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One of the country's most popular Republican governors on Thursday called for an independent investigation into the allegations made against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and said the Senate should hold off on a vote. Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker made the comments as Professor Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh sexually and physically assaulted here. "The accusations brought against Judge Kavanaugh are sickening and deserve an independent investigation," Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker tweeted. "There should be no vote in the Senate." Baker, who faces re-election this November, is one of only a few Republican governors,...

What if Barack Obama endorsed the wrong candidate for governor? What if he meant to support Trump-bashing RINO Gov. Charlie Baker and got confused and ended up backing challenger Democrat Jay Gonzalez, the milder of the two men? I mean, if Obama wanted to help an anti-Trump candidate, who better than honorary Democrat Charlie Baker? Not that it matters very much. The Obama endorsement got lost in the frantic and overwhelming media coverage of the Judge Brett Kavanaugh drama as well as the Boston visit Monday of the aptly named U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake

QUINCY, Mass. - Gov. Charlie Baker says a new environmental infrastructure law will help make Massachusetts more resilient to climate change. The bill ceremonially signed by the governor in Quincy on Tuesday authorizes the state to borrow up to $2.4 billion for environmental projects in the coming years. About $500 million is earmarked specifically for helping communities prepare for extreme weather events that many scientists believe will become more frequent with global warming. Baker, a Republican seeking a second term in November, says Massachusetts is a "national leader" in addressing the challenges posed by climate changes.

The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) sounds like one heck of a time. According to a recent Washington Post report, the office tasked with vetting presidential appointees had the audacity to partake in alcoholic drinking games, happy hours, and even use of tobacco products. Egads! “The Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) is little known outside political circles. But it has far-reaching influence as a gateway for the appointed officials who carry out the president’s policies and run federal agencies.Under President Donald Trump, the office was launched with far fewer people than in prior administrations. It has served as a refuge for...

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker cautioned that a health care bill proposed by U.S. Senate Republicans would cost 264,000 state residents their health coverage and have a cumulative negative impact of more than $8.2 billion on the state by 2025, while Sen. Edward Markey described defeating the bill as the legislative fight of his life. In a letter to the state's all-Democrat Congressional delegation, Baker, a Republican, wrote that the bill would "increasingly strain the state's fiscal resources, result in greater numbers of individuals without insurance and destabilize the commercial insurance market." He separately joined Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in urging...

Governor Charlie Baker is pledging to boost state funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Massachusetts if his fellow Republicans in Washington push ahead with a plan to slash the flow of federal dollars to the organization. Massachusetts’ five Planned Parenthood clinics stand to lose a total of about $2 million a year, from a budget of $21.5 million, if the federal cuts take place.

If Gov. Charlie Baker really wants to prove his anti-Donald Trump street cred, he'll open the State House to illegal immigrants. That way he can help deal with the overflow of all the illegals who will seek sanctuary from deportation in Boston Mayor Marty Walsh's City Hall. The mayor, who went ballistic over the temporary initiation of extreme vetting of refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries, invited threatened illegal immigrants to seek safety in City Hall

Gov. Charlie Baker revealed Monday that he had spoken by phone with President-elect Donald Trump, whom he did not support, after his election. Although the conversation was private, this column has obtained a totally bogus, invented transcript of the conversation. It went like this:

Gov. Charlie Baker, the state's most prominent Republican, did not cast a vote for president of the United States for the first time in his life today. "This is the first time I haven't voted for president and I'm obviously disappointed about that," Baker said outside The First Church in Swampscott, where he was 40th in line to vote - his wife Lauren, 39th - at 7 a.m. in a 35-degree chill. Baker also passed on penning a write-in candidate. "But you know what? I have lots of friends who are voting for Hillary Clinton. I have lots of friends...

In a groundbreaking effort to close the wage gap between men and women, Massachusetts has become the first state to bar employers from asking about applicants’ salaries before offering them a job. The new law will require hiring managers to state a compensation figure upfront — based on what an applicant’s worth is to the company, rather than on what he or she made in a previous position. The bipartisan legislation, signed into law on Monday by Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, is being pushed as a model for other states, as the issue of men historically outearning women who...

Could U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy's rapid political ascent land him on a presidential ticket in November? A report in USA Today Monday listed Murphy as among those who would be interested in the vice presidential spot alongside former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. A Murphy spokeswoman declined to comment on the report. "Some progressives would also offset a weakness of Clinton — who will be 69 by Election Day — that she can’t compensate for with her résumé: her age. Murphy is 42," reads the story by Heidi M Przybyla, the paper's senior...

Gov. Charlie Baker won’t be attending the Republican National Convention in Ohio this July, breaking a string of Massachusetts governors with prominent speaking roles at the party’s convention. Baker, who was elected to office and has governed as a moderate Republican, has taken issue with the party’s leading presidential candidates this election cycle. He has criticized Donald Trump’s “reprehensible” comments about Muslims and women and said Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz have not shown an ability to collaborate with others. Other moderate Republicans, including New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have also said they do...

An emotional Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday signed what he called the most comprehensive law in the nation to combat an opioid addiction scourge, including a seven-day limit on first-time prescriptions for opiate painkillers. The Republican governor struggled to maintain his composure while recalling families he had met — some standing behind him at the Statehouse ceremony — who had lost loved ones to a “deadly, merciless epidemic” and others who were desperately seeking help for a family member. In recent years, the opiate-abuse epidemic has claimed thousands of lives in Massachusetts. The law, which was given final approval by...

The greatest threat to Gov. Charlie Baker’s re-election right now isn’t a Democrat — it’s his own party and soon-to-be-nominee Donald Trump. Baker’s power grab on the GOP state committee and denouncement of Trump have alienated him from many party activists, and more importantly, the 311,000 Massachusetts voters who cast ballots for Trump. That’s a big problem for a GOP governor who got just 115,000 votes in his own primary in 2014 and beat Democrat Martha Coakley by a slim 40,000-vote margin. The bad blood could even leave Baker vulnerable to a Republican primary challenge in 2018, especially if Trump...

Charlie Baker had better stick to his day job of governing. Because politics is not his thing. The late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo said it best: "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose." Baker, the Republican governor, gets the prose part pretty well. It is the poetry piece that has him puzzled. He said early on that he was not going to get involved in national politics or campaign for anybody but would stick to the business of running the state. But he ended up endorsing and campaigning for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a guy he likes,...

In Tuesday’s elections in Massachusetts, liberal GOP Governor Charlie Baker and his political team are conducting an unprecedented large-scale, state-wide campaign to purge all social conservatives from having any significant voice in the State Party. Baker and his people have recruited hand-picked political “moderates,” answerable to Baker, to run against social conservatives in the local Republican State Committee elections across the state. He is funding their election expenses, and his people are coordinating their campaigns. Baker is also helping a number of current RINO State Committee members fend off challenges from grassroots conservatives in their districts.

While partisan battles rage in Washington and state capitals, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker thrives in one of the nation's bluest states. He trades compliments, not jabs, with Democratic legislative leaders and has forged close relationships with other key Democrats, including Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. Democrats, in fact, occupy several key posts in his cabinet and inner circle. [...] For the most part, Baker has sought compromise over confrontation since narrowly defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in the 2014 gubernatorial election. Four years earlier, in a losing campaign against then-Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, Baker came off as angry and partisan, even...

Did a proposal to save a breed of poisonous snakes by giving them their own island in the Quabbin Reservoir make it all the way to the governor’s office? You bet it did. And Charlie Baker supports it. It is being called Rattlesnake Island, and it is soon to be inhabited by a group of lucky pit vipers called Timber Rattlesnakes.

As General Electric gears up to move its headquarters from Fairfield, Conn., to Boston, the people and communities being left behind are dreading the pain to come. John Engel, a real estate agent and town councilor in nearby New Canaan, told public radio's "Marketplace" that the departure of 800 GE executives, most of whom will likely list their homes for sale, will send the local housing market staggering. Once the region loses millions of dollars in disposable income, it will ineluctably lose much of the business those dollars sustained. There will be fewer patrons to fill local restaurants, for example,...

It seems a majority of Massachusetts voters actually prefer boring to blustery. In a recent poll that gauged support for governors across the United States, Baker earned a 74 percent approval rating from Massachusetts residents, a level of support no other governor could reach. How does Baker make boring so appealing? He seems to have figured out three qualities that are critical for getting things done, even in a state where his own Republican party is still a distinct minority. For one thing, he plays well with others. Unlike his predecessors, Baker goes out of his way to make nice...