The saying about New England’s fluid weather – wait a minute, and it’ll change – could also apply these days to the pronouncements coming out of Washington.
Donald Trump
Posted inState Government
Mass. scrambles to understand, react to fed funding freeze
The Trump administration’s move to pause trillions of dollars in federal spending triggered an avalanche of uncertainty, panic and outrage, including a lawsuit from Attorney General Andrea Campbell and several of her counterparts.
Posted inOpinion
Trump, MLK and the power of grace in an age of division
For all the cognitive dissonance we might feel as one of our country’s most divisive figures takes office on the holiday celebrating one of its great healers, we all should consider one way to help bridge the chasm of misunderstanding and conflict in our society: the power of grace.
Posted inHealth Care
Second Trump term has Mass. abortion advocates on edge
Rebecca Hart Holder, the president of Reproductive Equity Now, says Massachusetts needs to brace for possible assaults from the incoming Trump administration on the state’s ability to offer services not only to its own residents but to the thousands who have turned to Massachusetts for abortions in the past two years.
Posted inBy The Numbers
To understand 2024 results, hindsight is not 2020
This year’s Massachusetts results are much more on par, in terms of turnout and outcome, with every other presidential election so far this century — other than 2020. In that way, they represent more of a reversion to the mean than a shift to the right.
Posted inOpinion
The politics of subtraction
Democrats face two major structural headwinds on the path to regaining a majority coalition. First is governance in blue states, which have not exactly created a progressive utopia in recent decades. The second problem is interest groups that dominate the party coalition by practicing a politics of subtraction, whereby policy purity tests seek to narrow the big tent required for progressives to wield power nationally.
Posted inPolitics
Cracks form in Mass. Democratic strongholds, led by heavily Latino cities and towns
Vice President Kamala Harris, who carried the state and its 11 electoral votes by 61.3 percent to President-elect Donald Trump’s 36.5 percent, not only won Massachusetts by a smaller margin than her Democratic predecessors. She won almost every single town by less, a sign that the Democratic coalition is weakening even in its strongholds.
Posted inPolitics
Economic concerns drove shift to Trump, Healey says
Voters “were making a statement in part about how they were feeling in terms of their own personal welfare,” Healey said.
Posted inPolitics
Looming second Trump term dawns on Mass.
The first Trump administration and its fallout was marked, in Massachusetts, by a scramble to shore up protections for marginalized groups and double down on commitments to Democratic priorities that looked imperiled. Trump’s next term could be even rockier for the Bay State.
Posted inPolitics
Study finds use of gender-neutral ‘Latinx’ by Democratic pols is costing them votes
Democratic politicians have gravitated toward use of the more inclusive, gender-neutral term “Latinx” in recent years, but a new study says it’s costing them votes and helps explain some of Donald Trump’s gains with this population.
Posted inNews Analysis
A feisty Deaton fights to claim middle ground
When John Deaton speaks, he wants voters to see Charlie Baker. Elizabeth Warren is trying to make sure they see a potentially decisive vote for whoever emerges as Mitch McConnell’s even harder right successor as Senate Republican leader.
Posted inPolitics
Political Notebook: Teamsters throw new wrench into election
When a union declines to issue an endorsement at the national level, that typically frees up the locals to make their own picks. But the Teamsters president’s old local is staying quiet.
Posted inThe Download
Groups seek to keep Trump off 2024 ballot due to insurrection
Amid a national progressive campaign to keep former president Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, should he choose to run again, Massachusetts’s top elections official says it’s not so simple […]
Posted inPolitics
Groups seek to keep Trump off 2024 ballot due to insurrection
AMID A NATIONAL progressive campaign to keep former president Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, should he choose to run again, Massachusetts’s top elections official says it’s not so simple […]
Posted inPolitics
Here’s the Diehl with wacky Mass. politics
IT’S OFTEN HARD for outsiders to make sense of Massachusetts, where Democrats reign supreme but Republicans have dominated the governor’s office for more than three decades. Today’s development does little […]
Posted inPolitics
Is Trump’s exit bad for Baker?
IT’S TRUMP’S FAULT. Not the insurrection at the US Capitol or the discrediting of fairly conducted elections or the general degradation of democratic principles — though there may be those […]
Posted inPolitics
Trump leaves, but the chaos sown remains
DONALD TRUMP will be the first president in more than 150 years not to attend his successor’s inauguration, jetting off this morning to Florida in a denialist huff about his […]
Posted inOpinion
What are you going to do?
WERE YOU SHOCKED by the events in Washington DC, when pro-Trump demonstrators, urged on by the president himself, breached the US Capital and unleashed mayhem in a final desperate attempt […]
Posted inUncategorized
Baker calls for Trump’s removal
REPUBLICAN GOV. Charlie Baker on Thursday called for President Trump to be removed from office, joining the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation in saying the president fueled division and spread lies […]
Posted inPolitics
Mass. delegation stunned, outraged by mob invasion of Capitol
FOR JAKE AUCHINCLOSS, the first days in office as a new member of Congress have felt the same as they likely did for hundreds of lawmakers before him — momentous […]
Posted inPolitics
Can there be a DC return to ‘normality’?
MONDAY’S MEETING OF presidential electors in state capitols across the country is the kind of ritual that usually gets cursory news coverage, one of those quadrennial stories reported more as […]
Posted inOpinion, Politics
Trump’s rise — and fall — carry a Massachusetts echo
HIS ELECTORAL TRIUMPH seemed like a fluke. Just to pursue our highest public office as a first-time candidate was improbable enough. To go on to win it was so flabbergasting as […]
Posted inPolitics
Mass GOP jumps on unfounded election ‘fraud’ bandwagon
“DEAD PEOPLE voted!” “In Wisconsin, a ‘glitch’ added over 100,000 votes to Biden’s tally in the dead of the night, and ZERO to any other candidate.” Tweets from President Trump? […]
Posted inPolitics
Baker really is a RINO
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER’S status was sealed last night: He is now an officially certified leading figure among the ever-shrinking ranks of major elected Republican officials who question the sanity of […]