The Trump test, Democrats' future and big money: Three things to watch in New Jersey's primaries
New Jersey voters are heading to the polls on Tuesday to pick nominees for this year's race for governor, in the first high-profile primaries for both parties since the 2024 election.
New Jersey is one of two states with a gubernatorial race this year, along with Virginia. And both contests will be closely watched as early indicators of how voters are responding to President Donald Trump's second term.
Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy cannot run for re-election due to term limits, so there are contested races for both parties' nominations. Candidates and groups have spent $85 million on ads this year in both primaries, according to to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, with more than $75 million spent in the Democratic primary alone.
As Democrats nationally have tried to regroup following Trump's 2024 victory, where he also narrowed his margin of victory in bluer states like New Jersey, the six Democratic candidates have presented different paths forward for their party. And the race is still unsettled heading into the primary.
On the Republican side, five candidates are on the ballot — but former state Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, whom Trump endorsed in mid-May, is viewed as the front-runner.
Polls close at 8 p.m. ET. Here are three things to watch as voters make their choices.
Which path will Democrats choose?
The crowded Democratic primary remains the most unpredictable race New Jersey has seen in decades, in part because county parties can no longer give advantageous ballot positions to their preferred candidates, following a lawsuit from Democrat Andy Kim during his Senate run last year. The suit weakened the state's party machines and contributed to a wide-open contest.
As Democratic voters in New Jersey have evaluated the candidates, some have prioritized electability, raising concerns that Ciattarelli will be tough to beat in November. The former state legislator lost to Murphy in 2021 by 3 percentage points. And Trump also made gains in the state last year, losing by 6, a 10-point improvement on his 2020 margin, which was the second-largest swing toward Trump in the country. Democratic voters also say they are looking for a candidate to take on Trump.
Against that backdrop, each Democrat has been pitching a different path forward for their party, and Tuesday's primary will be Democratic voters' first major opportunity to weigh in on which path they should take.
Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill has been viewed as the relative front-runner after leading in limited public polling, although candidates are often clustered together within the margin of error.
Sherrill has leveraged the party's successful playbook from the 2018 midterm elections, when she and other Democrats flipped Republican-held House seats. She has emphasized her background as a Navy helicopter pilot and a federal prosecutor in her pitch as someone who can effectively govern and take on Trump.
Sherrill has faced recent attacks for her House campaign accepting donations from a corporate PAC tied to Elon Musk's SpaceX, and for being late to disclose two stock trades related to her husband's work. Sherrill's House campaign donated the PAC money to charity. She also paid a fine for the late disclosure and supports a stock trading ban for members of Congress.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka has been pitching himself as the true progressive in the race who's willing to take on the president. He garnered national attention when he was arrested last month at a federal immigration detention facility. (The charges were later dropped, and Baraka is now suing New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba in response.)
The attention has given Baraka's campaign a last-minute boost, with recent fundraising reports showing that his campaign raised $962,000 in the 17 days following the arrest, more than twice as much as his next closest Democratic competitor.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is also appealing to the party's liberal voters, describing his supporters as 'pragmatic progressive' voters. Fulop has been running an anti-establishment campaign, criticizing the state's Democratic political machine and Murphy, whom he described at a recent campaign stop as a 'sub-average' governor.
Teachers' union president Sean Spiller has said he also considers himself a progressive and has criticized those in his party who he says are backed by wealthy corporate interests. Spiller himself has been boosted by Working New Jersey, a super PAC funded by the New Jersey Education Association, which Spiller leads.
Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, one of the more moderate members of Congress, has been pitching an economic-focused message, saying he will work to bring down the state's high cost of living.
And former state Senate President Steve Sweeney, who lost re-election in 2021 to an underfunded GOP challenger, has argued that he is best equipped to lead the state government given his legislative experience. Sweeney, who is also stressing his blue-collar roots as a former ironworker, could have a geographic advantage as the only candidate from South Jersey.
How influential is Trump's endorsement?
The GOP primary will be a key test for Trump's endorsement and determine whether the president has helped consolidate his supporters around Ciattarelli, his preferred candidate in the race.
Ciattarelli sharply criticized then-candidate Trump in 2015, calling him a 'charlatan' and unfit to be president, and he notably did not campaign with Trump when he ran for governor in 2021. Trump knocked Ciattarelli for failing to do so in a radio appearance last year with Ciattarelli's chief competitor in the GOP primary, Bill Spadea.
'This guy never came to ask for my support,' Trump said then of Ciattarelli. 'And you know what, when MAGA sees that, they don't like it and they didn't vote for him. He would have won easily if he did.'
Spadea also asked for Trump's endorsement in the race, and the possibility that Trump would take sides in the primary loomed over the contest for months.
The president ultimately endorsed Ciattarelli on May 12, writing on Truth Social that Ciattarelli is now '100%' MAGA and is best positioned to win in November.
Ciattarelli, for his part, now says he fully supports Trump and dismissed his past comments in an April interview with NBC News, noting other Republicans (including Vice President JD Vance) have criticized Trump in the past.
The primary could also shed light on the size of the anti-Trump wing of the GOP in New Jersey, with state Sen. Jon Bramnick in the race. Bramnick, a longtime state legislator who is also a standup comedian, has called for a return to civility, and he has sharply criticized Trump in the past.
Two other candidates are also on the Republican primary ballot: former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac, a a self-described 'forever Trumper' who has been endorsed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and contractor Justin Barbera.
Will the millions of dollars matter?
Tuesday's primaries in New Jersey will also test outside groups' influence as they've spent millions of dollars in the pricey New York and Philadelphia media markets to reach Garden State voters.
The pro-Spiller super PAC Working New Jersey, which is tied to the state's teachers' union, had spent a whopping $35 million on the race as of May 27, according to the latest campaign finance reports, while Spiller's campaign itself had spent $342,000. The group has spent $12.1 million on ads this year, according to AdImpact.
That ad-spending sum was surpassed only by Affordable New Jersey, a super PAC supporting Gottheimer, which was funded largely by transfers from Gottheimer's congressional campaign. That group has spent $14.8 million on the airwaves.
Fulop has also gotten a boost by a super PAC called Coalition for Progress, which has spent $8.1 million on ads this year. Sherrill's aligned super PAC, One Giant Leap PAC, has dropped nearly $5.9 million on the airwaves, largely over the last month of the race.
Ciattarelli has had a financial advantage in the GOP primary, spending $6 million on ads, compared to Spadea's $1.7 million and Bramnick's $1.2 million, according to AdImpact. Both Ciattarelli and Spadea have also gotten boosts from super PACs, but both groups have spent less than $1 million on ads in the race.
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New Statesman
6 minutes ago
- New Statesman
How Donald Trump plunged America into a blind war
Photo by Daniel Torok/The White House via Getty Images One minute after midnight on 21 June, a small group of US B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri heading west across the Pacific. They were picked up shortly afterwards by flight tracking accounts on social media, prompting breaking news alerts that multiple American bombers capable of carrying the type of heavy ordinance that would be needed to destroy Iran's nuclear sites were airborne as journalists frantically traced their trajectory. In fact, this was a decoy. The real strike group was flying east across the Atlantic, with seven B-2 bombers joined by US fighter jets as they reached the Middle East, which escorted them into Iranian airspace. In the early hours of 22 June local time, they dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), 30,000-pound guided bombs known as 'bunker busters', on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo and Natanz. A US Navy submarine fired more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at a third site in Isfahan as part of what the Pentagon called 'Operation Midnight Hammer'. By now, most people will have seen Donald Trump's address to the nation in the hours that followed, flanked by his distinctly uncomfortable-looking vice-president JD Vance along with secretary-of-state-turned-national-security-adviser Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump, predictably, pronounced the whole operation a 'spectacular military success', declaring that Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities had been 'completely and totally obliterated', which he could not possibly have known at the time and has yet to be confirmed. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,' Trump intoned. 'If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.' Appearing to veer from his script towards the end, he added, 'I want to just say, we love you, God.' In the best-case scenario for those who support these strikes, Trump has acted decisively, ordering the use of military force where successive previous presidents had equivocated, and setting back the Iranian nuclear programme for years, perhaps even for good. He has finally neutered a regime that has long been defined by its rallying cry, 'Death to America', and delivered Israel from the existential threat that would have been posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, which one former Iranian president is said to have described as a 'one-bomb country'. According to this rendering, Trump has taken advantage of a moment of profound weakness for Tehran, whose most notorious proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have been eviscerated by the Israeli military campaign over the last 18 months, and whose most senior military commanders and nuclear scientists have been assassinated. He has forced a reckoning for the Iranian regime – that will be quietly welcomed by many in the region and beyond – abandon your nuclear ambitions, or cease to exist. In the process, he has also proved the TACO theory (Trump Always Chickens Out) wrong. Perhaps some even see him delivering on his election campaign mantra that he would deliver 'peace through strength'. This is all, theoretically, possible. We should be clear, less than 24 hours at the time of writing from the US strikes, that nobody – not Trump, not the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and not Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei – knows for certain where this will lead, or how this war will end. (Trump has already called it a 'war' on social media.) But the history of recent US military campaigns in the region does not bode well. The exception often noted is the first Gulf War in 1991, where the coalition military effort known as Operation Desert Storm lasted than two months and succeeded in forcing Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait, although the Iraqi dictator was permitted to remain in power. The problem with the optimistic case this time is, to quote the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the subsequent invasion of Iraq, the 'known unknowns', and the 'unknown unknowns'. In the short term, the known unknowns include what capabilities Iran retains to retaliate, both in terms of its proxies abroad (including the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq), the remaining stockpiles of missiles and drones in Iran, which Israel has repeatedly targeted in recent days, and its ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where almost a third of the world's seaborne oil transits. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 86 and said to be in faltering health, is reportedly sheltering in a bunker, according to the New York Times, avoiding electronic devices for fear of revealing his location and communicating only through a trusted aide, where he has listed several clerics who could replace him if he is killed, along with substitutes for the military chain of command. We do not yet know how Khamenei will respond to these attacks and whether he will assess – as many commentators have insisted – that he must now retaliate in some meaningful form if he hopes to restore Iran's deterrence and remain in power. We do not know whether Tehran can be induced to resume negotiations on a nuclear deal with Washington, as many European leaders have now urged. We do know, however, that Iran had previously negotiated a nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – with the United States, the UK, France, China, Russia, and the EU in 2015, which Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. It is not clear that any Iranian government would entrust its future to a new deal that could be similarly torn up by the next US administration. (Trump has also launched trade wars against Canada, Mexico and China since returning to power despite signing much-hyped trade deals with them during his previous term.) Meanwhile, the example of the Kim dynasty in North Korea, which has pursued nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them despite the significant costs, and is not currently being bombed by the US, might well suggest to the Iranian regime that the surer course for survival would have been to race for a bomb while it still could, and, if it has the opportunity, to try again. We also know that despite the repeated messaging via US backchannels in the hours after the strike that this was a 'one-and-done' operation – a limited campaign to target the nuclear facilities and nothing more, certainly not the prelude to regime change – Trump and Netanyahu have delivered starkly contradictory signals. Netanyahu openly urged the Iranian people to 'stand up' against the regime after launching the Israeli military campaign on 13 June. Trump has demanded 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER' from Iran on social media and threatened to kill Khamenei. 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on the evening of 22 June. 'MIGA!!!' Given these statements, it is not hard to see why the Iranian government might conclude that the US and Israel have, in fact, launched a war that aims to overthrow them, and, therefore, that this is not merely a negotiating ploy that could yet end in a new nuclear deal, but an existential fight that justifies any means. Then there are the unknown unknowns. We do not know, for instance, whether there could be other Iranian nuclear facilities that had not yet been identified, and what steps the regime might have taken to ensure the survival of key personnel, equipment and material. We do not know how secure the regime's grip on power is and whether Khamenei could yet be sidelined, or simply replaced, by hardliners from within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or former high-ranking officials. 'Tehran is now full of such plots,' one anonymous source, who claimed to be part of a plan to replace the ageing supreme leader, told The Atlantic after the strikes. 'Everybody knows Khamenei's days are numbered.' If the regime does fall, it is far from clear what type of government would take its place, and what that would mean for the region, and well beyond. Recent examples – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria – suggest liberal democracy is an unlikely outcome. 'The US is now entangled in a new conflict, with prospects of a ground operation looming on the horizon,' taunted Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chair of the country's security council, who is now probably best known for his bellicose social media threats. He then claimed that a 'number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.' (It is worth bearing in mind that his main role these days seems to be garnering attention and provocative headlines.) With the Russian military tied down in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is unlikely to offer much in the way of meaningful help in the short term, but he will certainly capitalise on what appears to be a flagrant breach of international law and what he will present as yet more evidence of American hypocrisy. (Putin, too, claims to have attacked Ukraine in part to stop the country developing nuclear weapons and threatening Russia's national security.) Moscow also stands to benefit from a rise in the price of oil if Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz or targets other oil-producing facilities in the region. Beijing has strongly condemned the US attack, which the foreign ministry said, 'seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law'. China is Iran's largest trading partner, which supplied around 15 percent of the oil the country imported last year, and will not welcome the prospect of a massive spike in oil prices if the conflict escalates at a time when the Chinese economy is already slowing. But the prospect of the US getting drawn into another interminable war in the Middle East and deferring, yet again, the mythical 'pivot to Asia', with its focus on deterring a Chinese assault on Taiwan, offers other potential benefits to Beijing. The reverberations of Trump's gamble will be felt far beyond the borders of Iran. Flanked by Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth as he delivered his speech in the hours after the attack, the impression was less a show of unity than a president who is keenly aware of the domestic political risk this involves – and the vehement opposition already emanating from parts of his Maga base – and determined to show that his top lieutenants were all on board. Perhaps that was why Vance in particular, who has built his political brand on his opposition to US military intervention overseas, looked so perturbed. Trump has plunged the US into a war with Iran, with no apparent strategy, and objectives that appear to be evolving, in real time, on social media. Maybe the best-case scenario will yet transpire, and the Middle East will emerge from this conflict more stable and prosperous, but recent history cautions against too much optimism. [See also: The British left will not follow Trump into war] Related
The Herald Scotland
24 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Trump says Iran's nuclear sites were 'obliterated.' Were they?
"Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine told reporters a day after the strikes on June 22. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the main agency that assesses the scale and evolution of Iran's nuclear program, said hostilities would need to cease for it to resume inspections. The organization, housed within the United Nations, said it would hold an emergency meeting June 23. Trump said Iran's nuclear sites were obliterated It was not entirely clear what evidence or intelligence Trump was relying on when he told the world that Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity had been destroyed. He also disputed twice disputed intelligence community findings before the strike that Iran was not close to producing a nuclear weapon. "Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success," Trump said in a late-night June 21 address. "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated." Hegseth used similar rhetoric at a morning news conference, saying that thanks to Trump's leadership, "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated." But a battle damage assessment is ongoing, Hegseth acknowledged during in the briefing. He noted it was the Pentagon's "initial assessment" its precision munitions had the desired effect. "Especially in Fordow, which was the primary target here. We believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there," Hegseth told reporters. Caine was more cautious. "It would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there," he said when asked about Iran's remaining nuclear capabilities during the same news conference. Live updates: US warns of 'heightened threat environment' after strikes on Iran nukes How much of a hit did Iran take? It was a "responsible" comment from Caine, said Simone Ledeen, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in Trump's first administration. Whether the Iranian nuclear program was set back a decade or decades and whether there is no more nuclear program period "really needs to be determined by a systematic battle damage assessment," she said. Yet, given what the president and secretary of defense know of the bombs that were dropped and where, Ledeen added, "I don't think it's far-fetched for them to say that these sites were destroyed." Democratic lawmakers on committees that oversee the military, intelligence community and foreign policy apparatus are pushing for classified briefings to help them reach their own conclusions. "There is a lot we still don't know and we need an accurate, factual damage assessment," Senate Armed Services ranking member Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, said in a statement. Senate Foreign Relations ranking member Jeanne Shaheen also said in a statement, "We are still waiting to understand the extent to which that action has deterred Iran's nuclear threat." "President Trump must now de-escalate tensions with Iran and immediately brief Congress," the New Hampshire Democrat said. Vice President JD Vance did not specify the extent of the damage to Iran's sites as he made a round of television interviews the morning after the strike. "But we know that we've set the Iranian nuclear program back substantially last night," Vance said on ABC News' "This Week" program. "Whether it's years or beyond that, we know it's going to be a very long time before Iran can even build a nuclear weapon if they want to." Iran claims its uranium stockpiles were evacuated Iran's IRIB state broadcaster claimed its stockpiles of enriched uranium were "evacuated" from all threes sites prior to the U.S. strikes, another assertion not independently verified. Russian Security Council deputy chairman of Dmitry Medvedev also said Iran's critical nuclear infrastructure appeared to be unaffected or to have sustained only minor damage. "The enrichment of nuclear material - and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons - will continue," Medvedev said in a social media thread. "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Russia is an ally of Tehran's, and Medvedev is a previous Russian president. Israeli forces could try to enter Iran's nuclear sites in a sensitive operation and make a determination for itself and the United States, said Ledeen, the first-term Trump defense official. But an official assessment will have to be conducted by the IAEA, which says it can not go in until the conflict ends, for the international community to accept it. "I hope it is the end, so IAEA can get their inspectors in there sooner rather than later," Ledeen said. "You also don't want loose material getting into the wrong hands." Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard
The Herald Scotland
24 minutes ago
- The Herald Scotland
Trump vowed to keep US out of wars. What changed with Iran attack?
It's not clear what exact damage was done in Iran. The White House says U.S. bombers decimated three uranium enrichment facilities. What comes next is also far from certain: additional U.S. strikes, Iran's retaliation, a resumption of diplomacy, even? Is this the start of the collapse of Iran's clerical regime? Is it a historical moment akin to the breakup of the Soviet Union? What's indisputable is that one pull factor for the U.S. is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long, complicated relationship with recent American presidents. The U.S. bombing of Iran is also the culmination of a process that traces at least as far back to the 1990s when Netanyahu, then a young lawmaker, predicted the Islamic Republic, Israel's sworn enemy, would one day either acquire, or be on the cusp of acquiring, a nuclear weapon and Israel would be forced to act - ideally with U.S. help. "Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb," Netanyahu said in 1992. His prediction was later repeated in his 1995 book, "Fighting Terrorism." Netanyahu's constant refrain: bomb Iran Netanyahu is the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in the Jewish state's history. He's occupied the role on and off for more than 17 years. In every one of those years he's sought to convince American presidents to bomb Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran insists is for civilian energy purposes only. Netanyahu has appeared at the United Nations with elaborate maps and cartoon-style drawings of bombs. He worked hard to scupper the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers that Trump exited because he said Iranian officials could not be trusted. In 2002, Netanyahu told a U.S. congressional committee that both Iraq and Iran would soon have a nuclear bomb. A year later the U.S. invaded Iraq. In 2009, he told members of Congress in private that Iran was just a year or two away from producing a nuclear weapon, according to a U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. Successive American presidents have listened and acted on Netanyahu's Iran warnings, most substantively politically in the form of the Obama administration's 2015 nuclear deal, which was designed to limit Iran's uranium enrichment in return for relief of U.S. economic sanctions on Iran. When Trump, in his first term, exited that agreement it was working in the sense that Iran was not enriching uranium at a level necessary to produce a nuclear weapon, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. Netanyahu's public and private relationships with recent American presidents have been marked by chilly tensions and insults. In 2015, Netanyahu's spokesman apologized to former President Barack Obama. He has also clashed with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Netanyahu has even annoyed Trump, although their relationship trends toward mutual lavish praise. But no American president - until now - has gone along with Netanyahu's war plans for Iran, fearing the U.S. could be dragged into a wider Middle East war. The experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan still haunt U.S. presidents. "The president more than anybody is worried about protracted military conflicts and that is not what we are getting ourselves involved in," U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on ABC's "This Week" program on June 22. Vance said the Trump administration is also not trying to force regime change in Iran. Reading Trump's Iran tea leaves Trump may also not be as risk averse to military actions as is sometimes portrayed, including by himself. In his first term, he ordered a missile attack in Syria to punish then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons; a raid to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; and a drone attack that killed Qasem Soleimani, a senior Iranian military commander much beloved in Iran whose death led to Iranian reprisals on U.S. bases in Iraq. Also in the background: The IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, and former U.S. officials such as Dan Shapiro, U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration, say Iran's nuclear capabilities have advanced since Trump exited the nuclear deal. "Iran cannot be left with an enrichment capability, able to produce a nuclear weapon at a time of its choosing," Shapiro wrote in a recent blog post. Trump has made various comments for years that reflect that sentiment. The main thrust of his remarks in recent weeks have been to say he won't allow Iran to continue its nuclear enrichment program, and Tehran could give it up through negotiation or through what he called "the hard way." After first pushing for a diplomatic solution, Trump's tone changed after Israel on June 13 struck dozens of nuclear and military targets in Iran, killing many of Iran's military elite and senior nuclear scientists. By June 17, the president was threatening Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on social media, calling him an "easy target." See updated maps, satellite images: Iran's nuclear sites before and after Israeli attacks Trump likes a winner. He often says so himself. In the days leading up to the U.S. strike, Israel appeared to be winning. "Congratulations, President Trump, your bold decision to target Iran's nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the United States will change history," Netanyahu said in a statement as he addressed the world on June 22 to update them on the war's latest development. He spoke in English, not Hebrew. In his own address, to the American people, Trump said, "I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel." Not mentioned: U.S. intelligence agencies assessed earlier this year that they did not think Iran was close to building a nuclear bomb. Contributing: Francesca Chambers, Tom Vanden Brook
