Gov. Phil Murphy, who replaced Chris Christie as New Jersey’s governor, said the Bridgegate scandal remains a “stain” that left “a big dent” on public trust in the Garden State even though the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday threw out convictions against two former Christie allies in the high-profile case.

Murphy — a Democrat who succeeded Christie, a Republican, in 2018 — was asked his reaction just hours after the nation’s highest court reversed the sentences against Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni.

“I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t have any comment on the legal aspects of it,” Murphy responded during his daily briefing in Trenton on the coronavirus pandemic.

Ten Catholic schools - nine elementary and one high school around northern New Jersey - will close at the end of the academic year, the Archdiocese of Newark announced Thursday.

Academy of St. Therese of Lisieux in Cresskill, St. Anne School in Fair Lawn, Trinity Academy in Caldwell, Good Shepherd Academy in Irvington, Our Lady Help of Christians School in East Orange, St. James the Apostle School in Springfield, The Academy of Our Lady of Peace in New Providence, Holy Spirit School in Union, St. Genevieve School in Elizabeth and Cristo Rey Newark High School will shut down, according to a news release.

The ten schools will continue online learning through the end of the year, in line with Gov. Phil Murphy’s order aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic in the state, officials said

Shareef Elnahal knows exactly who is in his hospital.

As another month of the coronavirus pandemic ground to a close last week, about 140 beds at University Hospital in Newark are filled with patients who have either tested positive for COVID-19 disease or are awaiting test results, said Elnahal, the hospital’s president and CEO. Many are fighting for their lives.

But Elnahal also knows exactly who isn’t in his hospital.

Because of a state order banning elective surgeries, no one is getting knee replacements. Few are coming in for routine tests. The dental and ophthalmology clinics are quiet.

By Jonathan Leath

One of the scariest parts of the crisis of surprise medical billing is that Congress cannot seem to get the fix right, and now they are trying to lump in broken legislation with the coronavirus packages, Pastor Jonathan Leath says.

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During his April 7 press briefing, President Trump spoke on the drastic difference in COVID-19 cases for minorities in this country. At the same briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded to this situation by saying, “It’s very sad. It’s nothing we can do about it right now except to try and give them the best possible care to avoid those complications.”

While Black Americans make up only 14% of the population in New Jersey, they’re nearly 20% of the reported COVID-19 deaths. Upon hearing this announcement and these statistics, what pained me the most was that none of this came as a shock to me. Not only was the stark difference in case numbers and fatalities not surprising, neither was the government saying there is “nothing they can do about it.”

What gives me both hope and concern, though, is that New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone heads the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee. On April 15, Pallone wrote to Seema Verma, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), asking her to release demographic data, saying: “The implications of COVID-19 on racial and ethnic minority communities cannot be fully understood or addressed until more comprehensive information, like the vast Medicare billing data available to CMS, is analyzed and publicly released.”

Preventing the spread of the coronavirus should be the priority over preventing an extended economic downturn, according to a poll released Tuesday.

And Americans were more concerned states would start reopening their economies too soon rather than not quickly enough, according to the Monmouth University Poll.

Seton Hall Prep teacher David Snyder has seen some pretty extraordinary things in his 25 years as an educator.

In the past, his STEM classes launched balloons nearly into outer space and put satellite trackers into the Atlantic Ocean, but nothing compares to what this year’s class has accomplished in the midst of a worldwide crisis.

The coronavirus reached New Jersey in March and hit it hard. Its outbreak caused Gov. Phil Murphy to shut down schools - eventually for the remainder of the school year.

In an effort to reach a population particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, Newark began testing its homeless residents for the virus on Monday morning.

The voluntary process launched at an airport hotel that serves as emergency homeless housing for 194 and the goal is to ultimately offer tests to all of the roughly 2,200 homeless people living in the state’s most populous city.

Newark partnered with the hotel operator last month as part of a plan by Mayor Ras J. Baraka to provide short-term housing for the city’s homeless — called “residents without addresses” in Newark — as the pandemic raged around the globe.