Latest news with #JonKeller
CBS News
14-05-2025
- Health
- CBS News
Keller: Looking at the Massachusetts people and projects impacted by federal funding cuts
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey's administration has created an online dashboard of federal funding cuts affecting state programs. Massachusetts programs impacted by federal cuts But there are human stories behind the raw numbers, like that of Yessenia Torres of Springfield, whose two young daughters have asthma. But they're no longer struggling to breathe thanks to a state program that removed the mold from their home. However, that program has now been cut, as has money from COVID recovery funds that had been slated for a new multi-million-dollar community health center based at New Bedford High School. "Primary care, immunizations, chronic disease management, mental health services, and it's all gonna happen on New Bedford High's campus," said nurse practitioner Alex Weiner, a New Bedford High grad who's been part of a group pushing for the facility for years. Studies show school-based health centers have had great success reaching patients who might have difficulty traveling to or finding time for medical care. But in a post on "X" justifying the cut, the federal Department of Education mocked the New Bedford plan, writing: "ED will consider all appeals for funding that are directly related to students' COVID learning loss recovery. MA even states in their own press release they want this money for BUILDINGS, not learning recovery." "I think this was one of the most forward-thinking uses of COVID relief money," said Weiner. And good luck to the Chelsea businesses like the New England Produce Center that have to deal with significant flooding all too often. Federal defunding of the Island End River Flood Barrier Project jeopardizes more than $7 billion worth of economic activity and the safety of thousands of residents, according to Chelsea officials. Is there wasteful government spending? Of course there is. But when you're cutting in haste with a chainsaw, can it be a surprise that mistakes are made and people are hurt? "Health and Human Services in the state affects one in three people across the Commonwealth," noted state Secretary of Health and Human Services Kate Walsh. "So these cuts will hurt people in your family, your neighbors, your elderly parents. These cuts are hitting human beings." "I think a lot of the cuts we're seeing at the federal level are indiscriminate. They're algorithmic," said Weiner. "This was about people. If any human evaluated this project and sat down and looked at the numbers and looked at the research, how could they say no to this?" So where is all this headed? It looks like that will be up to the courts in the short term - that New Bedford High health center cut is part of an ongoing lawsuit, for instance. But right now Congress is wrestling with proposed cuts that have aroused bipartisan protest. How that battle comes out will help tell us what government will and won't be able to help people with going forward.
CBS News
23-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Keller: Harvard poll of Generation Z paints bleak picture about young voters
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global. The latest National Youth Poll out of the Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics in Cambridge, Massachusetts paints a bleak picture of the state of mind of 18 to 29-year-olds. More than 4 in 10 said they're barely getting by financially, with women and non-college young people especially struggling. And that's upsetting some old political assumptions about these voters. Majority in poll are Independents It's been a lynchpin of Democrats' strategy for decades: twenty-somethings will vote for us if we can turn them out. But the Harvard poll sticks a fork in that theory. Out of the half of those polled who signed up to vote last year, a huge plurality were registered Independents. Democrats could only manage a tie with Republicans. And most of these young voters classify themselves as moderates. The rest split evenly between liberalism and conservatism. No wonder the youth vote isn't the windfall Democrats thought it would be. And it seems the issues that often animate marchers aren't necessarily driving young voters' decisions. Economy is number one issue The Harvard poll found economic issues are number one with them, followed by democracy's health and immigration. But other hot-button issues like abortion, gun control and the environment don't register beyond the survey's margin of error. "Those fundamental issues of just having the food on the table, having a roof over your heads, being able to pay your bills really does come first over a lot of the cultural issues that may have motivated a lot of the discussions leading up to the election," said Jordan Schwartz, chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project which oversaw the poll. Voter trust in governmental institutions has been marginal for years, and Generation Z is no different. More of them trust the military than they do the Supreme Court, the presidency or Congress. But even there, young-voter confidence is in decline. "And now even 60% of the country doesn't say that they trust the United States military all or most of the time, which is about as low as its ever been," said Schwartz. But here's a bit of good news. Asked if your parents understand you, more than six in ten said yes, mostly or completely. Just 18% said rarely, and only 8% said not at all. 31% approve of Trump But while they may like their parents, this generation doesn't much care for the new leadership in Washington. Only 31% of them approve of President Trump's performance so far, a whopping 15 points below the latest national average for all voters. But the Harvard poll shows these voters are genuinely up for grabs -- if the economy improves for them before the next election.
CBS News
15-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Keller: Why Harvard is an attractive political target for President Trump
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global. Harvard University is pushing back hard against Trump administration demands for major changes in the way it operates. But while the new federal policies are surely questionable, there's no question Harvard makes an attractive political target. The Crimson face an escalating war with Trump. Freezing $2 billion worth of federal grants was just the opening salvo, with the president Tuesday posting online: "Perhaps Harvard should lose its tax exempt status and be taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting "sickness?" Remember, tax exempt status is totally contingent on acting in the public interest." It's too much even for critics of Harvard's handling of anti-Israel sentiment on campus like former President Larry Summers. "Universities are in need of a great deal of reform and it's come too slowly, but that's not a reason why the government can entirely suspend the law," he says. But good luck generating broad public sympathy for Harvard and other elite schools the administration is going after. According to a 2024 Gallup/Lumina Foundation poll , only about 10% had no confidence in higher ed a decade ago. Now, about a third of people have no confidence in higher education. And the survey found the percent of people with high confidence in higher ed had plunged by 21 points over less than a decade, with almost a third expressing no confidence at all. For Harvard, this moment has been brewing for a long time. "I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University," conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. famously said more than 60 years ago. And the contempt it reflects has spread beyond just political conservatives. "So many Americans see them as out of touch, overpriced, exclusionary, not a place for them," said Courtney Brown of the Lumina Foundation. "That's why when they get targeted, the general public isn't as concerned." After all, the core philosophy of the MAGA movement is that elites have abused their power and neglected working-class Americans. Harvard and other elite schools have seen their brands tarnished by campus protest and other hot-button issues. What a perfect way for the White House to change the subject from its economic struggles to a war on a central-casting villain
CBS News
19-03-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Keller: Here are some good things that came out of the COVID pandemic
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global. For many, the current spate of five-year anniversary reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic resurrect memories we'd just as soon forget. The panic shopping and chronic shortages, the seemingly endless testing and masking , the shutdowns , isolation and loneliness - and, of course, the terrible death toll . But the pandemic left behind some positive changes that are still with us, including: Before the pandemic, you had to be on Beacon Hill or at your local city or town hall to participate in important public meetings. But the Massachusetts Legislature is poised to extend online access to many events via Zoom for another two years, continuing a widely applauded trend of giving more access to government meetings than ever existed before COVID-19. The stopgap funding bill that just passed the U.S. Senate was controversial, but there was bipartisan agreement on a part of it extending the use of telehealth services, a pandemic-era staple that has proven to cut costs and improve healthcare access. And then there's the staying power of the working-from-home habit . It's a nightmare for office-building owners struggling with sky-high vacancy rates, but it's the gift that keeps on giving for the 73% of telecommuters who tell Pew Research pollsters the arrangement has done wonders for their work-life balance while not damaging their productivity. Among them, a record number of women are now working, with a notable increase among women with children under 5. And the pandemic gave many entrepreneurs the extra time and cash they needed to spawn an unprecedented surge in new businesses, resulting in more than 7 million new jobs. Our national trauma was a nightmare in so many ways, but it also helped many dreams come true .
CBS News
05-03-2025
- Business
- CBS News
Keller: Here's what Trump's address to Congress was missing
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global. If you somehow missed all of the 2024 presidential campaign, President Donald Trump's address to Congress Tuesday night was your chance to play catch-up. The president used the first address to Congress of his second term to replay all the greatest hits from his victory. There were the odes to patriotism, military strength and fighting crime that you might also have heard at a Kamala Harris campaign rally, but plenty of hot buttons pressed that were anathema to the Democrats - denunciations of wokeness, of accommodations to the transgendered, and of course, undocumented immigrants. And the partisanship was unvarnished. Former President Joe Biden was repeatedly trashed by Trump, called the "worst president ever" and blamed, falsely, for the soaring price of eggs. He ad-libbed a gratuitous reference to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas." As their Republican counterparts whooped it up, Democrats sat sullenly, some waving signs reading "that's a lie" in response to egregious Trump whoppers like his widely-debunked claim that hundreds of thousands of Social Security checks have been sent to long-dead people. Early on, Democratic Congressman Al Green of Texas was ejected from the chamber for heckling the speech (a step not taken when a handful of Republicans did the same to Biden). Front and center for it all was Trump's co-star in these early weeks, Elon Musk, introduced by the president as the "head" of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which contradicts recent White House claims that he is not actually in charge of the controversial cost-cutting project. Musk beamed as he drew rousing applause from the Republicans on several occasions. But the celebration seemed to cool a bit when Trump finally, over an hour into the speech, addressed the trade war he has ignited with steep tariffs on imports from China and two of our closest allies, Canada and Mexico. And he made late and short work of the situation with Ukraine, reciting President Zelenskyy's make-up note and ignoring the now-infamous Oval Office dust-up of last week. Democratic response to Trump speech In the Democratic rebuttal, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) talked up the difference between "responsible" and "reckless" change, and parroted the party line that Trump is looking out for the rich at the expense of everyone else. "Do his plans actually help Americans get ahead? Not even close," she said. But truth be told, the Democrats were a footnote during and after the president's speech. The GOP controls two of the three branches of government; Supreme Court skeptics might argue they've got a lock on all three. We'll see how many people beyond friends, family and politics-addicted partisans stayed up late on a school night to listen to either speech. But the takeaway is clear and unsurprising. Trump speech - what was missing In Trump's first address to Congress as president, in February 2017, he called for "unity" and said at one point: "Solving these and so many other pressing problems will require us to work past the differences of party." That rhetorical nod to something beyond rank partisanship was missing from this speech. Also missing - reassurance to rattled citizens watching their retirement savings melt away as the markets tank in reaction to the Trump tariffs, and any kind of explanation of why he's been parroting Vladimir Putin's talking points.
