>> Funding for "NJ Spotlight news" is presented by New Jersey Education Association, making public schools great for every child.

And RWJBarnabas Health, let's be Anchor: Tonight, replacing Bill Carrasco -- pascrell.

Plus, Vice President Kamala Harris makes history, excepting the presidential nomination on the final night of the DNC as a new poll reveals her with a slight edge over Donald Trump when it comes to race and gender.

>> Right now Trump has to solidify his base and expand it, so he's doing very well among MAGA voters.

Anchor: With a spike in COVID over the summer, a new study on long COVID and kids revealing surprising new symptoms.

>> First thing I would tell parents and clinicians is long COVID in COVID Is real and relatively common.

Anchor: And Princeton University is putting teachers in the classroom to teach them, a curriculum for addressing the climate crisis.

>> They love feeling like a student again, and that brings the perspective of what it's like to be a student in their classroom.

Anchor: "NJ Spotlight News" begins right now.

♪ >> From NJPBS Studios, this is "NJ Spotlight News" with Briana Vannozzi.

Anchor: Good evening and thanks for joining us, I am Raven Santana in for Briana Vannozzi.

We begin with some big stories we are following.

The race to fill the ninth district congressional seat left by the passing of Bill Pascrell is heating up.

The seat opened up following the death of the congressman on Wednesday, triggering a frantic race to select a successor with a deadline of next Thursday.

As a Brenda Flanagan reported yesterday, and assemblyman was one of the first, but he now faces competition from a growing number of hopefuls.

A State Senator, a 27 year veteran of the state legislature, is officially campaigning for the seat, and aims to be the state's first Latina Congresswoman.

And got an endorsement from a mayor.

Others include someone mulling it over.

And a county commissioner, and a Bergen County some women.

Meanwhile, and assemblyman has chosen not to run, choosing to focus on state-level politics.

The open seat could become a contest between Bergen and Passaic County Democrats.

A story we've been following close to a year now, finally some good news for Bob Menendez.

Now that the former senior senator resigned from his seat, the U.S. Senate ethics committee says it has halted their probe into his acts of corruption.

If he hadn't stepped down, the panel would have considered a full range of disciplinary actions against him.

Back in 2018, the committee admonished him after his first corruption trial ended with a jury deadlocked and ordered him to repay the value of gifts he was accused of accepting at the time from a wealthy Florida eye doctor.

This time around, until I mended as was convicted on 16 counts of bribery and corruption charges.

He has vowed to appeal him and along with his codefendants, asked the judge to toss all conventions and grant -- convictions and grant new trials.

Kamala Harris became the first black woman in person of South Asian dissent to accept a major party presidential nomination and would become the first female president if elected.

During her speech she called on all to reject political division and get behind her to chart a new way forward, not as members of one party or another, but as Americans.

The former prosecutor said my entire career, I've only had one client, the people, calling out Former President Trump by saying the only client he has had is himself.

A more somber moment, the father of a fallen U.S. capital officer spoke along with his wife, Gladys -- along with his mother, Gladys.

They reminded the crowd about the death of his brother.

Harris also touching on the losses of generate safes, and invoked her prosecutorial background when she talked about Trump's encouragement.

She pulled no punches, also taking on the Middle East conflict head-on, pledging to always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself but acknowledging the plight of the Palestinian people, saying what has happened in Gaza the last 10 months is devastating, so many innocent lives lost.

She said desperate, hungry people fleeing to safety over and over again and the scale is heartbreaking.

Polls show Harris tied or with a slight lead over President Trump, but a new poll out today focusing on gender and race shows Vice President Harris's lead grows substantially.

A professor of government and politics and Executive Director of the poll, joins me now.

Thank you for joining me.

>> Always a pleasure.

Anchor: We are just coming off the DNC, Vice President Harris feeling a lot of momentum and we know this could be a tight race but your poll found the vice president has an edge over Donald Trump in some areas.

Tell me what it found specifically.

Dan: The overall number shows that Vice President Harris is up seven points over Former President Trump but the interesting part is what is deriving those figures.

We have two different sets of results.

We took a look at masculinity and there's been a lot of talk about masculinity in the race, Donald Trump projects a traditional, old model of masculinity, and with on the Democrat side, Tim Walz, who is doing a different sort of softer masculinity.

We want to look at how masculinity is playing into the race.

We have run these questions a lot in the past, we asked men and women to talk about gender identities, if they consider themselves masculine or feminine.

What we found is Trump's support is almost entirely among men who say they are completely masculine.

On the masculine-femininity chart, they are as far to the masculine side as you can get.

They support Trump 64-30 over Harris.

The other men support Harris by a 30 point margin.

Those aldermen are no different than women in -- those other men are no different than women interviews.

Anchor: Just to clarify, this poll was conducted before this week's Democratic convention?

Dan: It was conducted before and slightly during the Democratic convention.

That doesn't mean we expect there will be an extra pump for Harris during the convention and immediately after.

Partisans of the president or who just had the convention, pick up more.

Republicans undercut both seemed very willing -- Republicans and Democrats both seemed very willing to pick up the phone.

There is no such thing as a shy Trump voter.

Anchor: Right.

Prior to the selection and less than a month ago, race was between two white men.

Was any of this part of the conversation?

Dan: I think it absolutely was and one of the big problems faced by President Biden's he doesn't project masculinity.

We think masculinity as being assertive and strong and one of the big knocks against President Biden is he doesn't look strong, he looks weak.

It's not just contests between men and women, it's between men and men.

In 2020, 1 Former President Trump and now President seemed to have an argument about a push-up contest, or Biden was talking about taking Trump behind the shed and whipping him.

Anchor: Now we have a woman of color.

Will she have the advantage moving forward?

Dan: We want to take a look at the difference between race and gender on this and we did an experiment on the survey where we asked people about what is important and for about one third of respondents, we included the race of the candidates.

This goes from being a relatively close election to being a blowout for Harris where she is up by 14 points when we ask about race before who you will vote for.

That tells us identity really does matter.

We have all sorts of pundits that say don't talk about identity but when we talk about identity, it brings black and brown voters back to the Democratic Party.

Right now like 20% or 40% are supporting Trump.

We talk about racial identity it goes down to almost nothing.

Anchor: 70 days, what can each candidate do?

Dan: Right now what President Trump has to do is solidify his base and expand it, so he's doing very well among MAGA voters but he has to win over moderates.

The challenge is how you keep the MAGA on side while going after moderates.

Vice President Harris has to root for herself, she has to get moderates and independents comfortable with her.

Anchor: Dan, thank you for joining me.

While most research into COVID's lingering effects have been focused on adults, some 65 million are suffering with it.

Many parents reported similar with their kids.

Nearly 6 million people in the U.S. have been living with long COVID.

The tricky part for doctors is there is no test for long COVID.

Doctors must diagnose at.

Brenda Flanagan spoke to the co-author of the report and one mom whose instincts were to trust mother's intuition.

>> I thought he was being lazy.

And not putting any effort into doing the things he needed to do.

Reporter: At first this mother scolded her son Noah for being a typical teenager, lounging around, late for school, letting grades slip.

Then she remembered he had gotten COVID and she wondered, could her 16-year-old have long COVID?

She didn't want to believe that at first.

Maricel: I was like I am over it, I am done, you want to get past it but you can't just get past it because there are people still dealing with long-term effects from it.

As a parent I deal with it.

Noah: They just thought a teenager being a teenager who doesn't want to do what he is supposed to do when I was trying, I was genuinely putting in the effort and not getting the results I was putting in.

Reporter: Sometimes Noah also had chest pain and trouble breathing.

The family signed him up for a nationwide study of long COVID and almost 5400 kids, including a group Rutgers assembled in New Jersey.

Noah: You had COVID so long ago, you should be over it, your body has the antibodies to fight it, you should be good.

But I mean, my mom heard about the research team and the program and she thought it would be a good idea.

Reporter: The results show the suspicions were correct, says this researcher.

Dr. Gaur: Kids have long COVID and it's not all in their head.

Many kids are complaining of certain symptoms that attention needs to be paid.

Dr. Kleinman: The first thing I would tell parents and clinicians is long COVID in children Israel, it is relatively common and certainly not rare.

Reporter: This Dr. co-authored the new paper in the Journal of American Medical Association that reported among six to 11-year-old who previously had COVID, 45% experienced at least one prolonged symptom, most often nausea, stomach pain and memory loss, compared to just 33% in uninfected kids.

Among 12 to 17-year-olds who had COVID, 39% cited loss of smell and taste, fatigue and muscle aches, compared to 27% of uninfected kids.

Symptoms like brain fog often overlapped both groups.

Dr. Kleinman: We can see this is more common in children who had COVID than those who didn't.

Reporter: There is no test for long COVID -- doctors must make a clinical diagnosis on symptoms that can often mimic other illnesses, and there is no magic bullet to treat long COVID either.

Doctors take it one symptom at a time.

>> You find the particular problem and try to fix the problem to the extent we can.

Globally there isn't yet anything that can be done to treat all of the symptoms.

Maricel: When you see the pattern and it is lasting longer than what would normally be a week or two of feeling crappy, you have to say what is going on?

Reporter: She says Noah pushed through and graduated high school and now they will look for a treatment program to help regain his focus and energy.

He feels validated.

Noah: I thought if I could help other people and help myself get the research started and hopefully potentially find a cure, find something to help people with a brain fog and people who are so fatigued like I am get help, because it does suck.

Reporter: He will stay in the federally funded study.

It is growing and researchers want more volunteers.

I am into Flanagan, "NJ Spotlight News."

Anchor: Climate change can be controversial and not everyone believes in it but in New Jersey, teaching it is mandatory and now Princeton University is on a quest to educate dozens of K-12 teachers across the state and expand the way they teach at.

The program is part of the state mandated climate curriculum, focused on equipping educators with ways to explore the topic at every grade level in all types of classrooms.

But as Ted Goldberg reports, even science teachers are learning something new.

Reporter: Princeton is turning the tables on teachers and briefly making them students on campus.

>> They love feeling like a student again and it brings the perspective of what it's like to be a student in their own classroom.

That's one of the big outcomes teachers leave with as well as feeling comfortable and confident.

Reporter: The quest program is teaching 31 public and private school teachers this summer, helping them explain specific scientific concepts to student, part of the state mandated to introduce climate change in the classroom.

>> There were plenty of things especially when it came to the aerosols, things like carbon sequestration in different technologies.

Hearing about that and learning and taking notes and saying this is something I can provide for my students was awesome.

Reporter: Anthony teaches environmental science at Orange high school and was one of the teachers going through this experiment which calculated how much photosynthesis occurred in bags of leaves.

He knew more leaves equals more photosynthesis but he was happy to learn more.

Anthony: When something pops up and I had no clue, I am excited, that's the process for me and I want my students to feel comfortable with coming out with an idea and sang him not really sure what's going on here.

Barbara: A lot of people think it's a science thing, I don't need to concern myself with it but it has impacts on everything and affects everybody.

It disproportionately affects certain groups of people.

Reporter: Like her students.

Barbara: Some of their homes are subject to flooding and some of the schools we have trouble getting to when there are big precipitation events.

Reporter: Barbara teaches in New Brunswick and so students can get overwhelmed learning about the effects of climate change, and quest helps give her the tools to calm them down.

Barbara: It is gloom and doom and beyond me, I can't do anything about it, so just giving the kids awareness, voice and agency, and empowering them, we can all do little things and fight for this together and make a difference, it is important.

Laure: I teach 10 or 15 teachers but they teach thousands of kids so you can have an impact and I think it's amazing.

Reporter: Especially when teachers keep returning for different scientific topics.

Mary Beth: Content-wise and strategy-wise, it's wonderful content.

I've been doing this about 20 years and I will keep coming back because I love learning myself.

Reporter: Four years ago, New Jersey became the first state to mandate climate change education across all subjects.

Projects like a quest help make that easier for teachers in the Garden State.

In Princeton, Ted girl ordered -- Ted Goldberg.

Anchor: In our spotlight on business report, stocks rise as the Fed Chair signals rate cuts are in the cards for September.

Here's how the markets closed for the week.

♪ Anchor: Integrity house, one of the states largest not-for-profit providers of a substance use disorder treatment and mental health services, celebrated their 56th anniversary with integrity day.

The free event offered services and health screenings to the community in honor of the organization's anniversary, which started in Newark.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet and speak with people who now believe there is hope after addiction.

Tiffany: Anytime things's have gotten rough, every time, I looked in the mirror and didn't realize who I was looking at, this has been a place I could pick up the phone and I would get here and be safe.

Reporter: Tiffany says she battled with addiction since she was 14 years old and credits integrity house for helping her get back on track three different times.

Walker says without the organization she would never have been able to give birth to her happy and healthy baby girl.

Tiffany: My baby, I am speechless -- I'm so grateful to God and grateful to integrity for always being the hand of God, to be here and help, and just hope and love, optimism.

Reporter: Her story is no different from the nearly 100 people who showed up to integrity day in Lincoln Park, to celebrate 56 years of service to the city of Newark.

Robert: We are proud to be anchored here in Newark, and we have locations through the state of New Jersey, Hudson County, Bergen County, Morris County, Ocean County, what Essex County is where it started 56 years ago and we are proud to be partners with the city of Newark and helping individuals battle addiction, and also the associated problems that go along with addiction such as mental health, primary care problems, housing, etc.

Reporter: Robert has been CEO for 14 years but says he has been involved with the organization 40 years, and he says he is proof you can rebuild lives after addiction.

Robert: I was a person in recovery that started volunteering and then I became a counselor intern, and I got more involved with things at integrity house.

We know there are great needs in the community and we are here to meet the needs of the community.

We will also unveil our new refreshed brand and new logo.

Eman: We serve consistently right at or slightly over 3000 individuals in our substance use programs, or mental health program hasn't 900 clients regularly.

Reporter: The event offered everything from harm reduction supplies to Maine -- two free health screenings.

Robin: The accidental over deuces -- overdoses in New Jersey have increased year-over-year and it's important to make a bigger impact in the community.

There are a group of individuals who will never get to the brick-and-mortar building, so if people can't get to the mountain we need to take the mountain to the people so we can save lives.

We provide services on the corner of..., wherever individuals are.

We are tracked by demographics of police to permits and other organizations who tell us where hotspots are in the city of Newark, where there are increased numbers of accidental overdoses.

Those are the locations we frequent so we can provide services.

Reporter: The senior director of community engagement gave me a tour of the mobile van that is being sent out to meet those individuals.

Robin: We want to increase access to treatment and let individuals know that just because they don't have insurance or ID, they don't have to stay out in the community and possibly die.

Reporter: She says while addiction treatment is not one size fits all, she's confident integrity house will give those struggling with addiction a path to live up longer and healthier life.

Anchor: That does it for us tonight and before you go, a reminder to download the "NJ Spotlight News" podcast so you could listen to us anytime.

For the entire team here at "NJ Spotlight News," have a great weekend and we will see you back here Monday.

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♪