New Jersey
Progressive Democrat Analilia Mejia wins New Jersey special election for US House
Democrat Analilia Mejia won a New Jersey special election for the US House on Thursday, defeating Republican Joe Hathaway on a message of standing up to Donald Trump.
Mejia, a former head of the Working Families Alliance who had support from the senator Bernie Sanders, will fill the seat previously held by the Democratic governor Mikie Sherrill and serve until January.
Her victory is a win for progressives and means Democrats hold on to the 11th district seat in the House, where Republicans hold a thin majority. It also adds to a string of victories for Democrats heading into this year’s midterm elections.
The Associated Press called the race for Mejia minutes after the polls closed.
Mejia emerged from a crowded primary in February and cast the race as a test of Trump’s leadership. She criticized his pardons of people convicted of January 6-related crimes and faulted him for freezing funds authorized by Congress.
“The people here are ready to do something about it,” she said recently. “We’re not here to write strongly worded letters. Congress has real power.”
She campaigned on populist economic policies and pushing to abolish US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She has criticized the Israeli government and said she stands with Palestinian communities in their “pursuit of peace and dignity”.
Hathaway tried to use Mejia’s progressive credentials to his advantage, as national Republicans cast her as a socialist.
“I’m running to bring common-sense leadership to D.C + deliver results for our families, not push a far-left agenda,” Hathaway said in a recent social media post.
They could go head to head again in November’s election for a full two-year term.
The 11th district, which covers parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in northern New Jersey’s wealthy suburbs, was long a Republican stronghold but has become increasingly Democratic since Trump’s first term.
Sherrill first won the seat in 2018’s midterm elections, when Democrats flipped dozens of seats to take control of Congress. In 2024, she won re-election by about 15 points, while Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, carried the district by nearly nine points.
Saran Cunningham, an 86-year-old retired special educator, said she was initially reluctant to support Mejia, worried that her views were too far to the left. She backed another candidate in the primary. But recently, outside the Morristown early polling location, she said she would now vote for Mejia.
“I think we’ve been tilting a little bit more to the right lately, which worries me,” Cunningham said. “I think that we need people in Congress who will fight for things that will help people as opposed to hurting them.”
Over the years, Mejia has been a regular presence in the state capitol, advocating for progressive causes, and was Sanders’s political director during his 2020 presidential run. During the Biden administration, she was deputy director of the labor department’s women’s bureau. In addition to winning Sanders’s endorsement, she was backed by the US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the senator Elizabeth Warren.
“Dangerous heat is expected to continue across much of our region through today, with several record highs likely to be challenged again. High temperatures are forecast to peak into the low to mid 90s across most of the area,” the National Weather Service said Friday.
A Heat Advisory is in effect until 8 p.m. across the state except for Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Salem counties.
PHILADELPHIA – Philip McPherson II, a 37-year-old from Riverside, New Jersey, was sentenced Thursday, June 11, to 78 months in prison for his role in a 2022 plane crash in Lehigh County that killed a student pilot, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Sentencing and charges for fatal Lehigh Valley crash
What we know:
United States District Judge John M. Gallagher sentenced McPherson to 78 months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $5,000 fine, a $4,300 special assessment, and $19,530 in restitution. Judge Gallagher also barred McPherson from working in the aviation industry.
McPherson pleaded guilty in October to involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, obstruction of an administrative proceeding, and 40 counts of serving as an airman without a certificate.
The backstory:
Court filings show that on September 28, 2022, McPherson took off from Queen City Airport in Allentown as the pilot-in-command with student pilot K.K. and crashed shortly after, resulting in K.K.’s death.
Prosecutors said McPherson acted with gross negligence, knowing he was not competent to fly as pilot-in-command. He had two prior crashes, nearly a third, and failed a reexamination for his pilot’s certificate in September 2021.
McPherson voluntarily surrendered his pilot’s certificate in October 2021 and let his Temporary Airman Certificate expire in November 2021, acknowledging his inability to meet FAA standards.
He admitted to flying with passengers without a valid FAA pilot’s certificate between October 12, 2021, and September 20, 2022.
Investigators from the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, FAA, and Salisbury Township Police Department worked on the case, which was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Robert Schopf and Special Assistant United States Attorney Marie Miller.
What we don’t know:
Authorities have not released further details about the circumstances leading up to the crash.
The Source: Information from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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On Sunday, June 14, a bell will ring at the Historic Olde Courthouse in Mount Holly, New Jersey, as part of a festival to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
In the summer of 1776, officials rang the same bell at the courthouse in Burlington City, the seat of Burlington County at the time, after the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The bell was moved to Mount Holly in 1796 when that city became the Burlington County seat.
Marisa Bozarth, Burlington County’s museum curator of history, said courthouse bells were rung in the 1700s to signify that something important was taking place.
“They would have rung it when there was a large court case of any significance, when the jury was coming back, so people knew to return to the courthouse to hear the verdict,” she said. “The bell was also rung any time there was any public reading of any sort of important document. It was their way to get the information out to the masses quickly.”
After the wording of the Declaration of Independence was finalized and the document was signed, every state received a copy so it could be shared with the people living there. At the time, some Burlington County residents wanted to remain loyal to Britain, while others supported the movement for independence, Bozarth said.
“I would think it was a bit of a scary time because when the Declaration of Independence was finally signed and then presented, it meant we were really going to war,” she said. “We were declaring our independence, but we weren’t officially an independent nation yet. It meant a scary time was coming because Britain wasn’t going to accept that and just let us walk away.”
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