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      New Jersey Turnpike to Replace Tesla Chargers After Contract Expires

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      The agency that runs the highway said it was switching to another company to provide chargers that work for electrical vehicles other than just Teslas.The agency that runs the New Jersey Turnpike is replacing the more than 60 superchargers for Tesla vehicles along the highway after the state did not renew its contract with the electric-car maker.New Jersey officials said in a statement on Friday that the state would shift to another company that would provide universal charging stations. The change, already underway, will almost triple the number of charging stations along the turnpike and the Garden State Parkway, a second major toll road, where chargers are being added for the first time.The decision drew an apparently irked response from the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk. “Sounds like corruption,” he wrote on his social media platform, X, on Friday night, without providing any evidence. Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Thomas Feeney, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, which operates the highways, said that the decision was both about increasing the number of stations and providing chargers that were compatible with more than just Tesla vehicles. “Our goal is to serve as many E.V. owners as possible across all our service areas,” he said.The state has amended its agreement with Applegreen, an Irish company that already manages restaurants and stores in the turnpike’s service areas, to include its new line of fast charging stations to replace the Tesla equipment and build new stations elsewhere.In a message posted to X on Friday, Tesla said it would continue to offer its superchargers in New Jersey. “We have been preparing for 3 years for this potential outcome by building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike, ensuring no interruption for our customers,” said the post, which included a map of the charging stations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘So polarised’: Bruce Springsteen’s anti-Trump comments divide US fans

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      As the lead singer of a Bruce Springsteen cover band, Brad Hobicorn had been looking forward to performing at Riv’s Toms River Hub in New Jersey on Friday. Then came a text message from the bar’s owner, saying the gig was cancelled. Why? Because the real Bruce Springsteen had lambasted Donald Trump.“He said to me his customer base is redder than red and he wishes Springsteen would just shut his mouth,” Hobicorn recalls by phone. “It was clear that this guy was getting caught up in that and didn’t want to lose business. The reality is we would have brought a huge crowd out there: new customers that are Springsteen fans that want to see a band locally.”The culture wars have arrived in New Jersey, the state of Frank Sinatra, Jon Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, comedian Jon Stewart and TV hit The Sopranos. Springsteen – revered for songs such as Born In The USA, Glory Days, Dancing In The Dark and Born To Run – has long been a balladeer of the state’s blue-collar workers. But last year, many of those same workers voted for the president.Now their split loyalties are being put to the test. Opening a recent tour in Manchester in Britain, Springsteen told his audience: “The America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.” He repeated the criticisms at later concerts and released them on a surprise EP.Trump responded by calling Springsteen highly overrated. “Never liked him, never liked his music or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — just a pushy, obnoxious JERK,” he wrote on social media. “This dried out prune of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back in the Country.”Trump, 78, also posted a video edited to make it seem as if he had hit 75-year-old Springsteen with a golf drive. Trump called for a “major investigation” into Springsteen, Beyoncé and other celebrities, alleging that they had been paid millions of dollars to endorse his Democratic opponent in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris.Harris beat Trump by six percentage points in New Jersey, significantly less than Joe Biden’s 16-point winning margin in 2020. In Toms River, a township along the Jersey Shore, Trump received twice as many votes as Harris, helping explain why Riv’s Toms River Hub got cold feet about hosting a Springsteen cover band.The bar and restaurant cancelled the 30 May gig by No Surrender, a nine-person band that has played Springsteen songs for more than two decades, despite it being scheduled months in advance. Contacted by the Guardian, owner Tony Rivoli declined to comment.Hobicorn, 59, from Livingston, New Jersey, says the band suggested a compromise of playing classic rock other than Springsteen’s but Rivoli rejected the idea. Hobicorn also received some criticism from Springsteen fans for offering the partial climbdown.But he explains: “That’s where I made the point that not everybody in the band is aligned with Bruce Springsteen’s politics. Everybody’s got a different point of view but that’s OK. You can still be in a Springsteen cover band and not 100% agree with everything he says.”He adds: “My band is split. We’re half red, half blue. We have civilised conversations and then we go and play the music and it’s never been about politics. This thing got made into a political situation.”Springsteen is not new to the political arena. When former president Ronald Reagan referenced the singer’s “message of hope” at a campaign stop, Springsteen wondered if Reagan had listened to his music and its references to those left behind in the 1980s economy. Later, he was a regular presence on Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign.He has also challenged his audience politically beyond presidential endorsements. Born in the USA told of a Vietnam war veteran who lost his brother in the war and came home to no job prospects and a bleak future. My Hometown described the kind of economic decline and discontent that Trump has exploited: “Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores / Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more.”Springsteen’s 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad bluntly documented the lives of struggling immigrants, including those from Mexico and Vietnam. His 2001 song American Skin (41 Shots), criticised the shooting by New York City police officers of an unarmed Guinean immigrant named Amadou Diallo, angering some of the blue-collar segments of his fanbase.But taking on Trump is a cause of a different magnitude. His “Make America great again” (Maga) movement has proved uniquely polarising in US culture, forcing many people to choose whether they are on the blue team or red team. The clothes people wear, the food they eat and the music they listen to have become signifiers of Maga. Even some in New Jersey, where Springsteen grew up and now lives in the town of Colts Neck, are having doubts.Hobicorn reflects: “As the country has become more and more divided, there’s certainly a real disdain for Springsteen and his politics in New Jersey. Most New Jerseyans are supportive of who he is, what he’s done for the state, what he’s done for our culture, what he’s done for music.“I feel like it’s not a lot of stuff in the middle like, yeah, he’s OK. It’s one way or the other. In New Jersey it’s mostly in a positive way: people love and respect Bruce for everything. But some are going to paint the picture of him: he’s a billionaire and he doesn’t give a crap about anybody but himself. That’s what they do.”View image in fullscreenNo Surrender has found an alternative venue. After the cancellation of its Toms River gig, Randy Now’s Man Cave, a record shop in Hightstown, New Jersey, stepped in and will host the band on 20 June. The shop will producers flyers and T-shirts that say: “Free speech is live at Randy Now’s Man Cave.”Owner Randy Ellis, 68, says: “The state is proud of Bruce Springsteen. He should become the state bird for all I know.”But he admits: “In the last election, Harris won the state but there were many more people for Trump than I ever expected in New Jersey. It’s so polarised now. We may have people in front of my store saying Springsteen sucks and all that. Who knows?”At a time when many of Trump’s critics have kept quiet, Springsteen is arguably his leading cultural foe. In 2020 he said: “a good portion of our fine country, to my eye, has been thoroughly hypnotised, brainwashed by a conman from Queens” – knowing the outer-borough reference still stung a man who built his own tower in Manhattan.Dan DeLuca, who grew up in Ventnor, New Jersey, and is now a popular music critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, says: “The thing about Bruce that people love is this idea of being a truth teller. You see what you see and you need to speak on it. There’s a lot of people who are muttering things or speaking in private about what’s going on in America who are not speaking out for whatever reason. Maybe they don’t believe that politics and art should mix. Maybe they’re worried about their fanbase or something.“As he said, there’s a lot of crazy shit going on and it’s happened since he was last on the road. It’s good that he’s speaking his mind and he’s speaking what a lot of people want to hear but maybe are afraid to hear and it’s maybe giving some people courage.”But as the case of No Surrender demonstrated, there is a significant minority in New Jersey who see things differently in this hyper-partisan era. DeLuca reflects: “I grew up in south Jersey, which is less densely populated, less urban, and it’s Trump country now.“Springsteen has been true to what he sings about and the people he sings about and the blue collar concerns but then he’s open to target because he’s rich or hangs out with Obama. They probably think that Bruce has turned into a knucklehead socialist or something. I’m sure there are plenty of people who probably do have some divided loyalties.” More

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      in Elections

      U.S. Sues Four New Jersey Cities Over ‘Sanctuary’ Policies

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      Justice Department lawyers say in a lawsuit that Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson are shielding illegal immigrants from lawful prosecution.The Justice Department has sued four New Jersey cities and their leaders over so-called sanctuary policies that federal lawyers say are hindering the Trump administration’s enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. With their policies, the cities, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Paterson, are shielding illegal immigrants from lawful prosecution, Justice Department lawyers write in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Newark on Thursday. “While states and local governments are free to stand aside as the United States performs this important work, they cannot stand in the way,” the lawsuit says. “And where inaction crosses into obstruction, local governments break federal law.”The suit was filed a day after a judge dismissed federal trespassing charges that had been filed against Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark this month after his arrest outside a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where people were protesting. Mr. Baraka said at a hearing last week that he had been “targeted” for selective enforcement. He was named as a defendant in the suit filed on Thursday, as were Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, Mayor Andre Sayegh of Paterson and Mayor Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken. All are Democrats; Mr. Fulop and Mr. Baraka are candidates in the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Fulop said he had learned of the lawsuit from a post on the social media app X. “I think it’s a political sideshow,” he said. “It’s a stunt.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Fights to Keep Mahmoud Khalil From Holding His Month-Old Child

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      A judge ordered the Trump administration to let Mr. Khalil meet with his wife and infant son before a hearing on his immigration case. It was unclear whether they would be separated by plexiglass.On Wednesday evening, hours before the latest immigration hearing in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration was in the midst of pitched battle to prevent Mr. Khalil from holding his 1-month-old son.Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a leading figure in pro-Palestinian protests on the campus, have been fighting for days to win him what is known as a “contact visit” with his wife and child. Mr. Khalil, who is being detained in Louisiana, has not seen his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, in person since he was arrested in March, and has never met their son, Deen, who was born on April 21.On Wednesday, a New Jersey judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, ordered the administration to allow Mr. Khalil to hold a single joint meeting with his wife and his lawyers. But it was unclear whether the judge’s order would permit Mr. Khalil to meet his son, given Trump officials’ reluctance to allow such a visit.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Their filing also included an affidavit from Brian Acuna, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans.“Because the facility does not house female detainees or minors, it is unsafe to allow Mr. Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility,” Mr. Acuna wrote, adding that a contact visit had “never been offered to any other detainee.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      New Jersey congresswoman LaMonica McIver charged with assault after clash at detention center

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      US representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat, was charged with assaulting federal agents after a clash outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey, the state’s federal prosecutor announced on Monday.Alina Habba, interim US attorney, said in a post on social media that McIver was facing charges “for assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” when she visited the detention center along with two other Democratic members of the New Jersey congressional delegation on 9 May.“No one is above the law – politicians or otherwise,” Habba said in a statement. “It is the job of this office to uphold justice impartially, regardless of who you are. Now we will let the justice system work.”McIver on Monday accused federal law enforcement of escalating the situation, saying that it was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents who “created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation”.“The charges against me are purely political – they mischaracterise and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalise and deter legislative oversight,” she said.At the same time, Habba announced her office was dismissing a misdemeanor trespassing charge against Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, whose arrest instigated the clash with federal agents.Baraka, the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, was arrested and charged with trespassing as he sought to join the congressional delegation at Delaney Hall, a privately run federal immigration detention center.Habba, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer before being named to the post, said she had dismissed the charge “for the sake of moving forward” and offered to personally accompany Baraka on a tour of the facility, declaring the government has “nothing to hide”.View image in fullscreenKristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on X that McIver was being charged after a “thorough review of the video footage and an investigation”.Body camera footage released by the agency and shared with Fox News shows a chaotic scene outside the facility’s chain-link fence as the mayor is arrested. During the scuffle, McIver walks through the gate and appears to make contact with a law enforcement officer wearing fatigues and a face covering. It is unclear if the contact is intentional, accidental or the result of being caught in the scrum.Meanwhile, footage from witnesses on the scene appears to contradict the government’s claim that members of Congress stormed the facility.Paul Fishman, an attorney for McIver called the decision to charge the congresswoman “spectacularly inappropriate”, arguing she had the “right and responsibility to see how Ice is treating detainees”.“Rather than facilitating that inspection, Ice agents chose to escalate what should have been a peaceful situation into chaos,” Fishman, the former US attorney for the District of New Jersey, said in a statement.Democrats and legal advocates reacted with alarm on Monday, casting the prosecution of the congresswoman as an attempt to deter legislative oversight and stifle opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, which have included raids and deportations without due process.In a joint statement, House Democratic leaders on Monday condemned the charges as “extreme, morally bankrupt and [lacking] any basis in law or fact”.“There is no credible evidence that Rep McIver engaged in any criminal activity,” the Democrats said, noting that after the incident, Trump administration officials led the members of Congress on a tour of the facility, which they said would not have been permitted “had she done anything wrong”.In a statement on Monday, Bakara welcomed the dismissal of charges against him, but said he would “continue to advocate for the humane treatment of detainees” and “continue to press the facility to ensure that it is compliant with City of Newark codes and regulations”. He also made clear that he stood with McIver, whom he called a “daughter of Newark”. “I fully expect her to be vindicated,” he said.Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, and Amol Sinha, executive director of ACLU-NJ, warned that the charges against a sitting member of Congress were “more suited for authoritarianism than American democracy”.“If the Trump administration can target elected officials who oppose its extreme agenda, it can happen to any one of us,” they wrote. “We demand that they drop the charges against Rep McIver, and we implore her fellow members of Congress to call for the same.” More

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      New Jersey Transit and Engineers’ Union Agree to Deal to End Strike

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      The agency said its trains would start running again on Tuesday morning.An agreement was reached on Sunday to end New Jersey’s first statewide transit strike in more than 40 years just three days after it started, New Jersey Transit and a union spokesman said.The union that represents the state’s passenger-train drivers, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said it called off the strike at about 6 p.m., and NJ Transit said its trains would begin running a full schedule again on Tuesday morning.Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of NJ Transit, said it would take a day to conduct safety inspections and inspect tracks before service could resume.For Monday, the agency said, it would rely on its original strike contingency plan involving chartered buses running from four satellite locations into New York City or to stations on the PATH commuter train service.“The sound that you probably hear is the sound of our state’s commuters breathing a collective sigh of relief, said Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who announced the agreement at a news conference on Sunday night.“If both employers and employees could please give us one more day of work from home, that would be a huge, huge boost,” Mr. Murphy said. State officials had asked commuters to work from home during the strike if their presence in the workplace was not considered essential.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Couple Imprisoned Girl for 7 Years and Kept Her in Dog Cage, Police Say

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      Investigators, who did not identify the teenager, now 18, said they believed she had been sexually abused by her stepfather.One evening last week, a barefoot teenage girl with a shaved head burst into her next-door neighbor’s home in Blackwood, N.J., sat down on the couch and began to spill out a harrowing story.She said her stepfather and mother had imprisoned her at their home for the past seven years, ever since they pulled her out of elementary school with the excuse that she would be home-schooled. She said they locked her in a dog crate for an entire year, and at one point had chained her up in a bathroom. She said her stepfather had sexually abused her.This week, following a police investigation, prosecutors in Camden County, in South Jersey just outside Philadelphia, announced several charges against her mother, Brenda Spencer, 38, and stepfather, Branndon Mosely, 41. They included assault, criminal restraint, kidnapping and weapons offenses; Mr. Mosely also faces numerous counts of sexual assault.“The investigation has corroborated the heinous acts endured by the victim and we will hold those responsible accountable,” Lt. Andy McNeil, a spokesman for the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office, said in an interview. Authorities did not identify the 18-year-old teenager.Mr. Mosely is a rail conductor for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, the transit system that serves the Philadelphia region, and Ms. Spencer is a dog handler who specializes in Great Danes, the authorities said. They are being held in jail while they await a detention hearing scheduled for next week. Lawyers for the couple declined to comment.Days after the distressed teenage girl barreled into the home where he was staying, Michael Lacey, a 36-year-old pool cleaner, said he kept breaking down in tears over the brutality she had described.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Newark mayor says prosecutors tried to ‘humilate’ him by forcing redo of fingerprints and mugshot

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      Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, said federal prosecutors were seeking to “humiliate and degrade” him by making him give fingerprints and have a mugshot taken for a second time on Thursday.The move came after a court appearance on a trespassing charge stemming from his arrest at an immigration detention center where he was protesting with several members of Congress.The charges against Baraka have unfolded amid fears that the Trump administration is seeking to prosecute Democratic politicians, judges or others who have opposed its policies.Baraka appeared in court for a roughly 15-minute procedural hearing before magistrate judge André Espinosa. The hearing covered mostly scheduling for discovery in the case, which stemmed from an encounter on Friday outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center.Assistant prosecutor Stephen Demanovich said the government disputed Baraka’s claims that he committed no crime and was invited on to the facility’s property. Confusion over whether Baraka had been fingerprinted and processed after his arrest unfolded after the judge brought the proceedings to a close.As the parties began to walk away, the judge added that the mayor would need to be processed by the US Marshals Service and that it would take 10 minutes. Baraka, looking confused, said he had already been processed after his arrest. The judge said “agents” had processed him but not the marshals.“Let’s go,” Baraka said, before indicating he would go with the marshals.Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside court, Baraka addressed why it took him a while to emerge from the building.“They’re trying their best to humiliate and degrade me as much as they possibly can,” he said. “I feel like what we did was completely correct. We did not violate any laws. We stood up for the constitution of this country, the constitution of the state of New Jersey.”The trespassing charge against Baraka carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in prison.One of Baraka’s attorney’s, Rahul Agarwal, said the defense expected to seek to dismiss the charges because the mayor was arrested by federal agents on private property. He added that it was a “selective prosecution” and that only the mayor had been arrested.Demanovich said the government disputed that but did not go into detail.Baraka has been an outspoken opponent of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and a vocal opponent of the facility’s opening.In video of the Friday altercation shared with the Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the homeland security investigations logo can be heard telling Baraka he could not enter because “you are not a Congress member”.Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.Minutes later, several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. Baraka was dragged back through the gate in handcuffs.Delaney Hall is a two-storey building next to a county prison and formerly operated as a halfway house. In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded a 15-year contract to the Geo Group Inc to run the detention center.Politicians and activists have said facility has been reopened in contravention of local ordinances and without the necessary permits. It is the largest such facility in the north-eastern US, and the first to open during Trump’s second term, according to Ice.A trial date for Baraka has not yet been set.The Associated Press contributed reporting More