NYC NOW - Midday News: Port Authority Bus Crash Disrupts Commute, Trump Spending Bill Draws Pushback from NY Hospitals, and an Investigation into Youth Sports Coaches Reveals Abuse

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Port Authority police are investigating a multi-bus crash that shut down service to the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal during Wednesday’s morning rush. Meanwhile, hospital groups in New York say President Trump’s new tax and spending bill could strip health coverage from 1.5 million New Yorkers and cut $8 billion from hospital funding. Plus, an investigation by NJ Advance Media finds more than 100 youth sports coaches and trainers across New Jersey have been accused of sex crimes since 2015, raising urgent questions about safety and accountability. Reporter Matt Stanmyre joins us to discuss.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Wednesday, July 2nd. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Port Authority police are investigating what caused multiple buses to crash today, stopping service to New York Port Authority bus terminal during the morning rush hour. Saeeda Major was among the commuters left scrambling to find another way to get into the city. She took the frustration, though, in stride. You know, you're trying to get to work and stuff, but it's part of being in New York. Fire Department officials say the crash hurt some 12 people, mostly minor,

when the NJ transit buses crashed on West 41st Street, one serious injury being treated at Bellevue Hospital. Hospital groups in New York say President Trump's tax and spending bill will hurt health care. W.N.B.C.'s Jimmy PhilCon reports. The Health Care Association of New York State says the legislation approved by the U.S. Senate will knock 1.5 million New Yorkers off health insurance. It estimates the Republican bill will cut funding to New York's hospitals by $8 billion. B. Grouse is the president of the association, which represents hospitals and health systems. She fears layoffs could follow. If you don't have enough health care workers to care for the population who's coming in the door, everything stops in the emergency room.

So that's an impact. Republicans say the bill cut. cuts taxes for New Yorkers and cracks down on waste, fraud, and abuse. The legislation is now pending before the U.S. House. 79 and partly sunny on this July 2nd. Mostly cloudy today in a high of 84 with the calm wind. And then tomorrow, a slim chance of late afternoon showers and thunderstorm sunny in 88. And then July 4th Independence Day, sunny and 84 and looking dry.

Friday night, mostly clear, low around 67. Stay tuned for more after the break. An investigation into youth sports in New Jersey says the sexual abuse of minors has been allowed to fester to a crisis point. A database compiled by NJ. Advanced Media shows more than 100 sports coaches and trainers have been accused of sex crimes in youth sports across the state since 2015. With us now is Matt Stanmeyer. He authored this investigation along with his colleague Keith Sarge. A note to listeners. We'll be talking about the sexual abuse of minors over the next few minutes. Matt, experts you spoke to for this investigation called the number of sexual misconduct allegations in New Jersey youth sports an epidemic.

What did you all uncover? Yeah, our investigation found that, you know, roughly 140 coaches across all levels of youth in high school sports have been accused of some sort of sexual misconduct or misconduct over the past 10 years. So that's 140 and 10 years that we know of. And again, that's not just private coaches, it's also or private trainers. It's also formal high school coaches, formal town rec coaches. But what we have found is that a lot of new coaches who are being accused are these private trainers or these private shooting coaches or hitting coaches that kind of operate in this loose middle ground of sports where they're not really employed by a rec program or a public school. institution or something like that. They just start their business on their own and start recruiting kids to, you know, join and pay. Matt, I'm curious about the reaction to this. Local leadership,

state leadership, any reaction to your investigation? Since our investigation published, we have had a state assemblyman in New Jersey proposed legislation that would require all trainers and coaches that includes those private trainers to undergo background checks. If there were, working with kids under the age of 18. We saw bipartisan support in the Assembly and Senate in the state of New Jersey for improving protocol to prevent these predatory coaches from running wild. And then also, I think it was really important. Governor Phil Murphy, he came out and also said he was deeply disturbed by our reporting and that he was fully committed to working with the legislature. and also our two gubernatorial candidates,

Jack Chitterelli and Mikey Sherrill, they both have come out and commented on our piece and said that they were disturbed and they also are highly in favor of increased protocol to address this situation. So that's really good news. Now, let's hope that they follow through on that. Matt, you know, along those lines, then,

if you're a parent and you do your due diligence, Jones. Nothing happened with this coach in the last 10, 15 years. Nothing has ever happened as far as we know. Not in the sex registry and so forth. So what are the experts saying parents should do if you're hiring a trainer in terms of surveillance, in terms of monitoring along those lines? Yeah, Michael, that's a great question because that's at the heart of this. And that's a question that we also asked throughout our reporting was a lot of these coaches had nothing in their background that would have been flagged ahead of time. They had not committed a sex crime that people knew of. They had not been arrested for any crimes. And then they did something heinous or were found

to have been committing heinous acts over a number of years. And that's the scary part because a background check wasn't going to catch those guys. And so what the experts say is that it's really, again, unfortunately on the parents. I'm a parent myself and we have our hands full, but it's on the parents to really be monitoring their child, be aware of the environment that they're in, be aware of the relationships with their coaches. Are they spending one-on-one time with these coaches alone? Are they texting or communicating outside of some formal environment with these coaches alone? What is that relationship like outside of practice with the coach? Parents need to be aware of this because what experts say is that the parents that are not paying

attention, the parents that are not involved, those are the ones where their kids are more vulnerable. Those are the athletes that are targeted by predators because the parents aren't paying attention. So really, you know, again, I'm a parent. We have our hands full, but it's on us to really make sure we know who our coaches are and also the relationship with the athletes and if they're crossing any kind of lines. Matt, congratulations on this investigation. Our guest has been Matt Stanmeyer. He and his colleague Keith Sargent, author the investigation, Pray to Play at NJ Advanced Media for NJ.com.

Matt, thanks for this. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep hours. Also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.