26-05-2025
Mass. Rep. Trahan's ‘Les Miz' moment on Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
Good Monday morning, everyone.
In the early hours of last Thursday morning, as U.S. House Republicans got ready to send President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' over to the Senate, a Massachusetts lawmaker stepped into the breach, all Henry V-style, to try to stop it.
That lawmaker, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, D-3rd District, offered what's known as a 'Motion to Recommit,' a parliamentary Hail Mary that would have sent the bill back to committee rather than allowing the eventual 215-214 vote to approve it.
This was Trahan, who helms the House Dems' messaging effort, getting her 'Les Miz' moment to defend the barricades against legislation that she and her fellow Democrats believe will gut the social safety net and cause the national debt to skyrocket.
In addition to its other provisions, the GOP-authored bill is a 'targeted attack on Planned Parenthood, one of the most trusted providers of reproductive health care in our country,' Trahan said during a brief floor speech. 'No one should lose access to basic care just because of where they go to get it.'
Trahan later offered her procedural motion, which failed, with every Republican voting against it, her office said in a statement.
Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., may have won a battle on Thursday, but they still have to win the war by getting the bill through the U.S. Senate and onto the Resolute Desk.
Lawmakers on the other side of Capitol Hill were already talking about significant rewrites to the bill within hours of the House vote, according to Politico.
The messages, however, were contradictory. Budget hawks were looking for bigger savings, while others were looking to blunt the House's attack on Medicaid and preserve green energy incentives, Politico reported.
And as of last week, it looked like U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was spoiling for that fight.
'Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are popping champagne because House Republicans JUST passed Trump's 'big, beautiful bill,' the Cambridge lawmaker posted to X.
'This bill is a BIG tax handout for billionaires, paid for by ripping health insurance from 14 MILLION people. We must stop this from passing the Senate,' she continued.
Warren's colleague, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., meanwhile, was doing a bit of Capitol Hill math.
'The question now: How many Senate Republicans will vote to cut Medicaid, SNAP and Pell? How many millions of people will they take health care, food and education from — all to pay for tax breaks for the ultra wealthy?" he posted to X.
The answer, according to Politico, is three.
That's how many GOP votes Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-Texas, can afford to lose and still pass the bill on a party-line vote.
Thune wants to get the bill through the Senate by July 4, saying the Independence Day deadline is the 'goal and the aspiration,' but will depend on 'what does it take to get to 51?' That's a reference to the number of votes it takes in the Senate to win a simple majority.
It also gives the bill's opponents a deadline to work on any GOP lawmakers who might be wobbly on the bill and extra time to cue up their copy of 'Do You Hear the People Sing?'
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu had some headline-grabbing company last week with her during the latest installment of her ongoing 'Commute wth Me' series.
That'd be 'Love on the Spectrum' star Pari Kim and her girlfriend Tina Zhu Xi Caruso.
And because no mayoral outing would be complete without her, Baby Mira Wu (who we're increasingly convinced is really running the city) also was along for the ride.
Wu, Mira, and her celeb guests, took the Green Line's E Line from Park Street to MassArt, chatting along the way about what they love about the city (Taking the T, natch) and what they don't (People who don't give up their seats for riders living with disabiliies. Boo.).
And with the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act coming up in July, the trio also discussed the importance of making sure the T is accessible to disabled riders.
There was the inevitable, horrendous Green Line screeching of brakes (Boston's 'National Anthem,' they quipped). And there was the usual cuteness overload from Baby Mira.
You can watch the whole video here.
It's Memorial Day Monday here in Massachusetts and nationwide. And it's a day of solemn remembrance for those who have fallen in service to the country.
Last week, however, Gov. Maura Healey, joined by executive branch officials, state lawmakers and Massachusetts veterans, held the state's first Military Appreciation Day with ceremonies at the State House in Boston.
The observance, hosted by the state's Executive Office of Veterans Services, with the cooperation of the state Legislature, was intended to '[recognize] the contributions of veterans, active-duty service members and military families from across Massachusetts,' the administration said in a statement.
Participating legislators were invited to nominate a member of their local military community — whether a veteran, active-duty service member, National Guard, Reservist or military family member or advocate — to be honored during the ceremony.
More than 125 people were recognized and presented with an official citation and a challenge coin for their service, the administration said.
'We created Military Appreciation Day at the State House to honor these heroes — veterans, active-duty service members, and military families — whose courage, strength and commitment to service continue to shape our state and our nation for the better,' Healey said in a statement.
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. (Ret.), a Massachusetts native, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 36th Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, offered the keynote address at the ceremony.
'It's an honor to return home to Massachusetts and stand alongside a community so deeply committed to those who serve. Military Appreciation Day reflects something I've long believed: that service is not just what we do in uniform — it's a lifetime of leadership, character and sacrifice,' Dunford said in the administration's statement.
Pennsylvania U.S. Sens. John Fetterman, the Democrat, and David McCormick, the Republican, headline a June 2 event at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate next to the UMass Boston campus to prove that people from opposing parties can talk to each other without screaming.
Kidding ... kind of.
The sixth installment of the 'Senate Series' sponsored by the Kennedy Institute and the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation is intended to foster 'civil dialogue about current political issues, with the goal of identifying solutions and bridging partisan divides," the organizations said in a statement.
The 9 a.m. event will be live-streamed on FOX Nation and moderated by Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream.
'Vigorous and open dialogue is an essential part of our democracy and having these two senators from opposite sides of the aisle discuss important issues of the day is a valuable contribution to the public discourse,' Kennedy Institute Chairman Bruce A. Percelay said.
The partnership between the two organizations 'is a model for achieving civility and solutions. We are thrilled that Senators McCormick and Fetterman have agreed to participate,' Matt Sandgren, Hatch Foundation executive director, added.
Previous iterations of the series have featured conversations between U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; and Chris Coons, D-Del., who faced now U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican.
Bostonians are fiercely proud of their parks. But as far as the rest of the country is concerned, the city is a distant also-ran behind Washington, D.C., Irvine, California, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Cincinnati, Ohio, and St. Paul, Minnesota.
That's according to the annual ParkScore rankings list put together by the Trust for Public Land, a pro-parks advocacy group. The cities above are the Top 5 finishers.
Boston's park system finished 12th on the list, which relied on a number of metrics, including how far residents live from a park, the percentage of city land dedicated to parks and per capita spending on parks.
In the nation's capital, where you can't walk five feet without tripping over a memorial, 99% of the population lives near a park, and 21.5% of city land is dedicated to park space, according to the ParkScore list. It topped the rankings list.
In Boston, 20% of the city's land is set aside for park space, according to the rankings list. But the city spends $183 per capita on parks.
A bit of perspective, first-place Washington, D.C., spends $393 per capita on parks.
Boston also got high marks for equity for the proximity of parkland to neighborhoods of color. But it got dinged for having fewer green spaces than white and high-income neighborhoods, the analysis showed.
'My intent was to educate the United States populist people about what was going on. It was not to harm the United States or the country because I love my nation. I'm a patriot. I did believe that I needed to educate the people about what was going on because I believe they were being lied to.'
— Former Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, who's serving a 15-year federal prison sentence for leaking military secrets, in a jailhouse interview last week with 'Good Morning America.'
You can't smile without him: Schmaltz Pop legend Barry Manilow plays his final Boston show on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, at TD Garden (tickets and more info here). After more than half a century in the business, Manilow, 81, announced earlier this year that he was calling time on his career as a touring act.
Not to worry, though, you can still see him in Las Vegas, where he has a 'lifetime' residency at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino.
With a career so deep and varied, it was tough to pick one standout Manilow track for this week's newsletter. So we're just gonna go all townie: Here's 'Weekend in New England‚' from the 1976 LP 'This One's for You.'
Speaking of Memorial Day, here's a history (via PBS) of the holiday first known as 'Decoration Day,' that traces its roots to the post-Civil War era.
Here's the germane bit:
'During that first national commemoration, former Union Gen. and sitting Ohio Congressman James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers who were buried there.'
'This national event galvanized efforts to honor and remember fallen soldiers that began with local observances at burial grounds in several towns throughout the United States following the end of the Civil War, such as the May 1, 1865, gathering in Charleston, South Carolina, organized by freed slaves to pay tribute and give proper burial to Union troops.'
'In 1873, New York was the first state to designate Memorial Day as a legal holiday. By the late 1800s, many more cities and communities observed Memorial Day, and several states had declared it a legal holiday.'
'After World War I, it became an occasion for honoring those who died in all of America's wars and was then more widely established as a national holiday throughout the United States.'
'In 1971, Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and established that Memorial Day was to be commemorated on the last Monday of May.'
That's it for today. As always, tips, comments and questions can be sent to jmicek@ Have a good week, friends.
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Read the original article on MassLive.
