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Why is conservative criticism of Boston so loud all of a sudden? – The Boston Globe

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Why is conservative criticism of Boston so loud all of a sudden? – The Boston Globe


In the past, cities such as San Francisco and Chicago attracted the ire of conservatives for their liberal policies; Boston tended to fly under the radar, until now.

“Boston is a New England liberal city, which is maybe the quintessential elite university town,” said Matthew Baum, a professor of global communications and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “All of those things make it a natural source of antipathy for the current administration. Whatever you think about their policies, they’re directed on all the stuff that makes Boston, Boston. I think that goes a long way to explaining: Why Boston?”

The feud between the city and the White House kicked into high gear in late February, when Trump “border czar” Tom Homan declared he was “coming to Boston and I’m bringing hell with me.” Homan also criticized Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox for abiding by a Massachusetts law that dictates local police cannot keep immigrants detained for future deportation without a criminal warrant. Wu jumped in to defend Cox, saying he “has my complete confidence & support” in a post on social media. “We’re going to continue following & enforcing the laws to keep all Bostonians safe.”

Then, on March 5, Wu testified before Congress about Boston’s immigration policies. Her testimony included a fresh dig at Homan.

“Shame on him for lying about my city,” Wu said. “For having the nerve to insult our police commissioner, who has overseen the safest Boston’s been in anyone’s lifetime. Bring him here under oath, and let’s ask him some questions.”

A few weeks later on March 18, Homan kept his promise and came to Boston but did not make his presence in the city publicly known until after he left. According to federal officials, over a six-day operation across Massachusetts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 370 people. Of those arrested, 205 had “significant criminal convictions or charges,” according to ICE officials, who didn’t provide information on the other 165 people arrested. Homan, in a post on X, claimed the operation was necessary “because Massachusetts and Boston are sanctuaries that refuse to cooperate with ICE.”

Governor Maura Healey responded that Massachusetts is “not a sanctuary state, and Massachusetts law enforcement regularly partners with federal agencies and federal law enforcement to keep people safe.”

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“Public safety is a major priority for me, and it should never be a partisan issue,” she added.

But political operatives on both sides of the aisle say the animosity between a progressive city such as Boston and the Republican-controlled federal government is a symptom of the country’s wider partisan divide.

“Trump is a master storyteller, and he understands intuitively that the best narratives have a good versus evil kind of setting,” said Doug Rubin, a Democratic strategist who has worked on campaigns for the likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, and former Boston mayor Marty Walsh.

By calling out Boston, Trump and his allies are attempting “to pit the working class and working families against liberal elites. That’s a narrative that has worked for him successfully in both of his campaigns,” Rubin added.

Wendy Wakeman, a Massachusetts-based GOP strategist, said it was local politicians who courted Trump’s scrutiny, not the other way around. “I don’t think you can find a more radical mayor in the country than Michelle Wu,” she said. “I am not surprised that the reasonable policies of President Trump — which are enacted to protect Americans — are drawing his attention, and his administration’s attention, to Massachusetts.”

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Still, Wakeman argued the Trump administration’s deportations are not politically motivated but instead are born out of practicality. “Why do bank robbers rob banks? It’s because that’s where the money is,” Wakeman said. “Why is Tom Holman coming to Massachusetts to arrest criminals from other nations living in the United States? It’s because they’re here.”

Homan has said repeatedly he targeted Boston after reading news reports about undocumented people committing crimes in the city.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

“Conservative media promotes this vision of American cities being overrun by illegal immigrants causing crimes,” said Republican strategist Alex Conant, who was communications director for current Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential bid. Outlets including Fox News, Breitbart, and Daily Wire have all recently covered immigration issues in Boston.

“Trump has always been preoccupied by the state of American cities,” Conant said. “I think Boston is a great American city that he sees as in decline, not unlike Chicago, San Francisco, New York, or D.C. And part of that is he has an image of cities filled with illegal immigrants committing crimes and he has made removing immigrants an administration priority.”

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Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat who represents parts of California’s Bay Area and has frequently parried Trump’s jabs at his district, recommends Boston officials simply do not back down: “Shrinking is the worst thing you can do because then he’ll know that he owns you, and he’ll just keep coming back to get more. That’s the only language a bully understands, is strength.”

Baum, the Harvard professor, argued that immigration policy alone isn’t what’s driving the wedge between Boston and the White House.

“It seems like the core economic engines of this region are under aggressive assault right now,” he said, referencing the administration’s efforts to cut biomedical research funding and demands on elite universities. The former, he said, is being targeted because “post-COVID, there’s been a notable decline in trust in science and medicine, disproportionately among Republicans.” Meanwhile, universities are being sanctioned because of “the perceived overreach of progressives on hot-button cultural issues, with the epicenter being elite colleges,” he said.

For the Trump administration, the likely strategy behind cracking down on Boston “is to shoot a warning shot across the bow at other cities,” Baum said.

Among those interviewed for this story, though, there was consensus the tension is unlikely to abate any time soon.

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Wakeman expects Massachusetts will remain in conservative crosshairs because so many of the state’s elected officials have “signaled that they’re at war with Donald Trump.” Plus, any blowback will have little practical effect on Trump executing his agenda.

“If the state of Massachusetts had some juice — in other words, a congressman or a senator who was important for future votes — then perhaps somebody might be able to run interference,” she said.

Conant shared a similar assessment that “this is a fight with few political consequences” for the president since “there’s not a lot of Trump voters in Boston.”

Tal Kopan of Globe staff contributed reporting to this story.


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Julian E.J. Sorapuru can be reached at julian.sorapuru@globe.com. Follow him on X @JulianSorapuru.





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Boston University students protest ICE Allston Car Wash raid that BU student claims he started

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Boston University students protest ICE Allston Car Wash raid that BU student claims he started


A protest was held at Boston University Monday night after a student there claimed his tip led to an immigration raid at the Allston Car Wash last week.

The attorney for the nine employees who were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said three had posted bail on Monday, but none of them had been released.

Video of the incident on November 4 showed ICE agents pull up to the car wash, put the employees in handcuffs and take them away.

“They were asked basically, ‘Do you have any id or documents?’ and when they said ‘Yes, it’s in our lockers,’ they were thrown in the vans and handcuffed and driven away by 22 agents with masks over their faces,” the workers’ attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told WBZ-TV.

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Zac Segal statement

Three days later, Zac Segal, president of the BU College Republicans, posted a message online, saying, “I’ve been calling ICE for months on end. This week they finally responded to my request to detain these criminals. As someone who lives in the neighborhood, I’ve seen how American jobs are being given away to those with no right to be here.”

Those comments set off a social media firestorm and Monday’s protest on campus. WBZ has reached out to Segal several times in the last week, but he has not returned any requests for comment.

“This may be naive to say but I was very surprised that this kind of energy would come out of a Boston University student. It was just really disheartening and shocking to me,” said BU employee Olivia Maliszewski, who attended the rally.

Homeland Security rejects “silly rumor”

A spokesperson for Homeland Security said Segal wasn’t the reason for the raid. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called it “a targeted immigration enforcement operation.”

“The operation was highly targeted and relied on law enforcement intelligence-not your silly rumor,” she said in a statement.

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Boston University statement

BU President Melissa Gilliam said the school has “had many concerns raised by our campus community and neighbors” about Segal’s post.

“We must affirm the dignity and worth of all people. Too often, we fail to see one another’s full humanity, overlooking the rich complexity and unique gifts each person brings. When we focus only on differences-skin color, political views-we risk fostering division and pain where there should be unity and understanding,” she said in a statement.

The Allston Car Wash, where nine people were detained by ICE agents in an immigration raid on Nov. 4, 2025

Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

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Pomerleau said the nine employees were detained illegally without due process. They range in age from 19 to 67. One woman was taken into custody on her 45th birthday, according to Pomerleau. He said they’re immigrants from Guatemala, Columbia, Honduras and El Salvador and added that many of them have work visas.

“Three entered under the Biden administration, four were gotaways at the border, one entered illegally under W. Bush, and another overstayed his visa which expired under President Clinton,” McLaughlin said.

Allston Car Wash statement

Over the weekend, the car wash issued its first statement following the raid.

“At no point did this individual contact us, speak with management, or inquire about our employees or operations. Publicly labeling our workforce as “criminals” without any knowledge of who they are is reckless and distressing,” a spokesperson said of Segal’s comment.

“Our employees are good, hardworking individuals who come to work each day to provide for themselves and their families. We take pride in creating a workplace where people are treated with dignity and respect. Many employees have worked with us for years and in some cases decades.” 

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Boston’s Michelin restaurants will be announced tomorrow. Here’s what to know. – The Boston Globe

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Boston’s Michelin restaurants will be announced tomorrow. Here’s what to know. – The Boston Globe


The Michelin Guide will announce the restaurants included in its Northeast Cities edition on Nov. 18, at a ceremony at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

For the first time, the guide includes Boston and Philadelphia. The other cities in the Northeast category are Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Michelin chooses which restaurants to include by sending anonymous inspectors out into the region. In addition to awarding one, two, and three stars to restaurants, it offers designations such as Bib Gourmand, recognizing good quality food that is a good value (in other words, places the inspectors like to eat when they’re off the clock), and a green star for sustainability.

Three star restaurants are extremely rare; among the handful in the United States, Alinea, Inn at Little Washington, and Masa all just lost their third star. Demoted to two, they remain in rarefied company. There are only about three dozen two-star restaurants in this country. Boston is likelier to see one star and Bib Gourmand awards for this year’s guide.

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The guide’s presence is subsidized by local tourism boards. According to a Globe story, tourism marketing bureau Meet Boston declined to share the price tag for Michelin’s attention to this area, “but a person briefed on the matter indicated that the three-year partnership costs just over $1 million.”

Previously, Visit California reportedly paid Michelin $600,000 to expand its reach statewide. The Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau spent $1 million. Colorado tourism boards and resort companies joined forces, paying $70,000 to $100,000 each for consideration, according to The New York Times.

Which Boston restaurants are likely to receive Michelin accolades?

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Establishments that have garnered national attention will naturally be on inspectors’ radars. For example, Italian restaurants La Padrona and Pammy’s, Thai stunner Mahaniyom, and Jamie Bissonnette’s ode to Korean cuisine, Somaek, have all received recent mention in The New York Times.

O Ya, the little sushi omakase restaurant with a big reputation near South Station, has been a frequent speculative mention. Michelin has favored omakase spots in other markets: 311 and Wa Shin might also be among the contenders. Places with ambitious tasting menus — Asta, Mooncusser — could have similar draw. And perhaps nowhere has a more ambitious tasting menu than Nightshade Noodle Bar, offering up to 30 courses from chef-owner Rachel Miller. If this Vietnamese- and French-influenced ode to risk-taking and creativity isn’t a Michelin contender, what is?

That’s a question that’s hard to answer without knowing how Michelin thinks about excellence in 2025. Does the guide seek out time-tested stalwarts like Harvest and Oleana, deeply local neighborhood joints like Brassica and Urban Hearth, places that embody the terroir of the region (in our case, that would be seafood spots like oysters bars Neptune and Select), places with unique points of view that tell some kind of personal story, or all of the above?

Boston restaurants and diners will find out Nov. 18.

The Michelin Guide is a game changer for Boston

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These Boston restaurants might fly under the radar, but they still deserve a nod from Michelin

Which Boston restaurants will get Michelin stars?


Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @devrafirst.





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Fund-raising philanthropist Susan Hurley, who died at 62, was Boston’s marathon woman – The Boston Globe

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Fund-raising philanthropist Susan Hurley, who died at 62, was Boston’s marathon woman – The Boston Globe


And then there was her personal approach to preparing first-time marathoners to toe the starting line. Over the years she took thousands of runners on countless miles of training runs leading up to Boston Marathon day.

“It’s fun,” she said in an interview posted on YouTube. “I mean, this is what I live for. I want to see people succeed. This is life-changing for them to be able to run a marathon and be inspired by a charity and earn their spot at the starting line that way. For them, it’s the Super Bowl of running.”

Ms. Hurley, who helped raise her final millions while running her last two Boston Marathons after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, died Nov. 1. She was 62 and lived in North Andover.

“I always love to be known as Boston’s biggest cheerleader,” Ms. Hurley, a cheerleader in high school and later for the New England Patriots, said in the 2020 YouTube interview with Thom Gilligan, founder and chief executive of Marathon Tours & Travel.

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Trading football field sidelines for road racecourses, she cheered on year after year of runners, even while running in the marathons herself.

“In addition to being everyone’s cheerleader, she was everyone’s mom. She really cared about all her runners,” said Sarah Wessmann, team captain and a member of each year’s marathon contingent for Last Call Foundation. The charity, inspired by the heroic life and line-of-duty death in 2014 of her then-fiancé, Boston firefighter Michael Kennedy, funds education and research to advance firefighter safety.

Near the end of each Boston Marathon, Ms. Hurley’s son Ryan McGillivray recalled, she could be spotted with her arm around the waist of another runner — helping a member of her charity team or even a stranger whose strength was fading.

From the beginning of marathon preparations, Ms. Hurley stressed that all runners should have “their Boylston Street moment, hearing the crowd roar and seeing the finish line in the distance, and the happiness that brings,” said Ryan, who lives in Wrentham and is vice president of operations for DMSE Sports, the event management firm founded by his father, Dave McGillivray.

During weeks of training runs, Ms. Hurley helped newcomers prepare for the vagaries of the potentially punishing weather, and for the constancy of Heartbreak Hill.

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In February she would hold the fund-raising “Superhero 17” – a 17-mile run along the marathon course in which participants ran dressed as superheroes, their merriment a distraction from the arduous training workout.

And Ms. Hurley “didn’t just run the marathon. She had you learn about the course and the history and why things matter,” said Wessmann, who was among the runners Ms. Hurley helped train.

Ms. Hurley made sure runners knew about legendary Olympian Johnny Kelley, who completed the Boston Marathon nearly 60 times. She led training runs to Kelley’s statue in Newton so everyone could pay their respects.

“It’s a cliché,” Wessmann said, “but she really did put the fun in fund-raising.”

The third of four sisters, Susan Ann Hurley was born on April 8, 1963, and grew up in North Reading.

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Her mother, Sylvia Bidmead Hurley, was a real estate title examiner, and her father, James Hurley, was assistant register at Middlesex Family and Probate Court.

A cheerleading squad champion at North Reading High School, Ms. Hurley became a runner early on.

“I started running when I used to miss the bus in high school and I haven’t stopped,” she told Boston Magazine just before the 2013 marathon. “I’m proud to say I am a person who has worked out her whole life and never stopped and rarely missed a day.”

Ms. Hurley, who attended Emerson College, formerly was married to Dave McGillivray, with whom she had two sons, Ryan and Max.

She was as enthusiastic a mother as she was training runners and raising millions, said Max, who lives in Los Angeles.

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“Energetic doesn’t even cover it,” he said. “Her energy, her light, her celebratory nature was just infectious. Everyone will say it: she was a cheerleader in every sense of the word.”

Ms. Hurley found ways to make the marathon experience possible for participants facing a wide variety of hurdles, from spinal cord injuries to living without homes.

“The list goes on and on,” Max said, “and no person, in my eyes, was ever turned away from her light.”

Russell Hoyt, president and chief executive of Team Hoyt and the Hoyt Foundation, said Ms. Hurley was instrumental in helping the family organizations expand their reach and ensure their legacy after the deaths of his father, Dick Hoyt, and brother, Rick Hoyt, who had pioneered duo wheelchair road racing.

Russell said Ms. Hurley helped the organizations reach beyond the Boston Marathon to other major events, and to launch the Dick and Judy Hoyt “Yes You Can” inclusion grants, named for his parents, to assist families in getting their children with disabilities included in activities alongside non-disabled peers.

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“Sue helped us do something new and more powerful,” Hoyt said, adding that “she was the type of person who made you want to be a better person yourself, just by spending time with her.”

A service has been held for Ms. Hurley, who in addition to her two sons, mother, and former husband leaves three sisters, Lisa First of Alvin, Texas, Mary of Norfolk, and Cheryl Cuoco of Wrentham; her fiancé, Barry Foland of Owings Mills, Md.; and three stepchildren, Elle, Luke, and Chloe McGillivray, all of North Andover.

In August, Ms. Hurley spoke at the opening of Gronk Playground on the Charles River Esplanade, which was funded by her friend Rob Gronkowski, the former star New England Patriots tight end.

Ms. Hurley and Rob Gronkowski at the August opening of the Gronk Playground on the Charles River Esplanade.PSPH/Photo Credit: Liz Oberacker Pure

Gronkowski was overcome with emotion more than once, speaking a few feet away from where she sat next to Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

When it was her turn to speak, Ms. Hurley thanked Gronkowski for his philanthropy and floated an idea: “Can we just make it official and sign him for a day so he can retire a Patriot?”

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Several days after she died, Kraft and Gronkowski announced they would honor her wish.

On Instagram, Gronkowski wrote that “her strength and resilience were truly inspirational,” and added that “without Susan, there would be no Gronk Playground.”

In a CBS Boston interview posted on YouTube in 2023, a year after she was diagnosed, Ms. Hurley was back to her energetic pace, managing 500 runners and pushing that year’s fund-raising past the $4 million mark.

The cancer diagnosis had come as a shock, she said. A doctor broke the news a day after she had completed a 17-mile training run. In that interview, she was grateful for a reprieve treatment had brought.

“It is a miracle. I believe it’s God’s hand,” she said. “I really, truly, truly believe that there is a plan for me and I’m not ready to leave this planet and leave this earth. There’s work for me to do here.”

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Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.





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