MAURA HEALEY’S FINAL State of the Commonwealth speech in her first term as governor, delivered last Thursday, had to do several things: burnish her record as she runs for re-election, reassure the state that she has made progress on systems in crisis like housing and transportation, roll out a few policy proposals, and set the stage for a year of unpredictable federal actions after President Trump spent his first year back in office taking direct shots at Massachusetts priority areas like green energy and higher education.

This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon senior reporters Chris Lisinski and Jennifer Smith dig into Healey’s speech, comparing the governor’s tone and policy position to earlier years, reviewing reactions to it, and looking ahead at what it says about Healey’s second run for the corner office.

Affordability was the theme of the evening, but Healey also devoted a good chunk of the speech to taking aim at Trump and the impact his policies are having on the state.

“The first and most striking thing for myself, and frankly, I think most of the other attendees and those in the press corps, was not so much about policy or promises, but about tone,” Lisinski said. After a year of Trump’s “never-ending stream of impacts causing headaches for Massachusetts,” Healey’s speech was a departure from her 2025 State of the Commonwealth, delivered days before Trump’s return to office, in which the governor did not say his name once.

This year, Lisinski noted, “She really sought to contrast herself from the federal government, and to pitch Massachusetts as, I guess, a bulwark or a shield against overreach by the Trump administration.”

While groups including Planned Parenthood lauded the governor for her commitment to reproductive choice, progressives bristled at the lack of specific policy promises to address what Healey described as needlessly aggressive US Immigration and Customs Enforcement action chilling entire communities.

Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Massachusetts, said after the speech that “the governor offered nothing. Let’s be clear: reining in ICE violence is a kitchen table [matter], as there is no such thing as affordability when families are being broken apart and workers are being kidnapped on the way to work.”

On affordability, Republican gubernatorial hopefuls savaged Healey’s plan to reduce utility bills during the costly heating season, which depends in large part on utility companies simply delaying payments until spring and summer.

“Gov. Healey’s ‘plan’ for energy relief is basically a payday loan scam,” Mike Kennealy said in his response. He called the speech a “masterclass in political spin” and slammed Healey’s commitment to a “climate agenda” that he blamed for the state’s high utility rates.

On energy, Healey touted the now-operational high-voltage transmission line bringing hydroelectricity from Quebec into the Bay State. But Smith noted the absence of comment on wind power, after the governor in 2024 touted the state as “leading the clean energy revolution” with the Vineyard Wind project and looked ahead at reviewing offshore wind proposals that “could equal up to 25 percent of our energy needs.”

Trump has identified offshore wind as a target, halting construction on major projects by citing national security concerns and throwing offshore wind plans across New England coasts into limbo.

“Those sorts of pivots aren’t always apparent in the speech itself in front of you,” Smith said of the governor’s wind omission this year and last, “but when you can track it year over year, you can tell that since 2024, Healey has sort of seen that it’s going to become a lot harder to promise wind projects going forward.”

Healey gestured at the difficult path ahead, even while declaring the state of the Commonwealth to be strong, saying there’s “no doubt it may get worse before it gets better.” Her plans to “do what we have to do to make it better” should come into sharper relief this week as the governor rolls out her annual budget proposal.

On the episode, Lisinski and Smith discuss the governor’s posture on Trump (5:00), her housing promises (13:00), and what the speech teased about Healey’s upcoming budget filing (32:00).