Happy, happy Thursday. He was press secretary for former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy,

and these days, Mike Erasmussen is the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics

at Rider University. He's contributed to the public affairs of the state for more than two decades

and has more than 15 years experience as an adjunct professor of political science.

Mike Erasmussen, good morning to you. Hey, Ken, how are you? I'm great. It feels like I just talked to you in the last two days, maybe because I did. Almost a bit, right? There you go. Hey, so we got to ask you. Actually, I was going to talk to you about the New Jersey governor's race, but we've had some breaking news since then about the Gateway Tunnel Project and President Trump basically telling, hey, Chuckie Schumer, screw you, pal.

What do you think?

You think this is just politics?

He's just playing games right now?

Well, I hope so.

I hope so for the sake of the region, for the sake of New Jersey.

We're sort of swept up in this and it's, as you know, this project has been a long time coming.

That rail infrastructure is over 100 years old.

Sometimes it's got to be knocked into place with a sledgehammer and I'm not even kidding. And we can't afford for this thing to be caught up.

So I hope that resolution is on the way, and, you know, this is pretty strong language.

It's different than what we heard a couple weeks ago, which was that it was a pause.

Cancellation is a different deal. That doesn't sound like something you come back from. Yeah, I think he used the word terminated. He used the word terminated. So that is a serious word. And he does have the right to do it because this was a grant that was signed in by Biden. So because it was a grant, he could freeze grants.

And that's for, I'm sure this was at a left field for even those on the left.

But nonetheless, we'll see what happens in the days ahead.

Hopefully it brings them to the negotiating table so we could get this government open again.

Where do you see the New Jersey governor's race right now, Mike?

Do you, and we talked about this on our show the other day in New Jersey.

But now Jack was on, Jack Tudorelli was on Mentee in the morning today here at W-O-R.

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