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Despite the White House’s aggressive moves to slash federal spending, House leaders also said their new budget plan does not build in any direct contingencies for potential cuts to federal aid, which have already come at breakneck speed as Trump implements his second-term agenda.
State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, the chamber’s budget chief, said their plan going forward will involve “monitoring how the situation is in Washington [and] being ready to pivot when necessary.”
“We can’t be paralyzed by the situation that’s taking place in Washington,” Michlewitz said. “We need to still be moving our budget forward, be aggressive in terms of our support for our constituents, and not get caught up, try to keep blinders on and build the best budget with the information that we have.”
House Speaker Ron Mariano told reporters that Trump has begun wreaking “havoc” on programs on which residents rely. The Trump administration, for example, is closing the Boston Head Start office, which administers free care to families in need. The House budget includes $18.5 million in Head Start funds.
“Government can be both fiscally responsible and an agent of good,” the Quincy Democrat said.
The House budget included several items that amounted to the chamber’s first meaningful response to the Trump administration so far, nearly three months into his presidency.
Mariano said the House budget would include a “significant increase” in funding — to $82.5 million, a roughly 7 percent increase from last year — for Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office, just shy of the total number Campbell requested last month as she’s waged several legal fights against the Trump administration. That amount is $6.8 million more than the $76 million Healey’s January budget would allocate to Campbell, a sum that would be less than what Campbell received during the last fiscal year.
The extra funds are designed “to ensure that AG Campbell can continue to push back against any unconstitutional actions taken by the Trump administration.”
Lawmakers also allocated $5 million to a new immigration legal assistance fund that would be distributed as grants to organizations who assist non-violent offenders. Another $1 million will go to a new gender-affirming care program to community health centers, as the federal government has cut funding to organizations that administer transgender care.
The House also included a measure designed to alleviate Massachusetts’ exorbitant housing costs by ending renter-paid broker’s fees in many situations, which renters typically pay to secure a home or apartment. The House plan would prohibit prospective renters from being charged a broker’s fee if they did not “initiate contact with the broker” during their housing search.
Their proposal comes after Healey included a measure in her own budget requiring the party that hires a broker, usually the landlord, to pay for brokers’ fees, after she said they “should be abolished” in January. The Senate included a similar change in its version of a sweeping housing bill last year, but it failed to make it into the final version of the law passed last July.
The House also allocated $275 million for the state’s emergency shelter system, $50 million less than what Healey’s budget had suggested. It would be far less than the $1 billion the state has committed in total to the program this fiscal year, but, Michlewitz said, reflects the state’s efforts to rein in costs, including instituting a 4,000-family cap starting this December.
The Healey administration said Wednesday that fewer than 5,000 families were in the system as of this week, the first time it’s dipped below that level since the summer of 2023.
The Trump administration has already begun cutting aid tabbed for Massachusetts on several fronts. It has already sought cuts to school aid and health funding, and Healey’s office on Wednesday said the Trump administration canceled another $90 million in disaster prevention aid for Massachusetts communities from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Healey said that move “ripped the rug out from under” 18 cities statewide that had planned to upgrade local infrastructure to withstand natural disasters.
Meanwhile, Congress is pursuing a spending blueprint that Democrats and state officials warn could mean deep cuts to Medicaid, through which the state is reimbursed billions of dollars each year for its MassHealth program. In all, the state budget typically leans on roughly $16 billion in federal aid — most of which is tied to health insurance for 2 million Massachusetts residents, including children, low-income families, and those with disabilities.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Matt Stout can be reached at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him @mattpstout. Anjali Huynh can be reached at anjali.huynh@globe.com.
BROCKTON, Mass. (WJAR) — Four people were shot on Friday night after hundreds had gathered to watch a World Cup match in Massachusetts.
Police said the shooting happened just before midnight on Main Street in Brockton.
Officers said the victims were taken to the hospital.
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Police have not said if there were any arrests.
BOSTON, (WPRI) — A somerset man has been cited for allegedly causing a deadly wrong-way crash in Boston late Saturday night.
Just before midnight, troopers from the H9 Barracks were called for a report of a multi-vehicle crash on I-93 North before Exit 15A.
A preliminary investigation showed that the driver of a 2004 Cadillac Escalade, identified as 81-year-old Antone Carvalho, of Somerset, entered Route 93 North at Exit 15B and drove southbound in the northbound lanes.
Two vehicles, a Honda Odyssey and an Audi A4, attempted to avoid the Carvalho and crashed into each other.
Four people in the Honda Odyssey, were taken to a Boston-area hospital for evaluation.
Shortly after the initial crash, police say Carvalho collided head-on with a Chevrolet Cruze.
Carvalho and the other driver were taken to Boston-area hospitals for their injuries
The driver of the Chevrolet Cruze, identified as a man in his 20’s from Haverhill, died from his injuries.
Carvalho will be issued a summons to appear in court at a later date.
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Norman Rockwell painted Stockbridge so often that the real Main Street now looks like one of his canvases come to life. That is the trick these Massachusetts towns pull off. A whaling-era cobblestone lane on Nantucket and a Revolutionary common in Concord do the same thing in different accents. Each one packs its best landmarks into a few blocks you can cover on foot. The eight New England streets here all sit under 50,000 residents and earn their reputation the honest way.
Fewer than 2,000 people live in Stockbridge, yet its Main Street may be the most recognizable in the state. Credit Norman Rockwell, who lived here and painted the view down the street so many times it lodged in the national memory. The white clapboard buildings, the old inns, and the big shade trees are all still right where he left them, and people still use them.
The Red Lion Inn has welcomed guests on this corner since 1773, and its long front porch is the street’s anchor in every sense. A short walk away, the Norman Rockwell Museum holds the largest collection of his work and even his relocated studio. Naumkeag adds a Gilded Age cottage with terraced gardens climbing the hillside. Come December, the town recreates Rockwell’s famous “Main Street at Christmas” scene with vintage cars parked along the curb, which is about as close as a real place gets to stepping into a painting.
Edith Wharton built her dream house just outside Lenox, and the writer’s eye for proportion seems to have rubbed off on the whole town. The center is small enough to park once and walk, with bookshops, cafes, and galleries shoulder to shoulder under the trees. Under 10,000 people live here, and the place wears its Berkshire elegance lightly.
The Mount, Wharton’s 1902 estate, runs as a house museum and public garden and hosts readings and outdoor events all summer. Ventfort Hall, a Jacobean-style mansion built for a sister of J.P. Morgan, fills in more of the Gilded Age story. Just up the road, Tanglewood draws crowds every July and August as the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, so a quiet shopping street can be ten minutes from a world-famous concert lawn. Few towns this size balance that kind of culture against that little traffic.
On April 19, 1775, the shot heard round the world was fired a short walk from where Concord shoppers now buy their morning coffee. That is the strange gift of this town. Its pretty village center sits below 20,000 residents, and its old houses, churches, and civic buildings look calm until you remember what happened among them.
Minute Man National Historical Park preserves the battle road and the fields where colonial militia turned back British regulars. Old North Bridge marks the spot itself, with Daniel Chester French’s Minute Man statue standing guard. Concord also raised more than its share of writers, and Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, where she wrote “Little Women,” still opens for tours. Two miles south, Walden Pond holds the woods Thoreau made famous, an easy swim or walk that closes the loop between the town’s history and its quieter ideas.
The streets in Marblehead’s Old Town were laid out for foot traffic and fishing nets, not cars, so they bend and narrow and dead-end at the water. The town tops 20,000 residents now, but the historic core feels far older and more intimate. Washington Street and the lanes around it run past brick sidewalks and preserved houses, with the harbor flashing into view between rooftops.
The Jeremiah Lee Mansion, a grand Georgian house built in 1768 for the wealthiest merchant in colonial Massachusetts, still keeps its original hand-painted English wallpaper. Old Burial Hill rises above town with weathered colonial gravestones and one of the best harbor views around. Abbot Hall, the brick town hall with the clock tower, houses the original “Spirit of ’76” painting. Walk the waterfront and the reason for the whole town becomes obvious. Marblehead grew up facing the sea, and it never turned away.
Federal-era sea captains built their fortunes at the mouth of the Merrimack, and their three-story brick blocks still line the streets of downtown Newburyport. The Main Street feeling here spreads across several streets rather than one. Under 20,000 residents keep the center humming, with shops and restaurants filling old facades right down to the riverbank.
Market Square and State Street form the heart of it, a tight grid of brick that survived a great fire and a wave of 1970s urban renewal to come out the other side intact. The Custom House Maritime Museum, set in a granite 1835 building, tells the port’s seafaring story. Waterfront Park gives you a bench and a view of the boats. A few miles out on Plum Island, the Parker River refuge at Joppa Flats turns the same trip into prime birdwatching, so a downtown afternoon can end with herons instead of storefronts.
A plain red fishing shack on a granite pier may be the most painted building in America, and it sits right in Rockport’s harbor. Locals call it Motif No. 1, after an art teacher who got tired of seeing his students paint it. The town runs under 10,000 residents and folds its best parts into a few tight blocks by the water.
Main Street leads to Bearskin Neck, a skinny peninsula crammed with galleries, candy shops, and lobster shacks that ends with the open Atlantic. Front Beach puts sand and water within a short stroll of the shops. The Shalin Liu Performance Center, opened in 2010, built a concert hall with a wall of glass behind the stage, so the ocean becomes the backdrop for a string quartet. You can wander from a storefront to a harbor view to a gallery without ever breaking stride.
Great Barrington wired the first downtown in the world lit entirely by alternating current, back in 1886, and the place has kept that forward lean ever since. Under 10,000 residents fill a center that feels genuinely busy, with restaurants, bookstores, and galleries spread along Main Street and Railroad Street. It looks like an old Berkshire town and behaves like a young one.
The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, a restored 1905 theater, books films, concerts, and live broadcasts year-round. The Housatonic River Walk threads a half-mile greenway along the water right behind Main Street, the work of volunteers who spent decades clearing a once-polluted bank. Just outside town, Monument Mountain offers a short climb to a quartzite ridge and a long view over the Housatonic River valley, the same trail Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne hiked together in 1850.
Whaling money built Nantucket’s Main Street, and the cobblestones laid to keep wagon wheels out of the mud are still there to rattle your suitcase. The island stays well under 50,000 year-round residents even at the height of summer. Brick sidewalks, weathered shingles, and window boxes give the downtown the texture of an old port rather than a new outdoor mall.
The Whaling Museum, set in an 1847 candle factory, explains how a small island once lit the lamps of the world, right down to a full sperm whale skeleton. Brant Point Lighthouse marks the harbor entrance and ranks among the most photographed beacons in New England. Straight Wharf keeps the working waterfront within steps of the shops, and the Oldest House, built in 1686, anchors the streetscape in the island’s first century. Every detail down to the gray shingles seems to point back to the same seafaring story.
What ties these eight together is not a shared look but a shared honesty. Stockbridge and Lenox lean on Berkshire culture, Concord carries the weight of 1775, and Great Barrington keeps reinventing itself. Marblehead, Newburyport, Rockport, and Nantucket all grew up facing salt water and never lost the habit. The best Main Streets here are not stage sets. They are working downtowns that happen to be worth a long, slow look.
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