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Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a new state law Thursday that focuses on students' access to school meals, with provisions around free breakfast and lunch as well as unpaid meal debt. The new law also takes aim at a practice known as "lunch shaming," prohibiting schools from publicly identifying or taking punitive action against students who have unresolved debt for school meals. "The new law is both timely and critical because it boosts federal nutrition dollars to schools across Massachusetts, and keeps children out of what should be an 'adult only' conversation on school meal debt," said Patricia Baker, a...

Massachusetts Republican Party chairman Jim Lyons is not happy with his party’s incumbent governor Charlie Baker — who is also not happy with Lyons. Baker told a reporter on Friday that Lyons should resign as Massachusetts Republican Party chairman — and Lyons wants Baker out of the party. The latest turn in the frosty relationship between the party chairman and the governor stems from Lyons’s support for Boston city council candidate Donnie Palmer, ignoring racially insensitive social media posts that the candidate made about Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu; Palmer supports Annissa Essaibi George in the mayoral race.

Boy, has President Trump got Gov. Charlie Baker’s number. I had POTUS on my radio show Monday and he generally seemed in a pretty mellow mood — he just chuckled when I played for him the soundbite of Dementia Joe Biden last week falsely bragging that “I started the vaccination program.” But when it comes to Baker — and at least one other RINO governor — it appears that Trump is on a revenge tour. Last week he endorsed ex-Rep. Geoff Diehl, Baker’s opponent in the GOP primary, so I asked Trump to expand on how he came to his...

Having lost a Texas state Senate race in 2020, Pete Flores is taking another crack at a post in a newly drawn district, earning the endorsement of former President Donald Trump to boot. Trump wrote Tuesday in a statement from his Save America PAC: "Pete Flores will be a great state senator for the terrific people of Central Texas. With 27 years in strong law enforcement, Pete will stand for law and order, loves our military and our vets, and will fight to secure our border. Pete is strong on our second amendment and will fight for low taxes. Pete...

GOP gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl has landed a big deal endorsement. Former President Donald Trump is throwing his support behind the conservative candidate in a race where rivals are still lining up and Gov. Charlie Baker has yet to declare. “Baker is bad on crime, disrespects our police, does nothing for our Veterans, has totally botched the Vaccination rollout, presided over the collapse of the MBTA, and has seen crime go to record levels,” Trump said in his endorsement Tuesday night. Diehl has branded himself as a conservative counterweight in a race where most of the other candidates swing far...

BOSTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday against hearing an appeal of a decision that found Gov. Charlie Baker did not overstep his authority with sweeping orders to close businesses and limit gatherings to control the coronavirus early in the pandemic. The nation’s highest court announced without comment Monday that it would not consider the appeal. The lawsuit argued that Baker had no authority to issue public health-related orders under the state’s Civil Defense Act, which it said was designed to protect the state from foreign invasions, insurrections, and catastrophic events like hurricanes and fires. The Massachusetts Supreme...

The Massachusetts National Guard was activated to help communities with student transportation as the state contends with a shortage of bus drivers at the start of the school year. An order from Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday provides up to 250 personnel to assist local communities with training starting Tuesday for 90 members in several cities. The decision comes as states across the country deal with shortages of drivers...

....Replace every mention of religious motivation with scientific disease control and you have a template that could easily fit with Phase III Step 2 of “reopening Massachusetts” today. It is officially permitted to dance with a mask, with people in your household, or with friends up to six. But moving from table to table, dancing without a mask, or otherwise doing line dances or square dances with strangers is nothing but a danger to public health. There are aspects of lockdownism as ideology that have a religious caste, and this has been true from the beginning of the lockdowns. People...

We were excited and hopeful when Gov. Baker announced that performance venues could open on Thursday. Then we saw the rules: NO SINGING ALLOWED Excerpt: "Singing is not permitted in any indoor performance venues. For outdoor performances involving singing or indoor and outdoor performances involving brass or wind instruments, special distancing must be followed: At least 10 feet between performers At least 25 feet between performers and first row of the audience Plexiglass barriers cannot be used to reduce required distance between performers or between performers and the audience"

Gov. Charlie Baker must be losing it — on Wednesday he let St. Anthony Fauci beat him to the punch by hours in trying to scare “folks” out of having Super Bowl parties Sunday. “Every time we have something like this,” Fauci thundered to the true believers on the Democrat morning shows, “there is always a spike.” By the time Charlie Parker — as Joe Biden calls him — went out to administer his daily rites of panic porn, Fauci owned the headlines: “Lay low and cool it.” Parker seemed off his game, for once almost apologetic about his hysterical...

MassDOT Secretary Stephanie Pollack has been appointed to the new Biden-Harris administration as the new Deputy Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. Pollack has led MassDOT since 2015, at the beginning of Governor Charlie Baker’s first term. Before she joined the state government, Pollack had been Associate Director for Research at the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University, and an attorney and director of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF). As a CLF attorney in the 1990s, Pollack helped negotiate a package of significant transit improvements that the state promised to build as mitigation...

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said on “Fox News Sunday” that new faces of the Republican Party have the potential to flourish now that former President Trump is out of office. He named Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska as potential spokespeople. “So there will be some new faces,” Mr. Romney said. “President Trump, of course, will continue to have influence, but I think our party is going to return to some of our more fundamental principles, which is fiscal responsibility, believing in the importance of character,...

In its most recent exercise of liberal democracy, the state senate of Massachusetts voted 32-8 to override Gov. Charlie Baker's veto of what is called the Roe Act. One day earlier, Monday, the state house had voted to override. The Roe Act is now law in the Bay State. And what does it say? Drafted and adopted to protect a woman's right to an abortion, should Roe vs. Wade be overturned by the Supreme Court, it guarantees 16-year-old girls the right to abort their unborn children, without their parents' consent, through the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. At 24 weeks,...

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker issued a new stay-at-home advisory Monday asking all residents to be in their homes from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. daily and ordered restaurants to stop table service at 9:30 p.m. to ensure customers can get home in time. The stay-at-home advisory takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The state allows exceptions for going to work, seeking medical care, going to the grocery store and picking up take-out food. “We’re doing much better than many other states and many other countries, but hereto we’ve let down our guard,” he said. The curfew also applies to all...

Kimberly Budd is poised to take the reins as chief justice of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court where she promises to foster a “team of equals” and draw on her lifetime of experience. Budd has served the Massachusetts judiciary for 11 years. She was first nominated by Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick in 2009 to the state Superior Court when the late Chief Justice Ralph Gants vacated the bench to join the SJC. In her 2016 confirmation hearing, Budd laid out her opposition to the death penalty and to imposing mandatory minimum sentences. She also said she doesn’t “see any reason...

Face masks and two-week quarantines for travelers entering Massachusetts from COVID-19 hot spots would be required under a bill filed at the Statehouse on Tuesday. The bill would also prioritize COVID-19 testing for vulnerable populations and mandate enforcement of workplace safety requirements designed to protect both workers and the public. Both the face mask and quarantine requirements would be enforced with fines under the bill. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has already ordered the wearing of masks and has advised visitors to Massachusetts to quarantine for two weeks — except for a handful of nearby states. One of the sponsors of...

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Massachusetts authorities to allow gun shops to reopen after the governor deemed them non-essential businesses that needed to close to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston ruled that the restrictions ordered by Republican Governor Charlie Baker in response to the pandemic imposed an “improper burden” on the constitutional rights of citizens seeking to possess firearms. Baker imposed the restrictions through executive orders issued beginning in mid-March that, like those adopted in other states, forced the closure of an array of brick-and-mortar businesses in response to the...

<p>BOSTON (AP) — Everyone in Massachusetts must begin wearing masks or facial coverings while in public under an executive order signed Friday by Gov. Charlie Baker.</p> <p>The use of facial coverings is a commonsense strategy to help limit the spread of the coronavirus, particularly as the state makes plans to begin reopening the economy on May 18, Baker said.</p>

A large crowd of protesters gathered outside the Massachusetts State House on Monday afternoon calling on Gov. Charlie Baker to reopen the economy. Dubbed the “Liberty Rally,” the event was planned to take place if Baker didn’t reopen nonessential businesses on May 1. Baker’s business order, along with his stay-at-home advisory, was initially set to be lifted on May 4 but was extended last week to May 18, as efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus continue. The protest was promoted by Jeffrey Kuhner, a conservative radio host, and on the website for “Super Happy Fun America,” which organized...

Gov. Charlie Baker signed an executive order Friday requiring residents to wear masks in public, including people who take public transit and grocery shopping. “We view this as common sense,” said Baker, a Republican. The executive order takes effect on May 6. Masks and face coverings are mandatory in grocery stores, pharmacies and other retail shops, as well as on public transportation. The order does not apply to children under the age of 2 and people with medical conditions who would be negatively affected by the requirement. ... People who are found violating the order could get a $300 fine....