Statewide housing policy moves to juice new construction are colliding with “huge macroeconomic and federal policy headwinds pushing in the other direction,” said Luc Schuster, executive director of Boston Indicators, the research arm of the Boston Foundation. “It’s really hard to know where we’re headed in the next year.”

Natural gas is not an obstacle to a clean energy future; it is the proven, affordable, lower-emission backbone that supports renewables with flexible, around-the-clock power.

MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale, who has led the party for four years, said in a Monday morning email to state committee members that she will not seek reelection as party chair in January.

Lawmakers still have dozens of major policy decisions to make in the eight remaining weeks of the term, all of which will happen in the lame-duck stretch after Election Day.

It's a wrap on elections in Massachusetts, and the Democrats have kept a hold on almost all their levers of power in the state. But there was still plenty of controversial policy for voters to weigh in on. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Talia Lissauer of the Berkshire Eagle and Ella Adams of the State House News Service about election week, starting with a late-breaking ballot question result. They dig into the slew of ballot questions, the regions with competitive races, and what it means for areas without much down-ballot action.

It’s a new phenomenon for the Legislature to have this much unfinished business this close to the end of the two-year session.

As Democrats across the country celebrated historic election victories as a mandate to tackle affordability, here in deep-blue Massachusetts voters rejected a tangible solution to one of the biggest drivers of our affordability crisis: housing costs.

In the letter announcing the preamble, Healey said the state’s exemptions to its previous restrictions on later abortions have proven “too narrow to account for the full spectrum of high-risk pregnancy complications that can arise later in pregnancy.”

Since the 2024 gun law's passage, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said the county has managed to prosecute 17 people who were making and using ghost guns, as well as nine people who fired into homes while residents were inside.

Top Democrats agree their agenda will focus on ways to lower costs including reversing Medicaid cuts and opposing tariffs proposed by President Donald Trump.

The MWRA’s request landed the agency in even more hot water among Quabbin communities, which mobilized to kill the proposal.

The fact that the results broadly matched pre-election surveys has to be heartening for pollsters, an often-beleaguered and much-criticized cohort.

Children deserve to get through their most sensitive years before encountering a product built to profit from vice and vulnerability.

Lawrence voters, candidates, and civic organizations alike grappled Tuesday with the city’s recent political scandals, historically low turnout, and uncontested races as they tried to mobilize residents and make political change in the city. Though the city's voter turnout rate increased slightly this election, the city still has a long way to go.

Facing nine ballot questions, Bay Staters rejected efforts to throw out existing cannabis and gun laws, and to change an obscure tax cap law. They gave the green light to legislative transparency and Election Day voter registration while waving away a quest to replace party primaries with nonpartisan ones. A new state agency will now be allowed to unionize, and there may be more money for conservation efforts in the next few years.

All eyes will now turn to the House and Senate, where negotiators need to decide in the next eight weeks whether to follow through on an earlier proposal to substitute their own idea for public records access for the version that four out of five voters embraced.

We need to change how we judge whether transportation is working. Ridership matters, but it cannot be the only measure.

Passage of the ballot question now means a new nature conservation fund will be established to support clean drinking water, create and improve local parks, and protect wildlife habitats without raising taxes or levying a new one.

Voters rebuffed an attempt to inject more competition into the state’s low-energy elections by shuttling all candidates through a single primary contest, regardless of their party affiliation.

In a national political environment favoring Democrats, Bay State voters chose to stick with Healey and Markey at the top of the ticket for another term in this Democratic stronghold.

12:30 pm · Jennifer Smith, senior reporter Two efforts to roll back existing laws look like they are in serious trouble at the booth. Question 8 would dismantle the state’s […]

Local school districts, including the state’s largest district, are increasingly moving forward on their own, creating a patchwork of local policies in the absence of statewide action.

There's been "a dramatic increase" in early in-person voting, Galvin said at a State House press conference, while the mail-in voting rate is about the same as it was in 2022.

On this episode of The Codcast, we get listeners all caught up on the political landscape in Massachusetts and around the country heading into the crucial 2026 midterm elections.

To continue to pretend like our schools are better than they really are is a disservice to students, teachers, families, and the city at large.