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.

The Trump administration’s blizzard of activity in the first few weeks of the second term included a freeze on federal grants and funds. Two federal judges blocked it, and the Trump White House rescinded its initial memo on the freeze. But in the aftermath, there is a sense of unease about what could happen next. The forecast is cloudy.

Gov. Maura Healey fielded questions on federal funding, and the potential loss of it, throughout this week from reporters. “When President Trump does something like that, it has a direct and negative impact on so many people, real people who are counting on funding,” she said. “I’ve got seniors who are counting on some assistance to pay their heating bills through a federal program. We’ve got daycare centers that rely on the ability to get funds from the federal government to keep those child care centers open.”

The state budget last year relied on $14.3 billion in federal revenue, out of a total of $65.5 billion. Her budget proposal for fiscal year 2026, which starts this July, relies on $16 billion in federal funds. That’s more than the nearly $9 billion that exists in the state’s rainy day fund.

That explains why even longtime budget experts are struggling to get their hands around the scale of the problem. “Where do you start? I think that realization of the challenge of where to start is indicative of how interrelated the state economy and state public finance is with the federal level,” said Doug Howgate, the head of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, which regularly analyzes the state budget.

The range of impact “makes your planning challenging,” but various scenarios should be considered to quantify the possibility, he added. Some plans from 2013, when there was a shutdown of the federal government, might need to be dusted off.

One step towards that is last week’s letter from William McNamara, the state comptroller, and Matt Gorzkowicz, Healey’s budget chief, asking various agencies across the state to prepare for the effect of a federal funding pause. The letter came out just before a federal judge blocked the pause, but the work continues to ascertain a federal funding freeze’s implications.

Amid that scramble, another federal memo, this one out of the federal Department of Transportation, calls for directing funding in a way that gives “preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” The memo names the type of capital investment grant as was used to help fund the MBTA’s Green Line extension into Somerville and Medford, completed in 2022.

Massachusetts has low birth and marriage rates, and Healey said she does not see a connection between federal transportation funding and those rates. “It’s concerning to governors around the country because people rely on transportation just like they rely on child care and infrastructure,” she said.

Congress holds the constitutional power of the purse, but state officials also bear some responsibility in making sure their applications for funding are in order, according to transportation advocates like Stacy Thompson.

“The Trump administration has made it clear they’re being retaliatory towards states, they’ve made targets of states they perceive as liberal,” she said. “They are seeking to pull back funds where they can. The mechanisms by which they can do that are somewhat complex. I don’t envy any state right now trying to figure this out. You’re putting yourself at greater risk if you miss a deadline or you have a publicly contentious meeting.”

She pointed to the Allston I-90 project as an example. Even with a friendly administration in Joe Biden’s White House, Massachusetts struggled to meet deadlines necessary for the megaproject, which involves a new commuter rail station on the MBTA’s Worcester/Framingham line, new open space on the Charles River, and turning an elevated section of the Massachusetts Turnpike into an at-grade highway.

Thompson said complex projects like the one in Allston often take longer and cost more than initially planned. “This is a new level,” she said. (State transportation officials have tapped a former Biden administration official to be the executive director of a Megaprojects Delivery Office, with a portfolio that includes the Cape Cod bridges and the Allston project.)

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Healey tried to strike a hopeful note about beating back potential cuts to federal funding across the board.

“We’ve been clear this is not something that the state can just make up for out of the state general fund. We just don’t have the funds to be able to do that,” she said. “But hopefully common sense will prevail and the Trump administration will continue to fund very important things, Medicaid, access to health care, infrastructure, money to fix our roads and bridges, money for our veterans, for law enforcement, for food, for housing.”

A similar optimism was inherent in the version of the New England weather saying put forward by Mark Twain: Wait a minute, and it could get better.

What sometimes goes unmentioned is that the weather could get worse, too.

The post Political Notebook: The tensions and tangles over federal funding appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

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.

Policymakers, nonprofit leaders, watchdogs and other affected parties spent most of Tuesday trying to unravel the implications of a sweeping freeze on grants and loans while President Donald Trump’s deputies try to align government spending with his political and ideological aims.

They could have at least a few more days to figure out the landscape. A federal judge in Washington, DC, temporarily blocked the proposed freeze late Tuesday afternoon, according to POLITICO. The judge’s order is due to expire at 5 p.m. Monday.

Reports emerged over the course of the day about federal dollars left out of reach, including for Medicaid in Massachusetts, even as Trump’s team sought to clarify that some popular aid programs are exempt.

Campbell joined with at least five other Democratic attorneys general to pledge a lawsuit challenging the pause, which they argued is unconstitutional.

“Congress controls the purse strings, and the executive branch cannot decide to halt funding just because they don’t like how Congress chooses to spend it,” Campbell said.

The full impact of the administration’s pause remains unclear. Campbell said Massachusetts has been unable to access tens of millions of Medicaid dollars it tried to withdraw Monday. Nonprofit leaders in the state worried they might have to reduce employee hours or lay off workers. School superintendents warned that programs providing meals to students might be affected.

Gov. Maura Healey said she worries the pause will impact funding for a host of services, ranging from child care to road maintenance to energy affordability.

“It’s devastating, and it touches all aspects, which is why I don’t understand this,” Healey said. “Donald Trump ran on a promise to lower costs. All he’s done is offer proposals and take actions that are going to raise costs for people, raise costs for businesses and hurt our economies.”

The interim head of the federal Office of Management and Budget on Monday wrote to the heads of federal executive departments and agencies instructing them to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance” while undertaking a review of their funding distributions.

While federal aid is governed in part by congressional appropriations and longstanding funding formulas, OMB Acting Director Matthew Vaeth said the administration wants to ensure trillions of dollars the federal government spends in grants and loans match Trump’s goals.

“Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” Vaeth wrote in the memo, a copy of which was published by The New York Times. “The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”

Medicare and Social Security benefits would not be impacted by the pause, the memo said.

The memo dated Monday said the pause would take effect at 5 p.m. Tuesday. The White House reportedly sent a second memo Tuesday pledging that some programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would not be affected.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended OMB’s move in a briefing Tuesday afternoon, saying it was “not a blanket pause on federal assistance and grant programs from the Trump administration.” Individual assistance programs such as welfare and nutrition aid would not be affected, she said.

“The reason for this is to ensure that every penny that is going out the door is not conflicting with the executive orders and actions that this president has taken. So what does this pause mean? It means no more funding for illegal [diversity, equity, and inclusion] programs. It means no more funding for the green new scam that has cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. It means no more funding for transgenderism and wokeness across our federal bureaucracy and agencies. No more funding for Green New Deal social engineering policies,” Leavitt said. “Again, people who are receiving individual assistance, you will continue to receive that. And President Trump is looking out for you by issuing this pause, because he is being [a] good steward of your taxpayer dollars.”

Leavitt described the pause as “temporary,” but did not specify an end date.

States across the country reported Tuesday they were unable to access federal payment portals for Medicaid, which funds health insurance coverage for millions of low-income Americans. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said the platform was down in all 50 states.

During a virtual press briefing alongside other AGs, Campbell said Massachusetts officials on Monday tried to draw almost $40 million in Medicaid funding “and haven’t received the payment yet.”

“This is just one potential funding stream that could be impacted by this reckless order,” she said.

After a rapid back-and-forth with a reporter at the White House, Leavitt was asked if Medicaid would be affected by the freeze.

“I gave you a list of examples — social security, Medicare, welfare benefits, food stamps — that will not be impacted this federal pause. I can get you the full list after this briefing from the Office of Management and Budget,” she replied.

Another reporter followed up later in the briefing and asked for clarification from Leavitt about whether any individuals on Medicaid would see their coverage cut off.

“I’ll check back on that and get back to you,” Leavitt said before turning to the next question.

Later in the afternoon, Leavitt posted on social media that the White House was aware of a “Medicaid website portal outage.”

“We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent,” Leavitt wrote. “We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James described several other reports of frozen funding, including Head Start grants in Michigan, child development block grants in Maryland, and child support enforcement in another unnamed state.

The AGs on the call, all Democrats, pledged to file a lawsuit asking a court to intervene. It was not immediately clear Tuesday in which jurisdiction they would file their case.

“The president in this country is powerful. He is not a king,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said. “He does not get to wake up in the morning or after an afternoon nap and direct his entire government to stop funding critical services that Congress has duly authorized and appropriated, that millions and millions of Americans, Republicans, Democrats, independents, children, adults, [and] seniors depend on for life-saving care because he doesn’t like something that he woke up thinking about.”

Federal aid is a major source of revenue for states. According to Pew Charitable Trusts, federal grants represented 36.4 percent of total revenue for state governments in fiscal year 2022.

State records show Massachusetts expects to receive more than $15 billion in federal reimbursements in fiscal year 2025, a year when the state budget carries a $57.78 billion bottom line.

Healey did not say if she would file legislation to put state dollars to work to cover any lost federal funding, telling reporters that “we’ve got to take everything a step at a time.”

Asked about options to keep payrolls flowing amid a federal funding pause, Healey replied, “We’ve got to see what happens in the courts.”

“This is not just a blue state issue. This is a blue state, red state, every state issue,” she said. “All of our states rely on this federal funding, so my hope is that a court will quickly put an end to his overreach of executive authority. He doesn’t have the power to do this, and more than that, it’s really, really harmful.”

Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, noted that Medicaid reimbursements are the second-largest source of revenue in the state budget. He called the OMB pause “incredibly problematic.”

“The uncertainty in and of itself is a huge problem, and there’s a chance that when we get past uncertainty to more certainty, the problem is even bigger,” Howgate said.

Significant federal money also flows to nonprofits, local governments and many other entities, which use it to fund a suite of programs and services.

Massachusetts Nonprofit Network CEO Jim Klocke said the freeze would affect nonprofits “in every city and town in Massachusetts, large, medium and small,” even if federal funding for individual assistance programs is not affected.

Nonprofits on Tuesday had to “immediately shift into triage mode,” Klocke said, calling the risk of cutting employee hours or layoffs “very real.”

“Federal funding is hugely important to the nonprofit sector, and more importantly, to the people served by nonprofits. Billions of dollars come every year from the federal government to nonprofits in Massachusetts. Tens and tens of thousands of nonprofit jobs depend on that funding,” Klocke said. “It’s in every sector. Housing, crime prevention, research, after-school care — they all have federal funding in them to one degree or another. So when OMB says we’re going to put a blanket freeze in place … what that does is it freezes all those services.”

Associated Industries of Massachusetts, one of the state’s largest business groups, sent an alert to members just before 1:30 p.m. urging them to get in touch with the organization to share concerns.

“Many Massachusetts companies receive federal grants and loans for a variety of purposes. Some of those companies could now face issues making payroll at the end of the month,” AIM wrote in its alert. “AIM is working with members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation to determine the moratorium’s potential effect on employers.”

Federal offices and agencies must identify “any legally mandated actions or deadlines for assistance programs arising while the pause remains in effect” and report that information to OMB under the memo Vaeth issued Monday. They are also required to submit detailed information about affected spending activity by February 10.

Vaeth instructed agencies to review pending federal financial assistance announcements to ensure they comply with Trump’s priorities. To the extent allowed by law, agencies could modify unpublished aid announcements, withdraw already-announced funding or cancel awards “that are in conflict with Administration priorities” under the OMB memo.

The administration also ordered agencies to give a “senior political appointee” responsibility to ensure each federal aid program “conforms to Administration priorities,” and to investigate programs to “identify underperforming recipients.”

“OMB may grant exceptions allowing Federal agencies to issue new awards or take other actions on a case-by-case basis,” Vaeth wrote. “To the extent required by law, Federal agencies may continue taking certain administrative actions, such as closeout of Federal awards (2 CFR 200.344), or recording obligations expressly required by law.”

Sam Doran and Ella Adams contributed reporting.

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MONDAY MARKS ONE of the most remarkable juxtapositions in the history of America: the inauguration of Donald Trump on the same day we honor Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. But 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. 

“Grace” has a number of meanings, many associated with religion and the Bible. On Yom Kippur—the Jewish Day of Atonement—grace invites us to reflect on our actions and seek reconciliation. Indeed, the kind of grace I’m talking about is rooted in the way we often use the term “grace period” — a type of forgiveness that is neither deserved nor earned, but offered nonetheless for another, often greater purpose.  

However, we choose to define it, American society today is in desperate need of grace. Too often, it pits individuals and groups against one another. Our differences are magnified, and animosity seems to thrive. At the heart of our national identity lies a foundational belief in freedom of expression and the right to disagree. Yet in a political landscape that is almost evenly divided, discussions quickly evolve into shouting matches (both virtual and real), and our disagreements are weaponized. The result is a society where fear of backlash and retribution too often stifles honest conversation.  

Dr. King didn’t say a lot about grace – but he often demonstrated it. As we know, he encouraged us to confront injustice nonviolently, and to seek common ground, even with those who oppose us. In his vision, grace was not mainly passive; it was an active choice to engage.  

King also demonstrated grace through violence he endured and the many attempts on his life. While he and his family were understandably shaken and fearful after their home was bombed in 1956, instead of responding with anger or revenge, King urged his supporters to remain calm, stating that retaliating with violence would only perpetuate a cycle of hatred and suffering.  

Indeed, during the Civil Rights era, King recognized that extending grace to one another opened the door to civil discourse. He did so not to guarantee progress – but to foster an environment where constructive dialogue, mutual respect, and understanding became possible.  

Certainly, grace is not the same as empathy. Empathy requires us to step into someone else’s shoes, feel what they feel, and understand their struggles. Nor is grace compassion, which invites us to respond to others’ pain with kindness.  

In fact, grace isn’t really about others at all – but rather a gift we extend to ourselves, because, as King famously said in 1967, “Hate is too great a burden to bear.” Indeed, when we show grace, we demonstrate our conviction that we are all human, capable of growth and failure, the ability to make mistakes and learn from them. Grace is not a form of appeasement or weakness but rather extraordinary strength. 

Which brings us back to Donald Trump’s inauguration. No matter which “side” we find ourselves on—MAGA diehard or card-carrying member of the resistance, or somewhere in between—there will be no shortage of opportunities to show anger and vitriol next week.  

Instead, we should show grace.  

To be clear, I’m not suggesting we forgive those who break the law – or look the other way in the face of severe moral or ethical lapses. Grace is not about freeing those who went to jail for storming the Capitol on January 6 four years ago – or those who set fire to storefronts during Black Lives Matter marches. Rather, it is about recognizing the excesses nearly all of us have indulged in over the last eight years at one time or another – and that excusing heinous actions in a Facebook post or voting for someone distasteful isn’t the same as committing those crimes.   

So, as we inaugurate our next president on Monday and prepare for difficult years ahead, instead than taking actions that deepen our divisions, let us honor Dr. King’s legacy by offering a moment of grace. Let us take a small step toward contributing to a more harmonious country, so that civil discourse can again be a source of strength for our collective future. 

In a world that too often feels chaotic and divisive, grace can be our guiding principle, illuminating a path towards unity and healing. If not for those who receive it, then at least for ourselves.  

Colette A.M. Phillips is president and CEO of a public relations and inclusion, allyship and diversity consulting firm in Boston. Her book, The Includers: The 7 Traits of Culturally Savvy, Anti-Racist Leaders, is published by BenBella Books. She is a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s advisory board. 

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SINCE THE FALL of Roe v. Wade started to look certain, Massachusetts hustled to shore up abortion access. Now facing a second Donald Trump administration, advocates and officials alike are bracing for possible assaults on the Bay 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.

Trump has attempted to distance himself from the conservative Project 2025 and the idea of a national abortion ban – claiming he intends to leave the subject “to the states” – but congressional Republicans are pushing for a ban after 15 weeks and abortion opponents are laying out roadmaps for stricter potential bans.

“I don’t believe them for one second,” Rebecca Hart Holder, president of Reproductive Equity Now, said on The Codcast. “The goal is a federal abortion ban. ‘Leave it to the states’ is a nice talking point from Justice Alito. If we’re to leave it to the states – which I don’t believe we should, I believe that there should be a national right to abortion – but if we’re really going to leave it to the states, then they should leave Massachusetts alone and let us do the important work that we need to do to protect access to care.”

Polling last year, conducted for CommonWealth Beacon, asked whether the state’s abortion laws are a competitive advantage in attracting people to Massachusetts. Some 58 percent of poll respondents said they agreed, while 25 percent disagreed. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed said they support health providers in the state providing abortion services to people from out of state. 

And people have taken Massachusetts up on its offer. In just the first four months after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe, out-of-state abortions rose by about 37 percent, according to a Brigham and Women’s Hospital study of 45,797 abortion care records between January 2018 and October 2022. The researchers evaluated data from Planned Parenthood, which accounts for half of all abortions in Massachusetts. 

The demand continued to rise, with 6,115 out-of-state patients turning to Massachusetts doctors for abortion care in 2023 according to a WBUR analysis. This is up from 920 out-of-state patients in 2022. Most received prescriptions for abortion medications via telehealth, and less than one in three patients traveled to the Bay State to get abortions.

Holder expects the demand for abortion services in Massachusetts will rise. So far, she said, clinics have been able to accommodate patients traveling from out of state.

“If that continues to increase, I think we need to take a hard look and continually be talking to independent providers, to Planned Parenthood, to the hospitals who are providing care later in pregnancy, to make sure that they can continue to handle it,” she said. “But the Legislature has shown an appetite to help fund those providers. So I feel really confident that that will continue.”

Massachusetts’ fiscal year 2025 budget includes $2 million for grants to support improvements in reproductive health access. After the Dobbs decision, lawmakers passed a first-of-its-kind “shield law” protecting providers by refusing to cooperate with out-of-state actions to punish medical professionals who provide services to people in other states where abortions are restricted or banned.

Massachusetts has worked to shore up its abortion infrastructure, but Holder notes the state could be vulnerable if the federal posture toward abortion becomes more hostile.

Project 2025, a 900-page policy document from the Heritage Foundation involving more than 100 people who worked in the first Trump administration, targets abortion in several ways that trouble Holder.

The document proposes reversing the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion, and using the 19th century Comstock Act to ban abortion medications, equipment, or materials from being sent through the US Postal Service.

“I’m not planning for best case scenarios right now, and I don’t think we are living in a best case scenario world,” Holder said. “What the Trump campaign did in connection with the Heritage Foundation was to give us their game plan with Project 2025. We understand what it is they want to do. They want a federal abortion ban. It is not sufficient to have overturned Roe because that does not control access in all 50 states.”

Even as voters across the country have acted to protect abortion access through state referendums and constitutional amendments, abortion is not the only reproductive planning option in the sightline. Efforts to guarantee access to contraceptives, Holder notes, have been marked by partisan polarization. 

“I think we have to be very, very clear-eyed about the fact that the end game is not abortion,” Holder said. “The end game goes far beyond abortion. It is actually about women’s position in society, and the way you prevent women from being equal is preventing them from controlling their reproductive destiny.”
For more with Rebecca Hart Holder – on the role of the courts, implications for sexual education curricula, and threats to contraceptive access – listen to The Codcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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BY NOW YOU may have seen the New York Times map of the United States covered with tiny, red arrows pointing to the right, like weathervanes. The map shows the shift in the vote in this year’s presidential election compared to 2020. The sea of red arrows pointing right mark counties where Donald Trump’s share of the vote increased since 2020. The smattering of blue arrows, showing where Vice President Kamala Harris made gains over Joe Biden’s vote four years ago, barely register. 

Make no mistake, 2024 was a bad election for Democrats. But it wasn’t as bad as that map, and the accompanying takes, make it out to be. That’s because the 2020 election was an outlier, a high water mark for Democrats that should not be used as a yardstick for future contests. Here in Massachusetts, this year’s results are much more on par, in terms of turnout and outcome, with every other presidential election so far this century besides 2020. In that way, they represent more of a reversion to the mean than a shift to the right.

Probably the best explanation for the strong Democratic showing in 2020 is the simplest: Trapped at home and frustrated with Trump’s COVID response, Democrats voted in huge numbers, swamping past turnout records. The pandemic was by far the number one issue in 2020 exit polls, far outpacing the economy, and two thirds of Massachusetts voters thought Biden would handle it better. With COVID in the rearview mirror, turnout is back to normal, and voters, as they did the world over, punished the incumbent party for post-pandemic inflation.

The 2020 spike in turnout here in Massachusetts is obvious when comparing it to other presidential elections. The chart of raw vote figures shows this most clearly. The overall trend is a steady increase in total votes, interrupted by a huge spike in Democratic voters in 2020. If any of these elections were being compared to 2020, they would look like a rightward lurch. The red arrows on that national New York Times map are pointing more away from what happened in 2020 than at what happened this year. 

Harris won Massachusetts by a 24.5-point margin based on mostly complete but still unofficial counts. That’s down sharply from Joe Biden’s 33.5-point landslide four years ago, but in line with a conventional Democratic margin of victory for a Bay State presidential contest. Indeed, Biden was the only candidate with a margin over 30 points over the last 7 presidential contests.

In many ways, 2024, looks closer to 2016 than 2020. This year saw slightly more total votes than 2016, and so accordingly both candidates received more votes than in 2016 in most towns. It’s the towns where Harris and Trump lost votes that tells the clearest story of what changed this cycle. 

Harris lost votes in the state’s biggest cities when compared to 2016. In Boston, she got 15 percent fewer votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016; in Springfield, 18 percent fewer; in Holyoke, 20 percent. In Fall River, which Donald Trump won outright, she got 20 percent fewer votes than Clinton in 2016. In the Latino-heavy cities of Everett, Chelsea, Revere, and Lynn, she underperformed 2016 by 17 percent to 25 percent. 

Harris also underperformed in towns with large college populations. Her vote total was down 28 percent  compared to 2016 in Amherst, home to the flagship UMass campus, Amherst College, and Hampshire College. Harris still got 10 times more votes than Trump there, who also lost votes there compared to 2016. Still, the decline in votes for Harris may signal a protest against the Biden administration’s policy on the Israel-Hamas war. 

Trump also got more votes in most communities across the state compared to 2016, including in the major cities where Democratic votes declined. Trump’s biggest loss of votes came in Amherst (down 31 percent). Everywhere else he lost votes it was less than 10 percent of his 2016 total, mostly in liberal and well-off suburbs north and west of Boston, including Belmont, Concord, Lexington, Carlisle, Acton, and Melrose. He also saw declines in Provincetown and other towns at the tip of the Cape, and a few towns in Western Massachusetts. All these losses were smaller, both as a percentage and in terms of raw votes, than Harris’s double-digit declines in the cities.

Trump also gained raw votes in many of the cities where Harris lost ground, especially those with sizable Latino populations. The shift of the Latino vote towards Trump began in 2020 and accelerated in 2024, both nationally and here in Massachusetts. Lawrence, the state’s most Latino city, has already received much attention for its shift towards Trump. 

Looking at the raw vote totals underscores how dramatic that shift was. In 2024, Trump got 8,447 votes in Lawrence, more than double the 3,535 he got in 2016. Harris, by contrast, won 12,016 votes, down more than 7,000 from Clinton’s total in 2016. To be clear, Harris still won Lawrence, but the drop in her margin of victory, there and in other cities, should be a cause for concern for the state’s Democrats.     

To be clear, 2024 was a bad election for Democrats. But just how bad depends on what it’s compared to. Putting aside 2020 as an outlier and looking at 2024 through the lens of 2016 reveals real challenges for Democrats on what has traditionally been their home turf: big cities with racially diverse populations. That’s plenty for Democrats to focus on as they figure out how to adjust to a second Trump administration in Washington.

Steve Koczela is president and Rich Parr is senior research director at the MassINC Polling Group.

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TWO YEARS AGO, in a post-election column here, I caught blowback for criticizing Elizabeth Warren for costing Democrats a House seat. Our senior senator had backed a progressive challenger to a longtime Democratic incumbent in Oregon who failed to pass all the progressive litmus tests. The “Warren Democrat,” Jamie McLeod-Skinner, knocked him out in the primary but went on to lose the general election and in the process help Republicans narrowly take the House.

We are back again in a narrowly decided House, too close to call with a slim advantage likely for Republicans. But there is a happy ending to the Oregon story for Democrats. While McLeod-Skinner ran again this cycle, Warren did not endorse and she lost to a more moderate Democrat in the primary. Janelle Bynum went on to defeat the GOP incumbent, will be the first Black woman to represent Oregon in DC, and is keeping a flicker of hope alive for Democratic control of the House. 

So, kudos to Warren for showing that progressives can pick and choose their fights. 

Which brings us to the dynamics of the presidential election in which Donald Trump won all seven swing states. Coalitions changed, and with them election results. That was true even in deep blue Massachusetts, where Trump became the first Republican nominee to carry Fall River in 100 years.   

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. To use the slanderous Republican term, the way that “Democrat-run” cities and states manage housing stock, transportation, cost of living, and education is not attracting new voters to the cause. It is driving voters to leave blue states for red states, or start voting Republican while remaining in blue states.

Massachusetts was among the five states where voters moved most to the right this election, along with fellow wealthy blue states New York, New Jersey, and California.

To our fellow Americans, Massachusetts remains synonymous with progressivism. We have the highest rate of self-identified liberals in the country and play an outsized role in debates over the direction of our nation. The country sees the prohibitively expensive housing and cost of living, brutal traffic, and other shortcomings that lead to wealthy blue states losing our share of the national population.

And it is not random population shifts: People are moving from blue states to red states. And the loss of population has greater electoral impact than just congressional seats that are being pulled from blue states through decennial reapportionment. It is damaging to the Democratic brand. 

There is no shortcut to improving quality of life in blue states. A broad reform movement is required to significantly shift the experience of blue state governance. Promising cross-ideological approaches like the “Abundance Agenda” have emerged to tackle the cost of housing and energy by mixing progressive prioritization of human welfare with more libertarian instincts on regulation. In Massachusetts, that is already manifesting itself in a significant push for more abundant housing that is reducing regulation while overriding excessive local control. Those are fights worth having.

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. This is the tent-shrinking path that Warren took two years ago in Oregon, but largely avoided on the campaign trail this year as Kamala Harris worked to pivot away from the leftist policy positions she took in her brief presidential run in the 2020 cycle.

While Harris tacked significantly to the political center in the four-month sprint, her short-lived 2020 presidential run was animated by her efforts to appeal to the left in a crowded primary field. On some issues, such as fracking, Medicare For All, and mandatory gun buybacks, Harris was explicit in abandoning prior unpopular progressive positions. On many others, from the Green New Deal to electric vehicle mandates, she simply refused to answer. 

During the progressive surge of the past decade, a case was made that a heightened contrast between MAGA populism and litmus test progressivism would cause a coalition realignment that favored Democrats. Back in 2016, Chuck Schumer famously said, “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia.”

That math, obviously, has not worked out that way.

The Massachusetts version is that, in presidential races since 2016, Democratic nominees went from winning Lawrence by 67 percentage points to winning by just 17 points. 

From 2016 to 2024, Democrats lost 50 points in Lawrence, but gained three points in Wellesley. While that is surely not a good trade for a political party seeking to win elections, it may not be a bad one for progressive groups looking to fundraise. 

It is now social media clicks and foundation cash, not votes, that drive much of the key entities comprising the Democratic ecosystem. When people refer to “The Democratic Party,” what they typically mean is the sum of interest groups, not the formal party structure. Political scientists have termed this dynamic “Hollow Parties,” where weak formal institutions are overrun by outside groups.

The most stark example of policy litmus tests from such groups is found on policy questionnaires from nonprofit and political groups.

In 2022, then-candidate Maura Healey refused to even fill out the candidate questionnaires from the two most prominent Massachusetts groups of this type, Progressive Mass and Our Revolution.

This could hypothetically have cost Healey support. As Progressive Mass leader Jonathan Cohn said at the time, “Progressive groups are filled with people who are the types of people who end up being activists on campaigns and active in organizations.” 

But, as Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky noted in the story about Healey’s decision, there was also a potential  downside to completing the surveys that she avoided: “Her policy questionnaire answers could have been used against her,” she wrote.

The purpose of the modern progressive policy questionnaire is at odds with the purpose of a political party, which is to win. There would be no point in the ACLU or Progressive Mass asking where candidates stand on policies that are broadly popular. The point is to separate the merely progressive candidate from the completely pure candidate who is willing to take unpopular stances that appeal to a small but organized part of the primary electorate.

Kamala Harris faced significant headwinds, weighed down by Joe Biden and the post-pandemic dynamics that have felled incumbents around the globe. But when it came to spending hundreds of millions of dollars on swing state ads, the Trump campaign elevated Harris’ 2019 responses to the ACLU candidate questionnaire to demonstrate her fidelity to a broad range of progressive litmus tests.

In rejecting progressive litmus tests in her gubernatorial race, Healey was prioritizing those who pay the price for electoral defeat: the most vulnerable in society. Trump’s second victory will primarily hurt those who progressive advocacy groups are organized to defend. Progressive groups are often organized to defend the poor and marginalized, but seeking maximalist policies that lose elections can have the opposite impact.

These are good faith places where the balance is difficult to strike. Maura Healey took a hardline stance on immigration in June, but this week is pledging to use every tool to fight Trump deportations. Healey is picking which fights to have, balancing electoral and governing pressures to be able to deliver on behalf of the vulnerable.

The current coalitional heavyweights in the national Democratic Party focus too much on enforcing policy litmus tests that narrow the coalition, and do not focus enough on improving governance of blue states. These are the politics of subtraction, and the policies subtracting population and power from blue states.

These are distinct problems with different solutions. Massachusetts demonstrates the promise and peril of both, and a potential path forward for prioritizing the fights that can lead back to a majority party.

Liam Kerr writes the WelcomeStack.org newsletter, and is co-founder of WelcomePAC, which supports Democratic candidates in center-right districts and advocates for a big-tent Democratic Party.

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THE RIGHTWARD LURCH seen throughout the country didn’t miss Massachusetts – the state just started bluer. 

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.

Trump won 75 cities of the state’s 351 municipalities, according to current Associated Press counts, and has increased his vote count to 1.23 million million from 1.17 million in 2020. His pockets of wins are focused on Hampden, Plymouth, Bristol, and Worcester counties, with the biggest margin in his favor coming from Acushnet, where he pulled 72 percent of the votes.

House Speaker Ron Mariano said the party “must view this election not only as a wake up call, but also as an opportunity to renew our focus on the issues that drove voters across the country towards the Republican Party this year.”

Those issues, according to exit polling and polls throughout recent years, were the economy and immigration. Inflation has hammered leaders across the globe, with voters ousting almost every incumbent and ruling party that was in power as prices started to hike.

The most important issue facing the country, according to Massachusetts exit polling, was the economy and jobs. Of the 32 percent of voters who said that, Harris barely squeaked out a 49 to 48 percent win in the Bay State, which was actually an improvement from 2020. Of Massachusetts voters who told exit pollsters the economy was the number one issue in 2020, 74 percent said they voted for Donald Trump. 

While the Covid pandemic dominated voter concern in 2020, immigration was barely a blip. Just 2 percent of Massachusetts voters told exit pollsters that immigration was the most important issue in the country, but 22 percent identified it as the major issue in 2024. 

And for those who considered it the most important issue, immigration was the single biggest indicator of a Trump vote. Only 21 percent of those Massachusetts voters said they voted for Harris, compared to 77 percent who said Trump.

In flipped seats, immigration was an effective cudgel as an influx of migrants squeezed the state’s shelter system. Ken Sweezey, the Pembroke Republican who beat Democrat Rebecca Coletta to fill a vacant South Shore district, hammered immigration throughout the campaign.

It was “the number one issue” he hears about from voters, Sweezey said in an October forum. According to South Shore News, he criticized the state’s handling of the migrant crisis, arguing that Massachusetts has become “a magnet for this issue.”

Exit polls are not always the most reliable measures of demographic change – the eventual Pew Research Center analysis of validated voters will offer insight into the nitty gritty of swinging voting blocs – but changes by regions with distinct demographic characteristics can be a useful starting point.

Biden’s 70 percent margin of victory among Latino voters dropped to about 41 percent with Harris  based on initial data. It is part of a years-long trend toward Trump from Latinos across the country. 

Though a majority of Latino voters have backed Harris, the coalition is far from a monolith, with polling over the last year finding that Latinos voting for Trump were generally actively voting for him rather than against Harris, while those voting for Harris were split between approval of her and distaste for Trump. They overwhelmingly cited the economy as the biggest issue in the election, which is also reflected by moves toward Trump in Massachusetts’ mid-sized urban center Gateway Cities.

While Trump was more dominant in rural regions, urban areas also swung toward him this year. While Biden had a 60 point margin of victory in the state’s urban areas in 2020, Harris won by 39 percent according to VoteCast data.

In Lawrence, the most Latino community in the state with more than 80 percent of its residents identified as Latino in the 2020 census, the slippage was starting to show after 2016. Clinton pulled 82 percent, Biden got 74 percent, and Harris dropped to 59 percent.

It was the single biggest downward shift toward Trump of any community in Massachusetts. Other heavily Latino regions moved in the same direction. Chelsea saw a 19 point change from Biden to Harris, with Holyoke seeing a similar but smaller shift.

“What was so interesting in 2020 when we were looking at this map of the shift,” MassINC Polling Group research director Rich Parr said on The Horse Race podcast, “was that the only places that shifted toward Trump – everywhere else had shifted toward Biden since 2016 – were Holyoke and Lawrence… and now everyone has shifted, but the Latino communities are at the top of the list.”

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AS ATTORNEY GENERAL, Maura Healey launched her office at Donald Trump when he narrowly won the White House eight years ago, vaulting to the front lines and quickly joining with her Democratic counterparts elsewhere to oppose his ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries.

Healey struck a different tone in a different job on Wednesday, after Trump’s return to the White House was assured by a resounding Electoral College victory in which he also won the popular vote. Now the governor, Healey returned to the State House after spending much of Election Day campaigning in next-door New Hampshire for fellow Democrats, staying in the Granite State late into yesterday evening.

Healey said the overall results are still getting analyzed, but “I think last night you saw from the exit polls some of the focus and attention on the economy.”

While New Hampshire narrowly gave its four electoral votes to Kamala Harris, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate that Healey backed, Joyce Craig, lost to Republican Kelly Ayotte, whose key message was “Don’t Mass Up NH.” In Massachusetts, most municipalities shifted to the right, similar to the overall country. Cities like Lawrence, Chelsea, Everett, New Bedford and Fall River, in particular, swung toward Trump.

“My message today to everybody in Massachusetts is that we see you. We see you. Whether you voted for the president-elect or not, we see you,” she told reporters gathered in the lobby of the governor’s office. “Whether you’re feeling a lot of feelings today, and maybe scared or feeling horrible, know that we see you.”

Voters “were making a statement in part about how they were feeling in terms of their own personal welfare,” she added.

Massachusetts has benefited from a Democratic White House, as more than $8 billion in federal funds have flowed to infrastructure projects like the Cape Cod bridges. Healey also touted positive economic trends, while acknowledging the hit to wallets from post-pandemic inflation. “It’s taking time for people to see that in their own checkbooks,” she said. “That’s part of the communication challenge.”

Asked if she should have spent more time in Massachusetts, given that Craig lost, and Bay State voters backed Question 2, a measure opposed by Healey that severs passage of the MCAS test from high school graduation, Healey defended her focus, saying it’s “always a close election in my home state of New Hampshire,” where she grew up and her parents still live.

As for the MCAS ballot question, though she held a press briefing last month at Roxbury nonprofit to urge a “no” vote on the measure, Healey seemed to downplay any suggestion that she could have done more to influence the outcome, saying, “I recognize I’m just one vote.”

The anti-Trump banner Healey carried as AG between 2017 and 2020 will now be picked up by her successor, Andrea Campbell, who won the seat in 2022. In a separate press conference, Campbell told reporters her office is prepared for various scenarios as the Trump administration moves back into the White House. “Obviously, this office has been here before,” she said, referring to Trump’s first term.

Back at the State House, Healey said “we are not taking our foot off the pedal at all” on climate technology, as she pushes for an offshore wind industry investment fund, coupled with tax credits, in an economic development bill top lawmakers have pledged to get to her desk before the end of session. 

And as abortion rights could face new restrictions at the federal level, she said, “we’ll make sure women and those who need care are protected here in Massachusetts.”

Referencing some of Trump’s more incendiary stands and the hard-right Project 2025 playbook that he disavowed, but which many in his orbit were involved with crafting, Healey said we’ll have to wait to see whether he follows all his attention-grabbing words with actions. “I think I’ve spoken quite a bit about Donald Trump and my feelings about him,” Healey said. “We have to see whether he makes good on what he promised and ran on.”

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MASSACHUSETTS WOKE UP – if it slept at all – facing a second Trump administration and the looming prospect of being even more at odds with a national rightward swing than it was eight years ago.

Former president Donald Trump is poised to return to office, culminating his campaign of broadsides against the Biden administration’s immigration and economic landscape, fueled by mistruths, personal attacks, and rants about pet-eating migrants. This time, he’ll head to the White House with Republican control of the US Senate and a right-leaning Supreme Court. The House of Representatives has not yet been called. 

In the deep blue Bay State, where its US Senate race and presidential votes were called for the Democrats within minutes of polls closing, dawn broke on November 6 with a grim light for many of its residents.

“You know, I think of it this way: We’re going to do a lot of unpacking over the next many, many days,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who cruised to a third term, said in an interview with WBUR. “But it’s clear that there were many people who were attracted to what Donald Trump was offering, and that means my job in the United States Senate will be to be in there to fight for the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and fight for our shared values.”

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. Gov. Maura Healey built a national brand as state attorney general by challenging the Trump administration in court over issues as diverse as immigration policy, census counts, and gun regulations. 

Andrea Campbell, Healey’s successor as attorney general, will face an even rockier climb with a Trump-friendly high court. The US Supreme Court, currently a 6-3 conservative majority, concluded this year that the president has a broad grant of immunity from actions taken in the course of or related to official duties. 

Despite the impression of an enthusiastic groundswell for Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy after President Biden announced he would step out of the race, a tight national contest left open the real possibility of a narrow popular vote gap but a lopsided electoral college victory for one side or the other. That victory was clinched far sooner than many expected, with the race called early Wednesday morning.

Indicted four times, criminally convicted on 34 counts related to hush money payments, found liable of sexual abuse, and still facing charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, Trump is projected to win the popular vote for the first time in his three runs for president.

The rightward shift didn’t entirely miss Massachusetts. After years of Republican erosion on the state level, the party notched a handful of legislative wins, flipping three seats, including Republican Justin Thurber unseating Rep. Patricia Haddad as the veteran Democrat sought a 13th term. Overall, however, the power dynamic on Beacon Hill didn’t change.

Attention will now turn to what Massachusetts can do with its three Democrat-controlled branches of government. Healey has argued that the state’s LGBTQ-friendly policies are a  competitive draw and responded to worries of attacks on abortion medication by stockpiling mifepristone. 

Abortion and climate change have been key policy concerns during the Trump-Biden years. According to exit polls, 95 and 96 percent of Massachusetts voters who say abortion and climate are, respectively, the most important issues facing the country voted for Harris.

“Massachusetts in some ways was a left-leaning microcosm of the country,” said Steve Koczela, president of the MassINC Polling Group, which shares a parent company with CommonWealth Beacon. “The two issues that seem to benefit Trump the most were the economy and immigration,” he said.

In Massachusetts, 73 percent of people who said immigration was their top priority voted for Trump, according to exit polling. 

Trump has promised an aggressive immigration regime including mass deportations and floated the idea of ending birthright citizenship. Yet one of the biggest shifts in voting demographics over the decade has been movement toward Trump from Latino men.

Trump has also vowed to shut down the offshore wind industry, which is Healey’s primary vehicle for meeting the state’s climate goals. “He’s going to shut down the move toward renewables. And if that were to happen, we would end up with a sicker, less healthy population,” Healey said in August. “The consequences on our economy would be devastating. Look what we’re dealing with already in terms of the disparity of storms and weather due to climate. We can’t afford to go backward on climate and so many other things.”

The past years have been marked by an influx of migrants seeking asylum that have further strained Massachusetts’ shelter system, to the point that Healey sent people to the southern border to discourage incoming migrants from traveling to Massachusetts. 

Facing a severe housing and cost of living crisis, and the MBTA Communities housing law aimed at relieving some of the pressure tied up in the Supreme Judicial Court, the existing conundrum of where to house the people attracted to Massachusetts’ open-arms reputation will likely become even more of a flashpoint in the coming years. 

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DONALD TRUMP HAS made significant inroads among several traditional Democratic Party constituencies, cutting into Democratic margins among Black and Hispanic voters. A new paper looking at his gains among Hispanic voters puts forward a provocative argument to explain some of that movement. 

It contends that Hispanic voters who hold socially conservative, anti-LGBTQ views but might otherwise have voted Democratic have become turned off by Democratic politicians’ use of the gender-neutral term “Latinx,” which is being used “to explicitly include gender minorities and broader LGBTQ+ community segments.” 

Based on their analysis of a set of population surveys conducted in recent years, Marcel Roman, an assistant professor of government at Harvard, and Amanda Sahar d’Urso, an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University, say Latinos are less likely to support a politician who uses the term “Latinx” in their appeal to voters. 

They say the move away from Democratic candidates using the term appears to be driven by the subset of Latino voters who hold negative attitudes toward the LGBTQ community and is not based on a broader reaction against the new term, which first began to appear about 20 years ago. 

“We find that backlash is not driven by concerns related to respect for the Spanish language or anti-intellectual beliefs – that Latinx is a bourgeois, coastal, white imposition on working-class Latinos,” Roman said in an interview. “The reason why it generates backlash against some aspects of the Democratic Party is it’s a signal of inclusivity toward LBGTQ+ and gender non-conforming” members of the Latino community.

Their paper also digs into Hispanic voter patterns in areas where they say the use of Latinx has had particularly high “salience,” measured by the level of internet search activity, which Roman and d’Urso say serves as a reasonable proxy for its presence in the political discourse of local candidates. Among Hispanic voters with negative views toward LGBTQ people, they found that there was greater movement toward Trump from the 2016 election to the 2020 election if they lived in areas with higher Latinx “salience.” 

Nationally, there was about an 8 percentage point swing toward Trump among Hispanic voters from 2016 to 2020. Biden still captured a majority of Hispanic votes four years ago – 61 percent, according to one estimate – but if the movement by Hispanic voters toward Trump continues in the current election, it could be ominous for Democratic chances. 

The paper says use of the term among Democratic politicians surged in recent years. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren both used it in the 2020 presidential campaign, and Joe Biden used it in a 2021 speech on Covid vaccine compliance. Among Democratic members of Congress, the study says, just 10 percent used Latinx in social media posts during the 2015-2016 session, but by the 2019-2020 session fully half had done so. By contrast, they say, not a single Republican member of Congress has invoked the term on social media. 

Amid his harsh rhetoric toward immigrants, Trump has nonetheless won support among Hispanic voters who don’t see themselves in those attacks. 

“The us-versus-them framing has long characterized political alliances, across the ideological spectrum,” the New York Times said in a story Tuesday on Trump’s appeals to Black and Latino voters. “But Mr. Trump has been far more direct than any recent presidential candidate in inviting Black and Latino voters to be part of the ‘us,’ so long as they acknowledge that there is a ‘them.”

Underscoring the findings by Roman and d’Urso on the power of anti-LGBT views among a swath of Hispanic voters is Trump’s explicit attempt to win support on the issue. 

“In one of the Trump campaign’s most widely broadcast Spanish-language television ads, attacking Ms. Harris for her support of transgender medical care for immigrants, it closes with ‘Kamala Harris is with them. President Trump is with us,’” the Times story said.

Roman said Democrats appear to have recognized the electoral costs that may come with use of the term Latinx. “The Democratic Party has kind of course corrected,” he said, with Harris and Biden not using the term since early 2021. “The Democratic Party at the national level recognized it may do more harm than good,” he said. But Roman said some “damage may be done” already in terms of the association of the term with Democrats. 

Based on his findings, Roman said abandoning the term Latinx is a strategically smart move by Democrats. For his part, however, Roman sees the term as a welcome evolution in language precisely because of what it signals. “I think, in general, inclusive language is good,” he said. “It’s not the phrase that’s the problem. It’s that people hold queer-phobic attitudes – that’s the problem.” Shifting that reality, he said, is “a much larger undertaking.”

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