Welcome to CommonWealth Beacon‘s Election 2026 newsletter run. The most generous thing we can say about electoral competitiveness in Massachusetts is that it’s gotten marginally better since the last cycle […]

Massachusetts isn’t alone in the rising share of households facing energy insecurity around the country, yet the state, as wealthy as it is, sticks out given its high cost of living and increasing utility bills.

More than $38 million in debt relief will be distributed to 69,527 people in eastern Mass. through a partnership involving the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association.

Pollsters asked about the proposed law to eliminate the time limit for filing civil lawsuits related to child sexual abuse. Respondents overwhelmingly said they would strongly (60 percent) or somewhat (24 percent) support this change, and 79 percent said they would like their state legislators to vote for it.

Question 3 moves the final decision from the elections that most people ignore to the ones that have high participation

Democracy reform is personal for me. The first time I walked into the State House, I was a 16-year-old youth organizer advocating for our civics education bill with other Gateway City kids.

Question 3 would eliminate the ability of Bay State parties to police the use of their party labels by candidates in elections and sever the only meaningful accountability link between candidates/officeholders and party platforms.  

House Democrats say that they are not confident consumers would see savings reflected at the pump while the state lost revenue that is dedicated for transportation. 

The law focuses on the root causes of gun violence to make all Massachusetts communities safer – and it is working.

Even before Gov. Maura Healey entered the heart of campaign season — one that has been defined by skyrocketing energy costs and affordability issues — her administration has seemed sensitive to the price tag attached to the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars likely needed to support a sweeping green transition.

Community colleges, with their enrollment buoyed by tuition-free policies in recent years, "remain the largest source of new transfers at the state universities," said Mario Delci, associate commissioner for research and planning.

“Because restriction of firearm possession by those deemed too young to handle them safely outside of supervised settings is consistent with the nation's regulatory tradition," Wolohojian wrote, the majority upheld the lower court’s conviction.

Gov. Healey is right to look at this issue. Unfortunately, the proposal included in her supplemental budget bill, called “The Great Divide Act,” will likely only make the problem worse.

We should be fighting against that market domination, not enacting legislation that further enables it.

Given recent AI hacking incidents, CommonWealth Beacon checked back in with state officials to see how they’re protecting resident data flowing through an AI assistant. Here’s what you need to know.

Ballots are already printed with Oliver's name next to Minogue's as a joint ticket, and over 200,000 voters have already cast their ballots through early voting.

A debate between the campaigns supporting and opposing ballot Question 3 and the effort to bring all-party primaries to Massachusetts

For the first time since Barack Obama was president, Massachusetts did not land in dead last in Ballotpedia's biennial assessment of state legislative competition across the country.

Despite clear evidence that cannabis has had negative health effects in Massachusetts, our state has done little to survey and confront these harmful consequences.

The modernization project is a key phase of MassDOT's Springfield Area Track Reconfiguration Project, which will upgrade tracks, signals, and other infrastructure to ease a major rail bottleneck in the city by reducing conflicts between freight and passenger trains. West-East Rail construction is set to begin next year.

Gov. Maura Healey and Republican challenger Mike Minogue clashed over rising energy costs, abortion rights, and accountability for misconduct in their second and final gubernatorial debate before Election Day.

A project already pockmarked with delays and growing costs will once again stretch on longer than MBTA officials hoped, this time due to federal scrutiny of components shipped from China.

Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.

Roughly 55 percent of Massachusetts adults who have opioid use disorder and are enrolled in MassHealth will need to satisfy new federal work requirements outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The change, if implemented, would “dramatically and inaccurately favor southern states where many northern residents, sometimes called snowbirds, spend some or all of the months of December through March, despite spending a majority of their time voting in and paying taxes to northern states like Massachusetts," Jessie Partride Guerrero, director of data services at the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, testified.