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Biden, Trump win Massachusetts primaries on Super Tuesday, move closer to a November rematch

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Biden, Trump win Massachusetts primaries on Super Tuesday, move closer to a November rematch


Politics

A voter make’s his choices during Super Tuesday primary election voting at the Bridgewater Middle School. Jonathan Wiggs /Globe Staff

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, were sweeping the coast-to-coast contests on Super Tuesday, all but cementing a November rematch and increasing pressure on the former president’s last major rival, Nikki Haley, to leave the Republican race.

Biden and Trump had each won Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Massachusetts. Biden also won the Democratic primaries in Vermont and Iowa.

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Haley’s strongest performance was in Vermont, where she was essentially tied with Trump in early results. But the former president carried other states that might have been favorable to Haley such as Virginia and Maine, which have large swaths of moderate voters like those who have backed her in previous primaries.

Not enough states will have voted until later this month for Trump or Biden to formally become their parties’ presumptive nominees. But the primary’s biggest day made their rematch a near certainty. Both the 81-year-old Biden and the 77-year-old Trump continue to dominate their parties despite facing questions about age and neither having broad popularity across the general electorate.

Haley, who has argued both Biden and Trump are too old to return to the White House, was spending election night watching results in the Charleston, South Carolina, area, where she lives. Her campaign website doesn’t list any upcoming events. Still, her aides insisted that the mood at her watch party was “jubilant.”

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, meanwhile, was packed for a victory party that featured hors d’oeuvres including empanadas and baked brie. Among those attending were staff and supporters, including the rapper Forgiato Blow and former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn. The crowd erupted as Fox News, playing on screens around the ballroom, announced that the former president had won North Carolina’s GOP primary.

While much of the focus is on the presidential race, there were also important down-ballot contests. The governor’s race took shape in North Carolina, where Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein will face off in a state that both parties are fiercely contesting ahead of November.

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California voters were choosing candidates who will compete to fill the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein. And in Los Angeles, a progressive prosecutor attempted to fend off an intense reelection challenge in a contest that could serve as a barometer of the politics of crime.

The earliest either Biden or Trump can become his party’s presumptive nominee is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden. But both are already signaling publicly that they are looking forward to facing each other again.

“We have to beat Biden — he is the worst president in history,” Trump said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.”

Biden countered with a pair of radio interviews aimed at shoring up his support among Black voters, who helped anchor his 2020 coalition.

“If we lose this election, you’re going to be back with Donald Trump,” Biden said on the “DeDe in the Morning” show hosted by DeDe McGuire. “The way he talks about, the way he acted, the way he has dealt with the African American community, I think, has been shameful.”

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Despite Biden’s and Trump’s domination of their parties, polls make it clear that the broader electorate does not want this year’s general election to be identical to the 2020 race. A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds a majority of Americans don’t think either Biden or Trump has the necessary mental acuity for the job.

“Both of them failed, in my opinion, to unify this country,” said Brian Hadley, 66, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The final days before Tuesday demonstrated the unique nature of this year’s campaign. Rather than barnstorming the states holding primaries, Biden and Trump held rival events last week along the U.S.-Mexico border, each seeking to gain an advantage in the increasingly fraught immigration debate.

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Monday to restore Trump to primary ballots following attempts to ban him for his role in helping spark the Capitol riot, Trump pointed to the 91 criminal counts against him to accuse Biden of weaponizing the courts.

“Fight your fight yourself,” Trump said. “Don’t use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent.”

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Biden delivers the State of the Union address Thursday, then will campaign in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The former president has nonetheless already vanquished more than a dozen major Republican challengers and now faces only Haley, his former U.N. ambassador. She has maintained strong fundraising and notched her first primary victory over the weekend in Washington, D.C., a Democrat-run city with few registered Republicans. Trump scoffed that Haley had been “crowned queen of the swamp.”

“We can do better than two 80-year-old candidates for president,” Haley said at a rally Monday in the Houston suburbs.

Trump’s victories, however dominating, have shown vulnerabilities with influential voter blocs, especially in college towns like Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College, or Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, as well as areas with high concentrations of independents. That includes Minnesota, a state Trump did not carry in his otherwise overwhelming Super Tuesday performance in 2016.

Seth De Penning, a self-described conservative-leaning independent, voted Tuesday morning in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for Haley, he said, because the GOP “needs a course correction.” De Penning, 40, called his choice a vote of conscience and said he has never voted for Trump because of concerns about his temperament and character.

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Still, Haley winning any Super Tuesday contests would take an upset, and a Trump sweep would only intensify pressure on her to leave the race.

Biden has his own problems, including low approval ratings and polls suggesting that many Americans, even a majority of Democrats, don’t want to see the 81-year-old running again. The president’s easy Michigan primary win last week was spoiled slightly by an “uncommitted” campaign organized by activists who disapprove of the president’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Allies of the “uncommitted” vote are pushing similar protest votes elsewhere, including Minnesota. The state has a significant population of Muslims, including in its Somali American community.

In Massachusetts, 29-year-old Aliza Hoover explained her “no preference” vote as a principled opposition to Biden’s approach to Israel but said it does not necessarily reflect how she will vote in November.

“I think a vote of no preference right now is a statement to make yourself a single-issue voter, and at the moment the fact that my tax dollars are funding a genocide does make me a single-issue voter,” Hoover said.

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Biden also is the oldest president ever and Republicans key on any verbal slip he makes. His aides insist that skeptical voters will come around once it is clear that either Trump or Biden will be elected again in November. Trump is now the same age Biden was during the 2020 campaign, and he has exacerbated questions about his own fitness with recent flubs, such as mistakenly suggesting he was running against Barack Obama, who left the White House in 2017.

“I would love to see the next generation move up and take leadership roles,” said Democrat Susan Steele, 71, who voted Tuesday for Biden in Portland, Maine.

Such concerns haven’t moved ardent Trump supporters.

“Trump would eat him up,” Ken Ballos, a retired police officer who attended a weekend Trump rally in Virginia, adding that Biden “would look like a fool up there.”

Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Steve LeBlanc in Boston; David Sharp in Portland, Maine; Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia; Trisha Ahmed in Eden Prairie, Minnesota; and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

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Massachusetts

71-year-old Massachusetts school bus driver fired after allegedly urinating inside bus with students on board

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71-year-old Massachusetts school bus driver fired after allegedly urinating inside bus with students on board


A 71-year-old Swansea, Massachusetts school bus driver has been fired for allegedly urinating inside the bus with students on board Monday morning.

Investigators say the bus driver, whose name was not released, was on the way to Hoyle Elementary School when he pulled over and told students to move to the back of the bus.

“The driver then allegedly relieved himself while sitting in the driver’s seat,” according to a press release from Swansea Public Schools and police. “Through the investigation, it is currently believed that no students on the bus witnessed the driver’s actions.”

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The driver then completed the trip and dropped students off at school. An investigation was launched after some students reported the unusual behavior to their teachers. So far, no charges have been filed against the driver.

There were 12 Pre-K to Grade 2 students on the bus at the time. All their parents have been notified.

The Swansea Police Department is investigating and school officials filed a report with the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.

“This is a matter we take extremely seriously,” Swansea Public Schools Superintendent Scott Holcomb and Police Chief Mark Foley said in a statement. “This type of behavior in the presence of children, especially young children, is unacceptable, and we will continue to look into the incident.”

The driver is an employee of Amaral Bus Company, which provides transportation services to Swansea Public Schools. The district is reviewing its relationship with the company after the incident. 

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‘That comes with a price tag’: How snow removal is busting town budgets – The Boston Globe

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‘That comes with a price tag’: How snow removal is busting town budgets – The Boston Globe


“The way we experience climate change is through extremes,” said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at Climate Central. “All of that comes with a price tag.”

Across the region, officials are trying to figure out how to pay that price. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has already spent more than $185 million on snow and ice removal this winter — about $20 million beyond what was spent during the “Snowmageddon” winter of 2015. State officials are weighing whether to seek aid from the Trump administration.

Providence has had to cap spending for the rest of the fiscal year after record-setting snowfall. In Boston, where officials have trimmed the snow removal budget, the city was on track to spend nearly double what it had set aside for winter cleanup — even before the February blizzard hit. Cambridge has spent $6 million, more than 10 times the placeholder amount it budgeted for winter cleanup.

“This is an additional pressure point on an already pressurized budget situation,” said Adam Chapdelaine, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association. “In some communities, it’s likely going to force some hard decisions.”

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In Edgartown, officials want to tap into budget reserves to make up the cost, a step that requires voter approval. If voters don’t support that move, it could mean raising taxes, said James Hagerty, the town administrator.

A boardwalk at the Seaport District in Boston still has some salt and ice melt deposits on the wooden boards along with some snow, on Mar. 2.David L. Ryan/ Globe Staff

Local officials said federal funding would help, but they’re not counting on it. Some worried that partisan disparities in which states have received disaster funding under the Trump administration would put Massachusetts at a disadvantage.

“We are hopeful that the state and federal government might step in to assist, but it’s just waiting at this point,” said Gregory Berman, Chatham’s director of natural resources.

The skyrocketing costs are yet another reminder that winters here don’t feel the same. New England is largely trending toward shorter and milder winters. Massachusetts has lost about 30 days of snow cover each year over the last few decades.

However, experts say the relationship between climate change and total annual snowfall is more complicated. Think of it as two competing forces. On one hand, global warming increases the amount of moisture in the atmosphere; when conditions are cold enough, this added moisture can fuel heavier snowstorms. On the other hand, rising temperatures mean that winter precipitation falls more frequently as rain than snow.

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The data reflect this mixed picture. An analysis of historic snowfall totals by Climate Central, a nonprofit that conducts climate change research, found that annual snowfall has actually increased over the past 50 years in Boston and parts of coastal Massachusetts, while inland areas have seen declines.

Looking ahead, researchers project that the most intense storms may become even heavier, producing more snow than blizzards past. This shift may already be underway. In the past 40 years, Boston has recorded 10 snowstorms that produced at least 20 inches of snow. In the eight decades prior to that, there were just three.

These massive storms can trigger extra expenses, as municipalities have to pay for equipment rentals, contractors, and overtime for cleanup around the clock.

Julie Wormser, chief climate officer in Cambridge, said that total snowfall data surprised her.

“Based on how quickly the ocean is heating up off New England, my bet is that the next 50 years of data will reverse that snowfall trend,” she said.

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Cities and towns in Western Massachusetts, Cape Cod, and the North Shore were hit especially hard. This winter, they received more than two feet of snow above their average.

Snowfall totals were higher compared to the seasonal average across Massachusetts from Dec. 1 to March 15.Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM)

On Cape Cod, Sandwich officials overspent their snow budget by $250,000, driven largely by the February blizzard. Town Manager George “Bud” Dunham said a day of minor plowing and treating roads can cost about $10,000, but major storms push that figure past $50,000. The town is still cleaning up downed brush and tree limbs.

If not for the storm, Dunham said, the town might have invested in new snow equipment or set aside funds for retired employees’ health insurance costs.

Mattapoisett, a coastal community on Buzzards Bay, also blew through its budget, spending nearly triple what officials had set aside. Still, Michael Lorenco, the administrator, said the town should be able to absorb the hit within its $37 million budget without raising taxes.

“I’m not a scientist, but towns near the coast seem to be getting more snow than they normally would in the past,” Lorenco said.

That doesn’t change the city’s responsibilities.

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“Climate change or not,” he added, “we have to clean up the roads.”

Ken Mahan of the Globe staff contributed reporting.


Kate Selig can be reached at kate.selig@globe.com. Follow her on X @kate_selig.





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Massachusetts bakery that made signature pizza trays for more than 100 years closes for good

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Massachusetts bakery that made signature pizza trays for more than 100 years closes for good



A Framingham institution that has been in business for more than a century closed its doors for the final time on Sunday.

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Framingham Baking Company, known for its signature pizza trays, has officially shut down permanently. Crowds have been lining up around the block in the shop’s final days, with Sunday serving as their last day in business.

“That’s a wrap! Special thanks to all of our loyal customers! It was a great run. We love you!” Framingham Baking Company posted on Facebook Sunday after selling its final slices of pizza.

Founded in 1917, the bakery on Waverly Street became known for the square pizza slices.

The third-generation owners say they couldn’t find anyone to take over the business.

“We’re closing today after 109 years in business,” owner Joan Thomas said. “My grandparents, my parents, and my siblings – three generations have run this bakery.”

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Customers explained why they were willing to wait in long lines to get their hands on some treats one more time.

“So many years of eating this pizza, and the bread, and the cookies. You had to be there for the end,” one woman said.

“My grandfather was a delivery guy for a long time. My first job was riding around with him in the van delivering to all the local restaurants. It’s tough to see it close, but it’s had an amazing run. Here for my last delivery. Bring some pizza home to my family,” another man added.

One customer waiting in line said it wasn’t just pizza the Framingham Baking Company provided, it was memories.

“Brought it to the cousins’ every birthday party, every gathering. Any time there was family there was pizza,” he said. 

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