather than a strict record, noting that the specifics of that Provincetown summer will always remain somewhat unknown, and that the goal was to capture Bourdain’s complexity and intellectual appetite rather than simply summarize his life.

Why Critics Have Responded So Strongly

Tony debuted to a rare, nearly perfect critical reception, opening with a 100 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes before settling into the mid to high 90s as more reviews rolled in, an unusually strong showing for a biopic, a genre that critics tend to approach with real skepticism. Reviewers at outlets including Eater, The Atlantic, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter have singled out the film’s refusal to clean up its subject, praising its willingness to show Bourdain as genuinely unpleasant at times rather than smoothing him into an inevitable success story. Several critics have also highlighted Michael Bauman’s cinematography, which renders Provincetown as warm and inviting even as the film keeps most of its action confined to the restaurant’s cramped, high pressure kitchen.

What seems to be resonating most, according to the reviews rolling in, is how little the film actually depends on audiences already knowing who Bourdain became. Several critics have noted that Tony works as a standalone coming of age story about mentorship and self discovery, one that would hold up even for viewers with no familiarity with No Reservations or Parts Unknown, precisely because it never leans on the audience’s hindsight to generate emotional weight. Instead, the film bets entirely on a single summer, a single mentor, and a kid who does not yet know what he is about to become, a much narrower and, according to early reception, considerably more effective story than the sweeping career retrospective a more conventional biopic might have attempted.

Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in 2018. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text at 988, or online at 988lifeline.org.

A Guidance Counselor Turned Author Wants Every Teenager to Understand Their First Credit Score

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

0

Erodita Agard-Anderson built Power2Plan out of a savings challenge she ran with her own students. Her newest release, My Savings in 12 Envelopes, extends that classroom experiment into a standalone guide covering budgeting, credit, and entrepreneurship for young people well beyond the schools where she teaches.

A Guidance Counselor Turned Author Wants Every Teenager to Understand Their First Credit Score

New ReleasePower2Plan expands its financial literacy library with a new youth guide

Education · Financial Literacy

A Guidance Counselor Turned Author Wants Every Teenager to Understand Their First Credit Score

Erodita Agard-Anderson built Power2Plan out of a savings challenge she ran with her own students. Her newest release, My Savings in 12 Envelopes, extends that classroom experiment into a standalone guide covering budgeting, credit, and entrepreneurship for young people well beyond the schools where she teaches.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Education Desk

Power2Plan Student Planner and Financial Literacy Workbook cover

The cover of Power2Plan’s Student Planner & Financial Literacy Workbook, the resource line now expanding with My Savings in 12 Envelopes.

Power2Plan, the youth financial literacy and entrepreneurship brand built by educator Erodita Agard-Anderson, has released a new resource guide aimed at giving young people a practical, hands on entry point into money management. The new title, My Savings in 12 Envelopes: A Quick Guide to Credit Scores, Saving, Budgeting, and Entrepreneurship, extends a growing catalog of workbooks and planners that Agard-Anderson has built directly out of her own classroom experience rather than a general purpose financial curriculum.

That classroom origin story is central to understanding why Power2Plan looks the way it does. Agard-Anderson has worked in education since she was a teenager herself and now serves as a guidance counselor, having started her career at an alternative school working with at risk students who were not on track to graduate. Alongside her focus on post secondary readiness, she became increasingly drawn to financial literacy specifically, eventually teaching workshops through the Boys and Girls Club before being selected to bring a formal financial literacy program into an after school setting at a high school.

The idea behind Power2Plan’s flagship savings challenge began as a simple classroom experiment. Agard-Anderson introduced a structured savings challenge among her own students to make financial concepts feel tangible rather than abstract, and its success there became the foundation for a product now used by families well beyond her classroom.

From a Classroom Experiment to a Bestselling Workbook

That original classroom savings challenge became the seed for Power2Plan’s first product, the P2P Power2Plan Student Planner and Academic Organizer with Annual Savings Challenge, which pairs a full academic planner with a 52 week structured savings challenge designed to help students work toward saving 1,000 dollars over the course of a year. The planner became Agard-Anderson’s first self published release and quickly reached the number one spot in Amazon’s Academic and Counseling category, a notable milestone for a project that began as a tool for her own students rather than a commercial product.

My Savings in 12 Envelopes builds on that foundation as a more focused, standalone companion resource. Rather than functioning as a full academic planner, the new guide walks through twelve fundamental financial literacy topics directly, covering how credit scores work, practical saving strategies, budgeting fundamentals, and an introduction to entrepreneurship, paired with hands on materials including twelve physical envelopes, three savings templates, and a deposit tracker form that let young readers put the concepts into practice immediately rather than only reading about them.

More Than a Book

Power2Plan’s work extends well beyond its published workbooks. The organization runs an annual youth marketplace and awards showcase, including a recent Power2Plan Youth Showcase and Awards event held in Harlem, giving young entrepreneurs a real platform to build a brand, market an actual product, and pitch to genuine customers rather than a simulated classroom audience. The brand also partners directly with schools to run structured entrepreneurship workshops, mentorship circles, and youth empowerment events, extending its reach beyond individual book sales into ongoing programming for the students and families it serves.

Taken together, the new release and the broader Power2Plan ecosystem reflect a consistent throughline in Agard-Anderson’s work, translating financial concepts that can feel abstract or intimidating, credit scores especially, into concrete, age appropriate tools young people can actually use. With My Savings in 12 Envelopes now available alongside the original planner and the organization’s ongoing youth showcase and workshop programming, Power2Plan continues to expand from a single classroom savings challenge into a fuller library of resources aimed at building financially literate young people well before they ever open their first credit card statement.

A $223 Million Medicaid Number Means Very Different Things Depending on Who You Ask in Trenton

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

0

Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger says the state comptroller’s calm delivery of a nine figure Medicaid recovery number proves Trenton has stopped taking taxpayer waste seriously. The comptroller’s own testimony, and years of similar figures before it, tell a more complicated story about what that number actually represents.

A $223 Million Medicaid Number Means Very Different Things Depending on Who You Ask in Trenton

TrentonAssembly Republican demands budget freeze and clawbacks after Comptroller’s Medicaid testimony

New Jersey Politics · State Budget

A $223 Million Medicaid Number Means Very Different Things Depending on Who You Ask in Trenton

Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger says the state comptroller’s calm delivery of a nine figure Medicaid recovery number proves Trenton has stopped taking taxpayer waste seriously. The comptroller’s own testimony, and years of similar figures before it, tell a more complicated story about what that number actually represents.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Politics Desk

A routine line in a state budget hearing has turned into a pointed political flashpoint in Trenton. During Assembly Budget Committee testimony this spring, Acting State Comptroller Shirley Emehelu told lawmakers her office’s Medicaid Fraud Division was on track to recover or facilitate the recovery of more than 223 million dollars in improper Medicaid payments for the current fiscal year, a figure she offered in the same measured, procedural tone typically reserved for routine agency updates. Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger, a Monmouth County Republican, has spent the weeks since arguing that tone was precisely the problem.

In a public statement responding to the hearing, Scharfenberger said the amount itself was less shocking to him than the casual, almost routine way it was delivered, comparing it to treating the loss of a quarter billion taxpayer dollars as just another day at the office. He has argued that this kind of matter of fact reporting on fraud and waste is exactly why taxpayers feel ignored by state government, and has called for immediate accountability, clawbacks of improperly spent funds, and structural reforms rather than what he characterizes as calm acknowledgments of institutional failure.

Scharfenberger and Assembly Republicans have followed the hearing with formal demands for a freeze on budget increases, direct tracking of program spending metrics, and clawback measures before advancing future state expenditure bills.

What the Comptroller Actually Said, in Context

The 223 million dollar figure is real and comes directly from Emehelu’s own written and spoken testimony to the Assembly Budget Committee. It is worth being precise about what that number represents, since the comptroller’s office and Scharfenberger’s characterization of it diverge in an important way. In her testimony, Emehelu described the figure as money her division was on track to recover or facilitate the recovery of, language that covers a broad category of improper Medicaid payments identified through audits, billing reviews, and investigations, not exclusively criminal fraud in the sense of deliberate theft. Some portion of recovered Medicaid funds each year reflects outright fraud, but historically a significant share has come from more mundane billing errors, such as Medicaid paying for care that should have been billed to a beneficiary’s other insurance, or continuing to cover someone who had since moved out of state.

That distinction matters for how the number should be read, though it does not make the underlying figure any less real as a measure of money that should not have left the state’s Medicaid budget in the first place. The 223 million dollar figure also is not a one time anomaly. The comptroller’s office recovered roughly 132.5 million dollars in fiscal year 2025, up from about 119.2 million in fiscal year 2024 and 114.5 million in fiscal year 2023, according to the office’s own public reporting, and has recovered or facilitated the recovery of more than 1 billion dollars in Medicaid funds over the past decade, with roughly 70 percent of that total recovered since 2022. Read against that trend line, this year’s higher figure could reflect either a genuine increase in improper payments or, just as plausibly, a more aggressive and effective recovery effort catching more of what was already there, a distinction the comptroller’s office has not definitively resolved in its public testimony.

A Broader Political Fight Over Medicaid Oversight

The exchange in Trenton is also unfolding against a larger national argument over Medicaid fraud enforcement. Earlier this year, New Jersey’s attorney general joined counterparts from several other Democratic led states in publicly defending their oversight records after facing criticism from the Trump administration and federal officials, who have argued that Democratic controlled states are not doing enough to root out Medicaid fraud as justification for cutting federal funding to the program. New Jersey officials countered that argument by pointing to the same recovery figures now at the center of Scharfenberger’s criticism, framing a rising recovery total as evidence of strengthened enforcement rather than worsening fraud.

Scharfenberger’s own broader argument extends beyond a single hearing. In a companion op-ed, he pointed to the federal 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, a Department of Justice initiative that has charged 455 defendants, including 90 licensed medical professionals, in connection with more than 6.5 billion dollars in false claims nationally, calling it evidence that healthcare fraud represents a much larger and more organized problem than any single state hearing can capture. He has also cited considerably larger fraud figures reported in states like Minnesota and California as evidence that the national scale of the problem dwarfs even New Jersey’s own numbers.

Two Read of the Same Set of Numbers

What remains genuinely disputed is not whether the money was recovered, both sides agree it was, but what that recovery says about the state of the program itself. Scharfenberger’s position treats a rising recovery number as proof that fraud and waste are accelerating and that Trenton’s political leadership has grown complacent about it. The comptroller’s office and the state’s Democratic leadership have generally framed the same rising figures as evidence their oversight systems are working better than ever, catching more improper payments than in past years precisely because enforcement has intensified rather than because the underlying problem has grown worse. Both readings are consistent with the same set of published numbers, which is precisely why a routine budget testimony line has turned into a live political argument rather than a settled fact either side can simply point to and move on from.

Kevin Smith’s Childhood Movie Theater Turns Into a Horror Marathon This Weekend

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

0

SModcastle Cinemas returns for its second annual HorrorFest on Saturday, packing 39 independent horror films into seven screening blocks inside the Atlantic Highlands theater Kevin Smith grew up going to before he ever bought it.

Kevin Smith’s Childhood Movie Theater Turns Into a Horror Marathon This Weekend

Today39 independent horror films screen across seven blocks in Atlantic Highlands

Monmouth County · Film

Kevin Smith’s Childhood Movie Theater Turns Into a Horror Marathon This Weekend

SModcastle Cinemas returns for its second annual HorrorFest on Saturday, packing 39 independent horror films into seven screening blocks inside the Atlantic Highlands theater Kevin Smith grew up going to before he ever bought it.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Arts Desk

Atlantic Highlands has turned into indie horror’s home base for the day. SModcastle Cinemas, the small downtown movie theater owned by filmmaker Kevin Smith, is hosting the second annual SModcastle HorrorFest today, Saturday, August 8th, an all day marathon of independent horror running from 11:30 in the morning across seven distinct screening blocks. In total, 39 independent films will unspool on the big screen, spanning sinister shorts, creature features, dark comedy, and supernatural chillers, with, as the festival’s own tagline promises, plenty of blood soaked surprises built in along the way.

The theater hosting it all carries real personal history for Smith. SModcastle Cinemas sits in the same downtown Atlantic Highlands storefront Smith frequented as a kid growing up in nearby Monmouth County, long before he became known for Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob, and a career built largely around his own corner of New Jersey. Rather than modernizing the space into a standard multiplex, Smith has kept much of its old school character intact, seats and all, giving HorrorFest, along with the theater’s other recurring events like the SModcastle Film Festival, a distinctly lived in, community feel that a newer venue would struggle to replicate.

When

Saturday, August 8
Starting 11:30 AM

Where

SModcastle Cinemas
82 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands

Tickets

$7 per block
$20 all-day pass

Seven Blocks, Thirty-Nine Films

The festival organizes its lineup into themed blocks running throughout the day, giving horror fans the option to drop in for a single session or commit to the full marathon with an all day pass. Early blocks lean into shorts and creature features, while later sessions in the day shift toward masked killer stories and even a historical thriller, giving the festival a genuinely wide range within the horror genre rather than sticking to a single subgenre for eight straight hours.

Block 1, 11:30 AM

Amygdala, Borglesque, Feast On Fear, Final Trip

Block 2, 12:00 PM

Follow Me Home, MascLooking, My Severed Arm, The Barn: Part 3

Block 3, 2:00 PM

Lebmig’s Department Store, Ding, Dong, Die!

Block 4, 2:30 PM

Dead Roommate, G(l)ory Days, Gooned To Death, Raven’s Room, Reflections, The Resonance, Tooth-puller

Block 6

Featuring the masked killer short Hogwash, among others.

Block 7

Featuring the historical thriller The Lone Piper, closing out the day.

That range is by design. The festival’s stated mission is to give aspiring and independent horror filmmakers a real theatrical showcase rather than a purely online one, screening selected work in front of a live audience in an actual movie theater, a genuine rarity for short independent horror in an era when most festival submissions end up streamed rather than projected. Standout entries across the day will also compete for festival trophies in categories including best feature, best short, best horror comedy, best gore and makeup, best kill, best actor, best villain, best scream, and best use of a kill weapon, giving the day a genuine competitive undercurrent alongside the marathon viewing experience.

Tickets and Getting There

Individual block tickets run 7 dollars each, while an all day pass covering all seven blocks is available for 20 dollars, both purchasable directly through SModcastle Cinemas’ own ticketing platform. Given the volume of programming packed into a single day, the all day pass represents the more practical option for anyone planning to stay for more than a block or two.

Parking in downtown Atlantic Highlands takes a bit of local knowledge, since the theater itself has no dedicated lot. Free parallel parking is available on the residential side streets directly behind the building, while the municipal lot on Railroad Avenue allows parking until 3 in the morning, useful given how late an all day festival can run into the evening. A second municipal lot off Bay Avenue sits about a five minute walk from the theater, and drivers should note that metered spots directly on First Avenue are strictly enforced until 2 a.m., making the side streets and municipal lots the more reliable options for anyone settling in for the full seven block marathon.

Margate Rooftop Benefit Will Support a Hospital Still Rebuilding From a Direct Missile Strike

Don Lichterman

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8 August 2026

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American Friends of Soroka Medical Center returns to Margate this month for an evening of Mediterranean food, a luxury raffle, and a keynote from Newsmax correspondent Sarah Williamson, with proceeds going toward mental health care at a hospital still recovering from a direct Iranian missile strike last year.

Margate Rooftop Benefit Will Support a Hospital Still Rebuilding From a Direct Missile Strike

Aug. 16Rooftop benefit in Margate supports mental health care rebuilding at southern Israel’s largest hospital

Atlantic County · Community

Margate Rooftop Benefit Will Support a Hospital Still Rebuilding From a Direct Missile Strike

American Friends of Soroka Medical Center returns to Margate this month for an evening of Mediterranean food, a luxury raffle, and a keynote from Newsmax correspondent Sarah Williamson, with proceeds going toward mental health care at a hospital still recovering from a direct Iranian missile strike last year.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Community Desk

South Jersey’s Meet and Mingle in Margate benefit returns this month, bringing together supporters from across the region on the rooftop of Sofia Restaurant for an evening built around a hospital most attendees have likely never visited but whose story has become increasingly hard to ignore. American Friends of Soroka Medical Center is hosting the event on Sunday, August 16th at 5 p.m., with a Mediterranean dinner, a luxury raffle, and a keynote address from Newsmax correspondent Sarah Williamson anchoring the evening.

When

Sunday, August 16
5:00 PM

Where

Sofia Restaurant, Rooftop
Margate, NJ

Benefits

Soroka Medical Center
Mental health & PTSD care

The Hospital Behind the Fundraiser

Soroka Medical Center, located in Beersheba, functions as the primary hospital for more than a million residents across Israel’s southern Negev region, the closest major medical center to Gaza and, as a result, one of the country’s most consistently strained health care institutions. The hospital has treated thousands of casualties since October 2023 alone. Its already difficult role became considerably more literal on June 19, 2025, when an Iranian ballistic missile struck the hospital’s Northern Surgical Inpatient Building during the twelve day Israel-Iran conflict, destroying eight operating rooms and six research laboratories and costing the hospital 144 inpatient beds, though the building had been evacuated the day before the strike and no one inside was killed.

More than a year later, Soroka remains in the middle of what hospital officials have described as one of the most ambitious health care reconstruction projects in Israel’s history, backed by more than 300 million dollars in combined public and private funding, including a major donation from Canadian Israeli businessman Sylvan Adams. Alongside the physical rebuilding, hospital administrators have pointed repeatedly to a less visible but equally urgent need, expanded capacity for mental health and post traumatic stress treatment, both for patients who lived through the attack and for the broader population the hospital serves in a region that has spent years living under recurring rocket and missile threat.

Proceeds from Meet and Mingle in Margate go directly toward Soroka’s Psychiatric Department and its expanding PTSD treatment programs, an area hospital officials have identified as an urgent, ongoing need separate from the physical reconstruction of damaged buildings.

A Keynote Speaker Who Has Covered the Region Firsthand

This year’s keynote speaker brings direct, on the ground experience to the evening’s theme. Sarah Williamson, an Australian journalist now working as a Newsmax correspondent, has spent five years reporting from Israel in addition to covering the war in Ukraine, building a career specifically around conflict and foreign policy reporting rather than general assignment news. Her talk in Margate is expected to focus on countering misinformation, sharing frontline perspective from her reporting, and making the case for expanded mental health resources at Soroka specifically, tying her own firsthand experience covering conflict directly to the fundraiser’s stated purpose.

Williamson is also a featured participant in Heroes of Truth, a global storytelling and portrait project created by photographer Limor Garfinkle in direct partnership with American Friends of Soroka Medical Center. The project was launched specifically to help raise funds for the hospital’s psychiatric department and PTSD treatment programs, profiling individuals connected to the story of the hospital and the broader conflict through portraiture and firsthand testimony. Williamson’s inclusion in that project makes her keynote appearance in Margate less a guest booking than a continuation of a fundraising relationship that already existed before this specific event was scheduled.

A Recurring South Jersey Tradition

This is not the first time Margate has hosted an evening built around Soroka’s mission. American Friends of Soroka has held versions of this rooftop gathering in past summers as well, drawing South Jersey and Philadelphia area supporters together for an evening the organization has described as building bridges between the local community and a hospital most attendees will only ever know through stories like the ones shared at events such as this. Registration for this year’s Meet and Mingle in Margate is open through the organization’s official event page, with the rooftop setting at Sofia Restaurant once again serving as the backdrop for an evening pairing a South Jersey summer night with a fundraising mission rooted several thousand miles away.

A Folk Festival’s Cross Country Road Trip Ends Up Exactly Where It Should, With Bruce Springsteen

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

0

A Folk Festival’s Cross Country Road Trip Ends Up Exactly Where It Should, With Bruce Springsteen

Newport Folk Festival’s Sea to Shining Sea project spent months crisscrossing the country asking musicians and everyday Americans what sound defines the nation, only to find one name kept surfacing more than any other. The answer led straight to a new interview filmed at Monmouth University’s Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.

From the first mile of this trip, we asked people the same question: what song, what artist, makes you think of America?

Executive Producer: Jay Sweet
Co-Host: Devon Gilfillian
Producer: Chamberlain Staub
Videographer: Charlie Turchetta
Videographer: C.J Brion
Post: Tandem
Editor: Brett Sylvia
Social: Steve Benoit

A Folk Festival’s Cross Country Road Trip Ends Up Exactly Where It Should, With Bruce Springsteen

West Long BranchNewport Folk Festival’s road trip series lands its biggest interview yet at Monmouth University

Monmouth County · Music

A Folk Festival’s Cross Country Road Trip Ends Up Exactly Where It Should, With Bruce Springsteen

Newport Folk Festival’s Sea to Shining Sea project spent months crisscrossing the country asking musicians and everyday Americans what sound defines the nation, only to find one name kept surfacing more than any other. The answer led straight to a new interview filmed at Monmouth University’s Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Arts Desk

A documentary road trip built on a single, deceptively simple question has landed its biggest interview yet, and the answer led straight to New Jersey. Sea to Shining Sea, the Newport Folk Festival’s coast to coast interview series, has released a newly filmed conversation with Bruce Springsteen, recorded on location at the recently opened Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music at Monmouth University in West Long Branch.

The project, executive produced by Newport Folk Festival’s Jay Sweet and co-hosted by singer-songwriter Devon Gilfillian, sent a small crew across the country in an RV to ask musicians, both famous and entirely unknown, what song or artist comes to mind when they think of America. The format deliberately echoes the historic song collecting road trips of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, folk pioneers who traveled the country decades earlier cataloging the music of working communities rather than chasing famous names. Sea to Shining Sea has followed a similar instinct, giving as much weight to musicians playing in community third spaces after their day jobs as it does to festival headliners.

Across every stop on the trip, one name came up more than any other when musicians and everyday Americans were asked what sound represents the country to them. That answer led the crew directly to Bruce Springsteen, and to New Jersey.

The Name That Kept Coming Up

When Sweet and Gilfillian sat down with Springsteen at the newly opened Center for American Music, they shared something they had not yet told him, that his name had come up more often than any other artist’s when people across the country were asked the project’s central question. Springsteen’s response leaned into the same instinct that has defined his own career long before this interview, naming a chain of influences rather than crowning himself. Asked to name the music that felt most essentially American to him, he pointed first to Bob Dylan, repeating a description he has used for years, calling Dylan the father of his musical country for stripping away illusion and showing the unvarnished truth of the world Springsteen grew up in.

From there, Springsteen widened the lens considerably, tracing his own musical education back through Elvis Presley’s physical, kinetic stage presence, James Brown’s command of showmanship, Woody Guthrie’s plainspoken storytelling, and, more recently, Public Enemy’s confrontational urgency, describing all of it as part of the same continuous American songline he has spent his career trying to extend. The range itself made a point the interview seemed built to draw out, that no single artist, including Springsteen himself, exists as an isolated genius so much as one link in a much longer chain of American musical inheritance.

Filmed in the Building Built to Hold That Story

The choice of location was not incidental. The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, which opened at Monmouth University following the school’s earlier establishment of the Bruce Springsteen Archives, exists specifically to preserve and study exactly the kind of musical lineage Springsteen spent the interview describing, housing his personal collection of writings, photographs, and career memorabilia alongside a broader mission of studying American musical heritage more widely. Filming the Sea to Shining Sea segment there placed Springsteen’s own reflections on his influences inside the same institution built to safeguard and interpret his legacy, giving the interview a layered, almost self-referential quality that few of the project’s other stops could replicate.

For a series built around asking what makes music distinctly American, ending up in a research center in West Long Branch, built around an artist most famous for turning working class New Jersey life into some of the most enduring rock music of the last half century, reads less like a coincidence than an inevitability. The Sea to Shining Sea project continues to release additional interviews from its cross country journey, featuring artists ranging from Joan Baez to Tyler Childers to Chuck D, but the Springsteen segment stands as the clearest distillation yet of the question the entire trip was built to answer, less about naming a single American sound than about tracing the long, overlapping chain of voices that built it.

Kayal Orthopaedic Center Redrew Its Own Blueprints After Allendale Pushed Back

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

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The Northern New Jersey orthopedic network founded by Dr. Robert Kayal is opening a new full service facility in Allendale this fall, but the more telling part of the story is what happened before construction ever started, when residents objected to the building’s look and the practice actually changed its plans.

Kayal Orthopaedic Center Redrew Its Own Blueprints After Allendale Pushed Back

Fall 2026Bergen County orthopedic network expands after revising design plans following resident feedback

Bergen County · Health Care

Kayal Orthopaedic Center Redrew Its Own Blueprints After Allendale Pushed Back

The Northern New Jersey orthopedic network founded by Dr. Robert Kayal is opening a new full service facility in Allendale this fall, but the more telling part of the story is what happened before construction ever started, when residents objected to the building’s look and the practice actually changed its plans.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Health Desk

Kayal Orthopaedic Center is opening a new location in Allendale this fall, extending a network that already spans more than a dozen facilities across Bergen, Hudson, and Passaic counties into one more corner of North Jersey. The new building will offer a full spectrum of services under one roof, including orthopedic surgery consultation, physical therapy, chiropractic care, and interventional pain management, continuing the all in one clinical model the practice has built its reputation on since Dr. Robert A. Kayal founded it in 1999.

What makes this particular expansion worth a closer look is not the services list, which mirrors what Kayal offers at most of its other locations, but the process that got the building to its current design. After initial architectural renderings for the Allendale facility were shared publicly, members of the community pushed back, voicing concerns about how the building’s look would fit within the character of the town. Rather than proceeding with the original plans, Dr. Kayal and his team went back to the drawing board with their architects and designers, reworking the exterior to feature softer materials and more refined details intended to blend more naturally with the surrounding neighborhood.

Kayal Orthopaedic Center revised its own architectural plans for the Allendale facility after residents raised concerns about the original design, opting for a softer exterior that the practice says better reflects the town’s character.

A Practice Built on Doing Almost Everything In House

The Allendale location reflects the broader operating model Kayal has built across its existing footprint. Rather than functioning purely as a surgical practice that refers patients elsewhere for supporting care, the organization directly employs physical therapists, chiropractors, podiatrists, and rheumatologists, and operates its own diagnostic imaging centers equipped with high field open 1.2 Tesla MRI machines and bone density testing. On the surgical side, the practice has built a regional reputation as an early adopter of Mako robotic arm assisted technology for total and partial knee and hip replacements, alongside surgical work covering foot, ankle, shoulder, and hand reconstruction.

That breadth is central to how Dr. Kayal has described the practice’s philosophy over the years, framing the all under one roof model as a way to give patients continuity of care from diagnosis through surgery and rehabilitation without forcing them to coordinate across multiple unaffiliated providers. The Allendale facility, offering orthopedics, physical therapy, chiropractic care, and pain management together in a single building, extends that same model into a new community.

Institutional Backing That Changed the Practice’s Scale

Kayal Orthopaedic Center’s growth accelerated substantially in 2022, when the practice announced a formal partnership with RWJBarnabas Health, New Jersey’s largest health care system. Mark Manigan, RWJBarnabas Health’s chief strategy and business development officer, said at the time that Kayal’s approach to providing a full continuum of orthopedic care aligned naturally with the health system’s own vision for patient care. Dr. Kayal, for his part, described the partnership as a way to give patients greater access and continuity of care through the state’s most comprehensive academic health system, while preserving the practice’s own identity and day to day operations.

Dr. Kayal has also built direct hospital leadership ties beyond that system level partnership. He currently serves as chief of musculoskeletal services at Hudson Regional Health in Secaucus, a role the hospital’s president and CEO, Dr. Nizar Kifaieh, said reflected years of searching for a highly qualified, well regarded surgeon to help build out the hospital’s musculoskeletal service line. Kayal Orthopaedic Center first affiliated with Hudson Regional Health in 2019, citing the hospital’s investment in robotic assisted surgical technology as a key reason for the relationship, before Dr. Kayal’s appointment to the chief role formalized that connection further.

What Patients Actually Say

Online reviews of the practice reflect a fairly common pattern for a large, multi location medical group operating under a major hospital system affiliation, a mix of strong individual office ratings alongside more mixed feedback at the aggregated corporate level. Several of Kayal’s individual locations carry ratings above 4.5 stars on Google, with thousands of reviews between them, and patients frequently highlight same day scheduling for acute sports injuries along with praise for specific physical therapists who guided them through postoperative recovery. At the same time, corporate level review aggregators show a more middling overall picture, with complaints that tend to center on billing practices, wait times, and the kind of insurance verification bottlenecks that are common criticisms of large medical groups tied to major hospital systems generally, rather than complaints specific to clinical quality.

Beyond its clinical work, the practice has also built a visible relationship with local law enforcement, employing a dedicated director of operations and law enforcement liaison to help coordinate care for injured police officers and sponsoring state Police Benevolent Association events. For Allendale specifically, the more immediate story is simply what opens this fall, a full service musculoskeletal facility built, by the practice’s own account, only after residents had a real chance to weigh in on what it would look like standing in their town.

A Maplewood Hosting Firm Wants Your QuickBooks Data for $12 a Month. Here Is What to Know First.

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

0

Apps4Rent has rolled out a new session-based QuickBooks hosting tier at what it calls the lowest published entry price among Intuit authorized providers, an aggressive pitch to small firms and solo bookkeepers that is worth weighing against the company’s own mixed track record on communication during a crisis.

A Maplewood Hosting Firm Wants Your QuickBooks Data for $12 a Month. Here Is What to Know First.

Product LaunchMaplewood cloud hosting firm undercuts rivals on QuickBooks pricing, but history is worth weighing

Essex County · Technology

A Maplewood Hosting Firm Wants Your QuickBooks Data for $12 a Month. Here Is What to Know First.

Apps4Rent has rolled out a new session-based QuickBooks hosting tier at what it calls the lowest published entry price among Intuit authorized providers, an aggressive pitch to small firms and solo bookkeepers that is worth weighing against the company’s own mixed track record on communication during a crisis.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Technology Desk

Apps4Rent, the cloud hosting company registered out of Maplewood since 2007, has introduced a new session based QuickBooks hosting plan starting at 12 dollars per user per month, a price the company describes as the lowest published entry rate currently offered among Intuit authorized hosting providers. The promotional rate applies to the first three months of service before reverting to a standard rate of 24 dollars per user monthly, with dedicated, single tenant environments available separately starting at 34.95 dollars a month and scaling up to roughly 255 dollars for larger teams of more than 30 users.

The pitch is aimed squarely at small accounting firms, solo bookkeepers, and small businesses still running QuickBooks Desktop rather than having migrated to Intuit’s browser based QuickBooks Online product. Session based hosting lets multiple users share a single virtual server environment rather than each getting a fully dedicated machine, a more cost effective setup for smaller teams that do not need the isolation and customization a dedicated server provides. Apps4Rent, which operates as an Intuit Authorized Hosting Provider and QuickBooks Solution Provider, says the new plans include SSD storage, daily backups, remote access from Windows, macOS, Linux, Chromebook, Android, and iOS devices, and integration with more than 200 business applications, along with a 15 day money back guarantee and no long term contract requirement.

The company says QuickBooks data is stored in SOC 2 Type II certified data centers located in New York and New Jersey, the same security standard used by major banks and financial institutions, with end to end encrypted data transfers and daily automated backups included on every plan.

What the Reviews Actually Say

Apps4Rent maintains generally strong customer feedback across review platforms, with users frequently praising specific support technicians by name for patient, effective help with routine migrations and day to day technical issues, particularly around Outlook and Office 365 setup. Independent hosting review sites have also flagged a more mundane, structural criticism worth knowing about separately from any security concern, namely that some of the company’s older, legacy hosting product pages still reference outdated terminology and older operating systems that do not fully match its newer cloud offerings, a sign of a company whose marketing materials have not entirely kept pace with a broad and growing product catalog.

That gap between routine praise and a more serious concern becomes sharper when looking specifically at reviews tied to a documented 2021 incident, when Apps4Rent’s QuickBooks hosting environment was hit by a ransomware attack that took its systems offline. The timing lines up with a broader wave of ransomware activity that summer tied to a widely reported supply chain attack affecting dozens of managed service providers and their downstream customers across the hosting industry.

Multiple customers who left detailed reviews around the time of the 2021 incident described a lack of timely communication as the central problem, saying they went roughly 36 hours or longer without a substantive update from the company while their accounting systems were completely inaccessible, receiving canned automated responses during extended hold times rather than clear information about what had happened or when service would return. One review specifically contrasted the experience unfavorably with a previous ransomware incident at a different provider, where that company reportedly sent affected customers status updates multiple times per day throughout the outage.

It is worth noting that the volume of negative reviews tied to that specific incident represents a distinct minority of the company’s overall review history, with dozens of positive reviews for routine service existing alongside a smaller cluster of severe, one star reviews concentrated around the 2021 outage period specifically. For a prospective customer evaluating the company today, the more useful question is less whether the 2021 incident happened, which it did, and more whether the company’s crisis communication practices have meaningfully changed since then, something current published reviews do not speak to directly one way or the other.

A Fit for Some Firms, a Question Mark for Others

None of this necessarily disqualifies Apps4Rent as an option, particularly for very small firms or solo bookkeepers evaluating cloud hosting primarily on price and basic feature set. The company has served QuickBooks customers for close to two decades, supports the full range of QuickBooks Desktop editions including Pro, Premier, Enterprise, and Accountant, and offers licensing assistance for firms that do not already hold an active QuickBooks license. For businesses whose accounting operations could tolerate a service interruption without catastrophic consequences, the new 12 dollar entry price represents genuinely aggressive positioning against competing Intuit authorized hosts.

For firms handling more sensitive client financial data, particularly accounting practices and CPA firms where a multi day outage during a payroll run or tax deadline could carry serious consequences for their own clients, the calculus is understandably more cautious. Cloud hosting providers across the industry face ransomware risk as a matter of course, and no vendor, however well regarded, can promise complete immunity from a determined attack. What a prospective customer can reasonably evaluate, however, is how a vendor communicates when something does go wrong, and on that specific point, Apps4Rent’s own review history from 2021 offers a cautionary data point worth weighing directly against the otherwise competitive pricing and feature set the company is now offering under its new QuickBooks hosting tier.

Egg Harbor Township’s Spencer Spirit Buys Hot Topic, Creating a 3,000 Store Mall Empire

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

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Spencer Spirit Holdings, the South Jersey company behind Spencer’s and Spirit Halloween, has agreed to acquire Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Her Universe in a deal reportedly worth 350 million dollars, uniting two of American mall culture’s most recognizable names under a single Egg Harbor Township roof.

Egg Harbor Township’s Spencer Spirit Buys Hot Topic, Creating a 3,000 Store Mall Empire

$350M DealSpirit Halloween and Spencer’s parent company buys Hot Topic from Sycamore Partners

Atlantic County · Retail

Egg Harbor Township’s Spencer Spirit Buys Hot Topic, Creating a 3,000 Store Mall Empire

Spencer Spirit Holdings, the South Jersey company behind Spencer’s and Spirit Halloween, has agreed to acquire Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Her Universe in a deal reportedly worth 350 million dollars, uniting two of American mall culture’s most recognizable names under a single Egg Harbor Township roof.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Business Desk

A South Jersey company best known for turning empty storefronts into Halloween pop ups for a few weeks a year is about to become one of the largest specialty retailers operating in American malls. Spencer Spirit Holdings, headquartered in Egg Harbor Township, announced on August 6th that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Hot Topic, the pop culture and alternative fashion chain, along with its sister brands BoxLunch and Her Universe, from the private equity firm Sycamore Partners. Bloomberg News reported the deal’s value at approximately 350 million dollars, though the companies themselves did not disclose financial terms in their official announcement.

The acquisition brings an end to Sycamore’s thirteen year ownership of Hot Topic, which the firm took private in 2013 in a transaction that valued the company at roughly 600 million dollars at the time. Dary Kopelioff, managing director at Sycamore Partners, described the sale as an outstanding outcome both for the firm and its investors, crediting years of close work with Hot Topic’s management team for driving significant growth across its three brands ahead of the sale.

“Joining forces creates an incredible platform of distinctive, established brands that share a passion for product, storytelling, and customer experience,” said Spencer Spirit CEO Steven Silverstein. “This transaction enhances our long-term durability, broadens our reach, and positions us to write the next chapter of retail history together.”

Six Brands, One Roof, More Than 3,000 Storefronts

Once the deal closes, Spencer Spirit’s combined portfolio will span six distinct retail concepts and more than 3,000 storefronts across North America, a scale few mall based specialty retailers can currently claim. The company has framed the combination as bringing together two organizations with different customer bases but closely aligned values, betting that shared operational infrastructure and greater licensing leverage will benefit both sides of the business even as each brand continues to serve its own distinct audience.

Spirit Halloween

Founded 1983. The largest Halloween retailer in North America, with more than 1,550 seasonal locations.

Spencer’s

Founded 1947. Trend driven lifestyle retailer entering its 80th year, with more than 650 locations.

Spirit Christmas

Introduced in 2024. Expected to reach 44 locations this year.

Hot Topic

Founded 1989. Music, entertainment, and pop culture retailer with more than 615 stores in the U.S. and Canada.

BoxLunch

Launched 2015. Licensed pop culture apparel and collectibles across more than 280 U.S. stores.

Her Universe

Founded 2010. Fandom centered fashion brand built around female geek culture.

Why a Halloween Retailer Wants a Year Round Pop Culture Brand

The strategic logic behind the deal centers on a challenge every seasonal retailer eventually confronts, that Spirit Halloween’s entire business model depends on a single, intense burst of activity each fall, while the rest of the year leaves its infrastructure comparatively idle. Hot Topic’s customer base, by contrast, shops year round, giving Spencer Spirit a chance to smooth out that seasonality and apply the pop up expertise it has spent decades refining to a partner brand that already has a built in, consistent audience. Industry analysts covering the deal have also pointed to the leverage a larger combined portfolio creates in licensing negotiations, since a retailer controlling six brands and thousands of storefronts carries considerably more weight when negotiating exclusive merchandise deals with entertainment studios and franchises than any of the individual brands could command alone.

That kind of licensing muscle is already familiar territory for Spencer’s specifically. Last year, the brand marked the fifteenth anniversary of MTV’s Jersey Shore with a limited edition collection of apparel, drinkware, and accessories built around the show’s biggest cultural moments, including its now famous Team Meatball merchandise, timed to coincide with a new season of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation. The collaboration, which launched both online and across Spencer’s stores nationwide, reflects exactly the kind of culturally fluent, pop culture driven merchandising playbook the company appears eager to apply at a larger scale once Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Her Universe join its portfolio.

What Changes, and What Does Not

Despite the size of the transaction, both companies have been explicit that Hot Topic’s day to day operations will remain largely untouched. Hot Topic will continue operating independently and will keep its headquarters in California rather than relocating to New Jersey, and CEO Steve Vranes, who has led the company for more than a decade, will stay in his role overseeing Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Her Universe, reporting directly to Silverstein rather than being absorbed into Spencer Spirit’s existing management structure. Vranes described the deal as an exciting milestone for the brand’s team members and customers, framing the arrangement as one that lets Hot Topic build on a decade of growth while gaining access to a larger, complementary platform.

The companies have also said no major changes are planned to store branding or merchandising strategy, meaning Hot Topic’s identifiable mix of goth, punk, anime, and band merchandise is expected to remain fully intact rather than being reshaped to more closely resemble Spencer’s own product lineup. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval, with both companies targeting a close sometime in the third quarter. Solomon Partners is serving as exclusive financial adviser to Spencer Spirit, with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson serving as legal counsel and Wells Fargo arranging the debt financing behind the deal, while Jefferies is advising Hot Topic and Kirkland and Ellis is serving as its legal adviser.

For a company built in Egg Harbor Township on the strength of a single seasonal holiday, the addition of Hot Topic, BoxLunch, and Her Universe marks one of the most significant expansions in Spencer Spirit’s history, transforming a business once defined almost entirely by October into a year round presence across alternative fashion, pop culture merchandise, and mall based retail more broadly. Whether that scale translates into the durability and cross brand opportunity Silverstein has described will likely become clearer once the deal closes and the two companies begin operating, at least on paper, under one shared corporate roof.

A Laurel Springs Startup Is Trying to Solve Networking With Math, One Chamber at a Time

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

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Langis, the relationship intelligence platform built by South Jersey entrepreneur Edward DuCoin, has joined the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, extending a national strategy built on a simple observation from the pandemic era, that professional networks did not need more events, they needed better introductions.

A Laurel Springs Startup Is Trying to Solve Networking With Math, One Chamber at a Time

ExpansionSouth Jersey relationship intelligence platform joins its first Texas chamber

South Jersey · Technology

A Laurel Springs Startup Is Trying to Solve Networking With Math, One Chamber at a Time

Langis, the relationship intelligence platform built by South Jersey entrepreneur Edward DuCoin, has joined the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, extending a national strategy built on a simple observation from the pandemic era, that professional networks did not need more events, they needed better introductions.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Business Desk

A technology company based in Laurel Springs is betting that the future of business networking looks less like a mixer and more like a matching algorithm. Langis, which describes itself as a Connection Intelligence Platform, has joined the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, marking its entry into one of Texas’s most established business communities and extending a national growth strategy that has, until now, largely played out closer to home.

The company’s origin story traces back to the pandemic, when its founders started a virtual networking group called Virtual 5 O’Clock. What they learned from running it became the foundation for the entire business. Members did not actually need more events or a bigger contact directory, they needed the right introduction, made for the right reason, at the right moment. That insight led to roughly eighteen months of development and, eventually, to what Langis calls its patent pending Connection Compatibility Algorithm, the technology now at the center of its pitch to chambers of commerce, alumni associations, and professional societies across the country.

“All meaningful networking starts with reciprocity, you ask how you can help others before you ask for help yourself,” said Edward DuCoin, Langis co-founder. “Luna lets us do that for many people at once instead of one at a time.”

The Math Behind the Pitch

Langis leans heavily on scale to make its case to organizations considering membership. In a group of 1,000 members, the company points out, there are nearly 500,000 possible one to one introductions that could theoretically happen. At 2,000 members, that number climbs to almost 2 million potential pairings, a scale no individual member, or even a full time chamber staff, could realistically sort through on their own. Langis’s software is built to do exactly that sorting, using an AI assistant the company calls Luna to analyze behavioral data and surface the specific introductions most likely to actually matter to both people involved.

The company offers two tiers of that service. Langis Direct works from an organization’s existing member directory to generate compatibility reports explaining why two members might benefit from connecting and how. Langis Engage is a deeper, enterprise level offering in which an organization feeds in its own goals, criteria, and internal data, letting the algorithm assess potential matches against a more customized set of parameters. To support that kind of data driven matching at scale, the platform integrates directly into common business software, syncing with Microsoft ecosystems, major customer relationship management platforms, and core HR systems, allowing it to draw on communication patterns organizations already have running through their existing tools rather than requiring members to adopt something entirely new.

Why Dallas, and Why a Chamber

Founded in 1954, the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce has spent more than seven decades building out a network that now includes upward of 500 member businesses spanning virtually every industry in the region. Megan McQuery, the chamber’s chief operating officer, welcomed Langis’s membership by framing it around the organization’s existing culture, noting that members get the most value from the chamber when they show up ready to help other businesses first, a philosophy that lines up closely with the reciprocity based approach Langis has built its own product around.

For Langis, the appeal of a chamber like NDCC comes down to concentration. Business leaders, growth stage companies, and professional service firms cluster inside organizations like this precisely because a single well timed introduction inside that kind of room can meaningfully change a company’s trajectory, and Langis is positioning its software as the tool that makes those introductions less a matter of chance and more a matter of design. The company has stressed that its relationship with NDCC is membership only, with no formal commercial partnership between the two organizations and no data access beyond what any other chamber member would have.

A South Jersey Entrepreneur With a Long Track Record

Langis’s national ambitions trace back to a founder with deep, established roots in South Jersey’s business community. Edward DuCoin has spent his career building and running a cluster of ventures largely out of the Laurel Springs and greater Philadelphia area, anchored by Orpical, a digital transformation agency he established in 2012 that now functions as the operational and development backbone for his other companies. His portfolio also includes Right Insulation, a New Jersey based residential and commercial energy efficiency firm focused on blown in insulation and solar systems, along with Go Get Secure, a cybersecurity platform centered on ethical hacking resources and defensive protection, and Attics and More, a smaller affiliate marketing and lead generation site offering consumer guidance on roofing and ventilation.

DuCoin’s earlier career included founding Impact Marketing, which later went public on the NASDAQ under the name Compass International, along with a stint as president of the NASCAR team Bang Racing, a resume that spans public markets, professional sports, and technology consulting well before Langis existed. That breadth appears to inform how DuCoin talks about the company’s current expansion, treating chamber memberships not as one off marketing wins but as deliberate entries into trusted, pre-existing communities where Langis believes its software can prove its value fastest. With North Dallas now added to that list, the company’s national chamber strategy has its first confirmed foothold outside New Jersey, a small but telling step for a platform whose entire premise rests on how much value sits inside relationships that already exist, waiting for the right introduction to activate them.

Sunny Mehta Says the Devils’ Roster Is “Never Done,” and the Quinn Hughes Rumors Prove It

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

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The Devils general manager has laid out how he sees the team’s goaltending and prospect pipeline heading into training camp, even as the rest of the hockey world keeps circling back to a question New Jersey cannot answer yet, whether Quinn Hughes ever ends up wearing red and black.

Sunny Mehta Says the Devils’ Roster Is “Never Done,” and the Quinn Hughes Rumors Prove It

DevilsMehta talks goaltending and prospects as Quinn Hughes speculation intensifies league wide

New Jersey Devils · Offseason Report

Sunny Mehta Says the Devils’ Roster Is “Never Done,” and the Quinn Hughes Rumors Prove It

The Devils general manager has laid out how he sees the team’s goaltending and prospect pipeline heading into training camp, even as the rest of the hockey world keeps circling back to a question New Jersey cannot answer yet, whether Quinn Hughes ever ends up wearing red and black.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Sports Desk

New Jersey Devils general manager Sunny Mehta has never pretended his rebuild has a finish line. Asked directly whether he was satisfied with where the roster stood after a summer of trades, extensions, and draft additions, Mehta reached for a comparison he has used before, describing team building as a painting that never truly gets finished. It is a fitting way to frame where the Devils sit heading into training camp, a roster that looks meaningfully different than it did in April, sitting alongside a very unfinished piece of business involving a Minnesota defenseman whose last name New Jersey fans already know well.

The Crease Plan Mehta Is Committing To

On the goaltending front, Mehta has been clear about how the Devils intend to replace Jacob Markstrom, whose contract he moved to Florida earlier this summer. Rather than hand the net to a single starter, New Jersey is planning to lean on a rotation among veteran Jake Allen, newly signed David Rittich, and 25 year old Nico Daws, distributing the workload across three netminders rather than betting the season on one player carrying the bulk of the starts. It is a low commitment, flexible approach that mirrors much of how Mehta has operated since taking over the front office, patching needs with affordable, proven veterans while keeping the door open to a longer term answer in net once one clearly emerges.

Mehta has repeatedly framed team building in the same terms since taking the job. “It’s never done,” he said of the roster back in July. “It’s like a painting that’s never finished.” The sentiment has become something close to a guiding philosophy for how he talks about the Devils’ rebuild.

The Prospects Mehta Is Actually Excited About

Beyond the veteran additions, Mehta has pointed to the organization’s own pipeline as a genuine source of optimism heading into the season. Winger Lenni Hämeenaho, who split last season between the Devils and the Utica Comets and has now represented Finland at back to back World Championships, is expected to compete for a full time NHL role after flashing real scoring touch at both levels. Defenseman Seamus Casey, an undersized but highly skilled puck mover who has dominated at the AHL level without yet locking down consistent NHL minutes, remains one of the more closely watched names in the system heading into camp. Czech forward Matyáš Melovský, who just completed a strong rookie professional season with Utica and earned his first appearance for the Czech men’s national team, rounds out the group of internal pieces the front office is counting on to push for meaningful roles rather than simply filling out organizational depth.

Further down the organizational chart, New Jersey’s ECHL affiliate has quietly kept adding to its own roster continuity. The Adirondack Thunder announced this week that they had re-signed forward Tanner Edwards for the 2026 to 2027 season, bringing back a 26 year old winger who posted nine points in 37 games with the club last year after arriving in a midseason trade. Thunder head coach Sylvain Cloutier said he was thrilled to have Edwards back, citing his work ethic and physical presence as exactly the kind of qualities that fit the culture the organization has built in Glens Falls, a small but real building block in the same development pipeline Mehta has spent the summer emphasizing at the NHL level.

The Quinn Hughes Question New Jersey Cannot Answer Yet

None of that, however, has quieted the speculation still swirling around Minnesota Wild defenseman Quinn Hughes, whose contract situation has become one of the most closely tracked storylines in hockey this summer largely because of who plays in New Jersey. Hughes has one season remaining on his current contract, and while Wild general manager Bill Guerin has said publicly that he is preaching patience and treating the extension as a major decision for both sides, no long term deal had been reported as of this week. Because Hughes’s younger brothers Jack and Luke are already foundational pieces of the Devils’ roster, and because all three have been described by people close to the family as eager to eventually play together, any prolonged standstill in Minnesota inevitably gets read through a New Jersey lens.

It is important to be precise about what is actually known here versus what remains speculation. Multiple hockey insiders have noted that the Devils are projected to carry significant salary cap flexibility, somewhere in the range of 32 million dollars, heading into the 2027 to 2028 season, a figure frequently cited as evidence the front office could theoretically pursue Hughes in unrestricted free agency if Minnesota fails to sign him first. Whether New Jersey is actively and deliberately withholding cap commitments today specifically to preserve that flexibility for a Hughes pursuit, as opposed to simply operating with normal offseason cap discipline that happens to leave room down the line, has not been confirmed by the team itself and should be read as informed speculation from league insiders rather than a stated Devils strategy.

The specific trade packages circulating in hockey media, including scenarios built around Dawson Mercer, prospect Anton Silayev, and future first round picks, are hypothetical constructions from independent analysts modeling a possible deal, not reported offers or confirmed trade talks between the Devils and Wild. Hughes remains under contract with Minnesota through the coming season, and no trade or free agent departure is imminent as of this writing.

Analysts who have modeled a potential trade scenario, rather than a free agent departure, have generally landed on a package built around winger Dawson Mercer, promising young defenseman Anton Silayev, and future first round draft capital, reasoning that New Jersey lacks many other movable, high value NHL assets outside its blue line prospects and its stockpile of picks. Other coverage has framed the more straightforward and cost free path as simply waiting: if Hughes and the Wild cannot reach an agreement before he becomes an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2027, the Devils would be free to sign him outright without surrendering any players or picks at all, competing purely on the appeal of money, term, and the chance to play alongside both of his brothers. Mehta himself has not publicly confirmed pursuing either path, and for now the entire storyline remains speculative, fueled by cap projections and family ties rather than anything close to an actual offer on the table.

Taken together, the week captures where the Devils actually stand better than any single headline could. The goaltending plan is set, the prospect pipeline has real names the front office is genuinely excited about, and the organization’s ECHL and AHL affiliates continue quietly building out depth beneath the NHL roster. The Quinn Hughes storyline, by contrast, remains exactly what it has been for months, a plausible, well reasoned piece of speculation resting on real cap math and a well known family bond, but nothing New Jersey can or has confirmed doing anything about just yet.

Trenton Reinstates a Weekend Business Curfew as the Capital City Juggles Water, Security, and Infrastructure News

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

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Mayor Reed Gusciora has ordered a new emergency weekend curfew for businesses along East State Street following renewed violence downtown, arriving in the same week Trenton Water Works lifted a precautionary boil advisory, reassured residents about cybersecurity, and pushed forward a major lead pipe replacement effort.

Trenton Reinstates a Weekend Business Curfew as the Capital City Juggles Water, Security, and Infrastructure News

TrentonWeekend business curfew returns to East State Street as city navigates water and infrastructure news

Mercer County · City Government

Trenton Reinstates a Weekend Business Curfew as the Capital City Juggles Water, Security, and Infrastructure News

Mayor Reed Gusciora has ordered a new emergency weekend curfew for businesses along East State Street following renewed violence downtown, arriving in the same week Trenton Water Works lifted a precautionary boil advisory, reassured residents about cybersecurity, and pushed forward a major lead pipe replacement effort.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Local Government Desk

Trenton is once again restricting overnight business hours along one of its most contested downtown blocks. Mayor W. Reed Gusciora issued a new emergency executive order placing a weekend curfew on businesses along East State Street between West Canal Street and South Broad Street, an area near City Hall that has become synonymous with late night violence over the past year. Under the order, businesses in the zone must close between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., beginning Friday nights and continuing through Monday mornings, a restriction the city says is a direct response to recent summer violence, street fights, and large unauthorized late night gatherings in the neighborhood.

This is not the first time the city has reached for this exact tool. Gusciora imposed a nearly identical curfew across roughly the same stretch of East State Street in July of last year, an emergency order that closed businesses between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. following a shooting death on the steps of a nearby building and a wave of related violence the city said was fueled in part by restaurants and clubs operating beyond the scope of their liquor licenses. That earlier order remained in place for about a month before conditions were deemed sufficiently improved to lift it. The return of a nearly identical restriction a year later suggests the underlying problem, businesses in the area attracting large late night crowds that outpace what current security and licensing enforcement can manage, was never fully resolved, even if it quieted down for a stretch.

Curfew Zone

East State Street
West Canal to South Broad

Hours

10 PM to 8 AM
Friday through Monday

Cited Cause

Recent violence, street fights, unauthorized gatherings

Gusciora has been direct in the past about where he places responsibility for the disruptions, saying businesses in the affected corridor have continued to attract large crowds without taking meaningful responsibility for the disturbances that follow. City officials have said they will continue to assess conditions on a rolling basis and could lift the order early if the underlying safety concerns are addressed, mirroring how the 2025 version of the curfew was eventually resolved. For now, though, business owners along the corridor are once again facing a mandated overnight shutdown during what are typically their busiest hours of the week.

Water Systems Draw Scrutiny, Then Reassurance

Trenton’s infrastructure has also been in the spotlight this week, for reasons largely separate from the curfew. Trenton Water Works issued a precautionary boil water advisory on August 4th covering portions of Ewing and Lawrence townships after a 16 inch water main break on Olden Avenue caused a temporary loss of pressure in that section of the distribution system, a standard precaution taken whenever pressure drops raise the theoretical risk of contamination entering the pipes. Following comprehensive laboratory testing coordinated with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the utility lifted the advisory the following day, confirming the water met all applicable state and federal safe drinking water standards.

The advisory came amid a considerably more serious statewide concern. Earlier the same week, New Jersey’s Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell confirmed that two municipal water systems in the state had been targeted in cyberattacks affecting internet exposed control equipment, incidents state officials and federal partners at the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have linked to a broader wave of attacks on water utility equipment nationwide, with Iran suspected as the source. The affected New Jersey utilities were not publicly named, and officials said both systems quickly shifted to manual operations with no interruption to water service. Against that backdrop, Trenton officials moved to reassure residents that Trenton Water Works’ own systems remain fully secure, a statement that reads as precautionary reassurance amid a regional threat rather than confirmation that Trenton itself had been targeted.

Lead Pipes, Grant Funding, and a Broadband Assist

On the longer term infrastructure front, Trenton Water Works has moved into a new phase of its lead service line replacement program, finalizing contracts with two vendors, Roman E&G and Dewcon Inc, to remove approximately 2,000 lead service lines spanning both the utility’s own distribution system and private homes across Trenton, Ewing, and Lawrence. Roman E&G will handle roughly 1,550 of those lines across South, North, and East Trenton, work partly funded by a 5.53 million dollar grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, while Dewcon has been assigned to remove an additional 450 to 500 lines in Ewing and Lawrence, timed to align with road paving scheduled in those areas next year and supported by a 20 million dollar loan with principal forgiveness from the New Jersey Infrastructure Bank. Sean Semple, director of the city’s Department of Water and Sewer, has said the broader effort is part of a 175 million dollar, multi year program aimed at eliminating all lead infrastructure from the system entirely by 2031.

The city has also pointed to a pair of smaller funding wins arriving around the same time. Trenton has received grant support through the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs aimed at capital needs within the city, part of the state’s continued pattern of direct aid to the capital city. Separately, Comcast of Mercer County finalized a 100,000 dollar capital grant to the city tied to its cable franchise obligations, funding earmarked for local educational and government access capital needs as part of the company’s renewed certificate of approval to operate in Trenton. Individually modest, the grants add up to a steady drip of outside investment arriving at the same time the city is managing a very public curfew and a water utility working through both a major lead removal program and a moment of regional cybersecurity anxiety, a reminder that Trenton’s local government is rarely working just one story at a time.

Booker’s Push to Close Delaney Hall Blocked in the Senate as a Third Death Comes to Light

Don Lichterman

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7 August 2026

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New Jersey’s two senators tried to force an immediate vote to shut down the Newark ICE facility permanently, only to be blocked by a single Republican objection, as a previously unreported death, a canceled visitation policy, and a growing protest movement compound the pressure on the privately run detention center.

Booker’s Push to Close Delaney Hall Blocked in the Senate as a Third Death Comes to Light

NewarkThird Delaney Hall death surfaces as visitation is halted and activists rally outside the gates

Newark · Immigration & Detention

Booker’s Push to Close Delaney Hall Blocked in the Senate as a Third Death Comes to Light

New Jersey’s two senators tried to force an immediate vote to shut down the Newark ICE facility permanently, only to be blocked by a single Republican objection, as a previously unreported death, a canceled visitation policy, and a growing protest movement compound the pressure on the privately run detention center.

Explore New Jersey Staff · Politics Desk

Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim took to the Senate floor this month asking for something Congress rarely grants on a controversial issue, unanimous consent to immediately pass a bill. The legislation in question, the Delaney Hall Closure Act, would require Immigration and Customs Enforcement to permanently shut down the Newark detention facility within 90 days. Booker made the request directly, asking colleagues to let the bill pass without the usual floor debate and committee process, telling the chamber that officials were out of excuses and that the country was out of time. Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt objected, which under Senate rules was enough on its own to block the request, leaving the bill in the same procedural limbo most legislation faces rather than moving toward a vote.

The push for immediate closure came directly on the heels of the death of Edwin Lopez Cornejo, a 41 year old Salvadoran national who died August 1st after a medical emergency at the facility, and it intensified further within days when Representative Rob Menendez disclosed that a third detainee had died in connection with Delaney Hall without ever being publicly reported. Menendez said he learned of the earlier death, believed to have occurred in late July, during an unannounced oversight visit to the facility. According to the congressman, a detainee began having a seizure shortly after arriving at Delaney Hall, and ICE granted him what the agency calls a discretionary release, transferring him to University Hospital before he died there. Because he had technically been released from ICE custody at the moment of his death, Menendez said, the agency was not required to report it under a recently changed policy that stopped counting deaths occurring within 30 days of a detainee’s release.

Menendez said the discrepancy between what ICE reports and what he hears directly from detainees and their families has become a pattern. “I personally choose to believe the detained individuals, their families, rather than ICE,” he said, describing what he called a separate reality inside the facility from the one reflected in the agency’s official accounts.

A Bill With a Simple Premise and No Path Forward Yet

Booker has been one of the loudest voices calling for Delaney Hall’s closure for months, having conducted multiple oversight visits to the 1,000 bed facility, which is owned and operated by the private prison contractor GEO Group under a 15 year, roughly 1 billion dollar contract. He has said those visits showed him degrading conditions and insufficient medical care firsthand, and he has pointed to a broader national pattern, citing figures showing at least 56 deaths in ICE custody during the current administration and noting that more than 70 percent of people currently held by ICE have never been convicted of a criminal offense. Kim, who has also visited the facility, said what he had seen and heard inside over the past year made clear that private prisons like GEO Group have no place in New Jersey, framing his decision to cosponsor the closure bill as an effort to shut the facility down before anyone else is harmed.

The closure bill is only the latest piece of a broader legislative push Booker has built around immigration detention oversight. He has previously introduced the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, which would ban private detention centers and family detention nationally while strengthening detention standards and civil rights protections, along with separate legislation to restore the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman and a bill called the Governors’ Right to Inspect Act, which would explicitly authorize governors and state health and safety officials to inspect immigration detention facilities within their own states, a response to Governor Mikie Sherrill’s public claims that federal authorities have actively obstructed New Jersey’s efforts to conduct health inspections at Delaney Hall.

Visitation Canceled, Then a Fight Over Why

Compounding the tension, Delaney Hall officials abruptly canceled all family visiting hours in early August, a decision facility staff attributed to safety concerns tied to protests outside the gates. That cancellation came only a day after the ACLU of New Jersey had formally pressed ICE to overhaul the facility’s visitation policies, arguing in a letter that current rules limiting visits to immediate family members within two narrow weekly windows, while excluding legal guardians and close friends who often serve as a detainee’s primary support system, may violate constitutional protections. Observers on the ground at the time of the cancellation described only a small handful of protesters gathered outside the facility that day, a considerably smaller presence than the demonstrations that drew a heavy law enforcement response near the facility earlier in the year.

The dispute over Delaney Hall has not broken down entirely along the lines the closure push might suggest. At a House subcommittee hearing on the facility held in late July, Republican members called witnesses who defended immigration detention broadly but had no direct firsthand knowledge of conditions at Delaney Hall itself, two had never visited the facility at all, and a third had last been there nearly a decade earlier before it briefly closed. ACLU of New Jersey executive director Amol Sinha, the only witness called by Democrats at that hearing, challenged Republican members directly to open the facility to full, unannounced, and uncensored oversight, inviting the press, members of Congress, and advocacy organizations to see conditions for themselves rather than rely on secondhand characterizations from either side.

Protests Continue Outside the Gates

Outside the facility, grassroots organizing has continued to build. Activists have organized a coordinated national day of action in solidarity with those held at Delaney Hall and similar facilities elsewhere, and demonstrators have tied black ribbons to the perimeter fencing surrounding the facility, a visual marker meant to represent the people who have died in custody there. With Booker and Kim’s closure bill now blocked from an immediate vote and no clear timetable for when or whether it might advance through the normal legislative process, the combination of congressional pressure, legal advocacy, and continued protest activity appears likely to keep Delaney Hall at the center of New Jersey’s immigration debate for the foreseeable future, even as the facts of exactly what has happened inside the facility remain contested between the agency that runs it and the lawmakers, attorneys, and families pushing for its closure.

Hour	Sky Condition	Temperature	Chance of Rain
6 PM	Partly sunny	86°F	15%
7 PM	Light rain	84°F	20%
8 PM	Partly sunny	81°F	5%
9 PM	Partly cloudy	79°F	0%
10 PM	Partly cloudy	78°F	5%
11 PM	Clear with periodic clouds	77°F	0%