EnviroPolitics Blog

Ex-Sen. Menendez’s wife gets 4½ years for role in bribery scheme

Nadine Menendez was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein after she was convicted in April of colluding with her husband, U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez.

Nadine Menendez wearing a face mask as she walks into the courthouse — *Nadine Menendez, wife of former Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., arrives at Manhattan federal court, in New York, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)*

By Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister, Associated Press

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s sobbing wife told a judge that her husband was “not the man I thought he was” before she was sentenced Thursday to 4½ years in prison for selling the powerful New Jersey politician’s influence in exchange for bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car.

U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein sentenced Nadine Menendez, 58, for her April conviction for colluding from 2018 to 2023 with her husband, the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a variety of corrupt schemes, some involving assisting the Egyptian government.

Nadine Menendez, tearfully addressing the judge for several minutes before he sentenced her, described her husband as a manipulative liar.

“I put my life in his hands and he strung me like a puppet,” she said. “The blindfold is off. I now know he’s not my savior. He’s not the man I thought he was.”

Standing outside the courthouse afterward, she said she doesn’t plan to divorce her 71-year-old husband, who is serving an 11-year sentence for taking bribes, extortion, and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.

Stein told the defendant that she wasn’t the person she was portrayed as during last year’s trial of her husband and two New Jersey businessmen, when the judge said she was painted as “the true force behind the conspiracies.”

But he said she also wasn’t the “innocent observer of what was happening around you,” as her lawyer claimed.

“You knew what you were doing. Your role was purposeful,” he said.

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Cornell Students Skin 120-Pound Bear Killed In Their Dorm Kitchen

Two students skinned and butchered a legally hunted black bear in a campus dorm kitchen at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, prompting outcry but no charges, officials said.

On Thursday, Sept. 11, university and state officials confirmed the hunt and the on-campus processing but said no laws were broken.

NBC News reported the pair killed the 120-pound black bear over the weekend and brought the carcass into a residence hall to process it on Saturday, Sept. 6.

The students held valid New York State hunting licenses, a Cornell spokesperson said, adding that a police report was filed after a complaint late Sunday night; no charges have been filed.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) sent an investigator Sunday, Sept. 7, and found no code violations.

The Cornell Daily Sun identified the location as Ganędagǫ: Hall, where a communal first-floor kitchen was subsequently closed “until further notice.”

Images of the skinned bear on a counter spread on Reddit and Sidechat, drawing both backlash and praise.

Some commenters questioned whether the animal was a cub, noting that shooting cubs is illegal in the southern zone, and raised sanitation concerns about butchering in a shared space, noting bear meat can carry trichinosis.

DEC said the bear was taken in Region 4, which includes Delaware, Otsego, Albany, Columbia, Greene, Montgomery, Rensselaer, Schoharie, and Schenectady counties, placing the kill outside Tompkins County, home to Cornell and Ithaca.

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NJ town rejects massive warehouse after 4 years of controversy

By Nyah Marshall | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

A developer’s plan to build one of the largest warehouse projects ever proposed in Somerset County has been blocked by local officials.

Following a lengthy hearing on Sept. 4, the Hillsborough Township Planning Board unanimously rejected the project, which called for two warehouses totaling more than 537,000 square feet.

The proposal, first submitted by Homestead Road LLC in December 2021, would have turned nearly 90 acres of undeveloped farmland in the town into an industrial complex.

The site lies east of the Route 206 bypass, near schools and residential neighborhoods.

Residents and advocacy groups spent the past four years battling the project, speaking out at hearings and circulating a petition that gathered more than 3,000 signatures.

In their final decision, the planning board said the mega-warehouse plan was flawed and did not align with the township’s character.

“Putting this warehouse in the center of town is counter to being compatible with neighborhoods and the peace and solitude of residents,” Mayor John Ciccarelli said before making the motion to deny the application.

Other planning board members chimed in, saying the project was “too massive” and carried “too many” problems.

“Instead of coming in with an application that could fit there and be harmonious with the neighborhood, they decide to go for the biggest building they could find and jam it in there,” said former Mayor Shawn Lipani, who also serves on the board.

Attorneys for Homestead Road LLC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New Jersey environmental and advocacy groups, including Stop Warehouses and Traffic, the Watershed Institute, and the Sourland Conservancy, also opposed the project.

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‘Zombie’ as pipeline raises environmental fear in New Jersey

By Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News

Opponents are on guard again over a revived proposal to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey — including along the seabed in Raritan Bay — into Queens, New York.

They call it the “zombie pipeline” because, after being killed twice by legal challenges and permit denials that spanned almost a decade, the project has come back to life.

Oklahoma-based Williams/Transco is behind the attempted revival of the Northeast Supply Enhancement Pipeline. The pipeline, which would generate energy only for New York, would also require a new compressor station in Franklin Township, Somerset County.

Revived natural gas pipeline plan includes major disturbances in Raritan Bay.

Opponents say the construction of an underwater pipeline would expose New Jersey to all of the risks and pollution with zero benefits. Greg Remaud, CEO of NY/NJ Baykeeper, said he believes Raritan Bay would be irreparably harmed.

“Raritan Bay, it’s just an incredible recreational and ecological treasure,” Remaud said. “I mean, there’s boating, sailing, crabbing, world-class fishing for bluefish, striped bass, fluke. It supports kelp, which is what whales feed on, and supports lots of other fish. There’s a commercial crabbing industry here. So, to run a needless pipeline across twenty-three miles of Raritan Bay, going through wetlands and then slicing through marine habitat and clam beds, it makes no sense to us.”

Remaud is concerned that construction would disturb toxic heavy metals, such as copper and mercury, buried in the bay’s sediments — a relic of New Jersey’s industrial past.

Undoing ‘good environmental work’

“Now $175 million is going to clean up the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund site, which is right adjacent to where the NESE pipeline would be going in,” Remaud said. “All this money is being spent to remove lead, but copper, mercury, and other contaminants are being re-suspended into the water column? So it really makes no sense, and the stakes are even higher because we’re undoing really good environmental work on the Raritan Bayshore,” he added.

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Homeowners scramble as solar tax credit deadline expires soon

*File photo: Installing solar panels on a residential rooftop*

By Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent, NJ Spotlight

WASHINGTON — After Congress voted to end a federal tax credit for rooftop solar installations, homeowners are galloping to buy, install, and hook up, panels to their houses before the year is out.

As part of President Donald Trump’s signature new domestic policy law, lawmakers voted to phase out a 30% tax credit for residential solar, which could defray about $9,000 of the cost of a project, on Dec. 31, roughly a decade before the scheduled date.

Now homeowners are racing to purchase, rack, and connect solar panels to the electric grid to meet that deadline.

“It is a rush,” Lyle Rawlings, president and co-founder of the Mid-Atlantic Solar & Storage Industries Association, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “Anybody who’s been thinking and dreaming of doing solar on their home understands that they have to do it now.”

Solar companies are struggling to keep up with demand, said Rawlings, president of Advanced Solar Projects, a commercial solar company based in Flemington. “Salespeople are overloaded.”

Surge of interest in NJ

After Congress passed the new law, online solar marketplace EnergySage hit an “all-time high in customer inquiries in July,” the company said, and the number of New Jersey customers who registered to receive quotes from local installers increased 109% from June to July, according to data from the firm. “Pedal to the metal right now,” Emily Walker, director of content and insights at EnergySage, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

Expiration of the credit lands as the U.S. solar industry is under strain from Trump’s tariffs, trade disputes, a hazy business outlook, and a federal administration hostile to renewable energy, solar included.

Over the summer, the Environmental Protection Agency canceled $7 billion in funding for solar grants, hundreds of millions of which had been slated for New Jersey.

Even before the budget law took effect, the residential solar industry was already in trouble. Solar installations dropped 31% in 2024, versus the previous year, and large companies in the field — SunPower, Sunnova, and Mosaic Solar — filed for bankruptcy.

The new federal law, which almost every Republican in Congress voted for and every Democrat voted against, also phased out a 30% federal tax incentive for commercial-scale solar projects — the sort of installations that might go atop a big-box store.

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As Musk’s auto sales plunge, Tesla may offer him $1 Trillion to focus

Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company's Fremont, California, factory. — *Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company’s Fremont, California, factory. | Noah Berger/AP*

By DAVID FERRIS, Politico

Tesla has been synonymous with electric vehicles for more than 15 years, elevating the company’s brand and CEO Elon Musk’s fortune.

But Tesla’s ambitions as an EV maker are shrinking as it pursues artificial intelligence — and faces the reality of a decreasing share of the car market.

Tesla’s vehicles made up only 38 percent of U.S. electric vehicle sales in August, according to data from Cox Automotive that was first reported by Reuters. Five years ago, Tesla sold more than 80 percent of America’s EVs.

Recent declines have been sharpest, tracking Musk’s plunging political popularity after leading President Donald Trump’s government-slashing efforts. As recently as May, Tesla sold more than half of U.S. EVs.

Meanwhile, Tesla recently released two milestone documents: a new master plan and a new proposed pay package for Musk. Neither puts electric vehicles in the foreground.

Musk’s pay package, which Tesla’s board unveiled last week and still needs investor approval, lays out the goals that Musk must hit to earn a titanic $1 trillion in the next decade.

It includes stretch goals in industries that, for now, barely exist.

For example, Musk could meet his targets by selling 1 million Optimus robots or putting 1 million robotaxis on the road. Both goals are difficult because, unlike when it began selling EVs, Tesla has serious competitors; it trails Waymo in robotaxi deployment, and other firms are developing humanoid robots.

Read the full story here

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