Senators use budget stage to preview priorities
When senators broke for lunch around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, they had adopted 153 amendments, rejected 75 others and withdrew 101 ideas from consideration. Additional 'bundles' were voted on soon after the Senate returned at 1:30 p.m. — a collection of 54 amendments was adopted and another of 54 amendments was rejected.
After passing a few amendments highlighted by President Karen Spilka in a pre-session press scrum, senators went on a run of withdrawing policy amendments in favor of other advocacy avenues, rather than trying to force the issues in the Senate budget.
Sen. Michael Moore advocated for and then withdrew his pitch to delay the implementation of minimum electric vehicle sales requirements, a topic that came up during the House budget debate as well, saying he recognized 'the bill we are taking up today is not focused on this policy.'
Under the Advanced Clean Cars II regulation that Massachusetts adopted following California's lead in 2023, vehicle manufacturers must produce and make available for sale a gradually-increasing percentage of zero-emission vehicles starting at 35% in model year 2026.
'By enforcing this rule, manufacturers will have to artificially manipulate vehicle inventory to force more zero-emission vehicles into the state while reducing the number of gas-powered vehicles available,' the Millbury Democrat said. 'Looking at last year, 280,000 new vehicles were sold in Massachusetts. To artificially meet the 35% threshold, there would have to be a reduction of 198,000 gas-powered vehicles, representing a $9 billion reduction in economic activity in Massachusetts.'
Also Tuesday, a coalition of 16 chambers of commerce and business organizations sent a letter to Gov. Maura Healey asking her to delay implementation of the ACC II rules, similar to action her administration has already taken related to similar mandates for truck sales.
'The fact is that even with the Commonwealth's aggressive efforts to encourage EV sales over the last several years, we are still short of goals. In 2024, approximately 14% of new vehicle sales in Massachusetts were ACC II compliant,' the coalition wrote. It added, 'These below-expected levels of demand make clear that many Massachusetts drivers do not consider EVs a practical or affordable purchase at the scale needed to satisfy the current timeline in this mandate. A primary concern is the lack of public charging infrastructure. In their 2024 Massachusetts Climate Report Card, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) reported that less than half the number of needed public EV charging stations have been installed.'
The coalition includes the National Federation of Independent Business, Retailers Association of Massachusetts, Cape Cod Canal Regional Chamber of Commerce, Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, Metro South Chamber of Commerce, Neponset River Regional Chamber of Commerce, United Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council.
Sen. Patrick O'Connor did the same with his amendment to move towards a single statewide inspection and permitting process for food trucks, eliminating the patchwork of differing municipal processes. He said he will focus his efforts instead on the standalone legislation he filed to the same end.
'We've seen too many times over and over again, with different businesses and different industries that have grown here in Massachusetts, that we don't do enough to foster their growth. And this is something so simple — that we're basically taking the control from a local municipality and putting it into a statewide umbrella, asking the Department of Public Health to promulgate regulations that will be one standard regulation for food trucks,' the Weymouth Republican said.
In her maiden speech in the Senate Chamber, Sen. Kelly Dooner of Taunton gave a preview of an issue that could spark greater debate as the budget debate goes on: the zoning requirements of the MBTA Communities Act. Her remarks focused on the burdens small communities like those she represents — Carver, Berkley and Rehoboth among them — face as they try to comply with the multi-family zoning mandate.
'I ask you, and I will continue asking you, for as long as I'm here, to have some compassion for those communities that are smaller, whether it's an extension, whether it's revisiting the conversation, both of which I believe need to happen, but anything to help our small adjacent communities that do not have the infrastructure to comply,' the first-term Republican said. She added, 'I just ask for your help in stopping the one-size-fits-all plan. And let's be partners to our municipalities, not the enemies that we have become known as by this MBTA Communities Act.'
One of the MBTA Communities Act-related amendments highlighted by Dooner, O'Connor's bid to exempt so-called adjacent communities from the mandate, was rejected by the Senate without discussion. The others — amendments 12, 13, 140, 147, 296, 297 and 298 — remained pending just before 2 p.m. Tuesday.
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on WWLP.com.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
3 minutes ago
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WASHINGTON — Despite the sun bearing down on him and the sweat beading across his face, President Trump still lingered with reporters lined up outside the White House on Friday. He was leaving on a trip to Scotland, where he would visit his golf courses, and he wanted to talk about how his administration just finished 'the best six months ever.' But over and over, the journalists kept asking Trump about the Jeffrey Epstein case and whether he would pardon the disgraced financier's imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. 'People should really focus on how well the country is doing,' Trump insisted. He shut down another question by saying, 'I don't want to talk about that.' It was another example of how the Epstein saga — and his administration's disjointed approach to it — has shadowed Trump when he's otherwise at the height of his influence. He's enacted a vast legislative agenda, reached trade deals with key countries and tightened his grip across the federal government. 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The sprawling inquiry led to convictions against some top advisors but did not substantiate allegations Trump conspired with Moscow. Trump's opponents, he wrote on social media on Thursday, 'have gone absolutely CRAZY, and are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM.' During the Russia investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors were a straightforward foil for Trump to rail against. Ty Cobb, the lawyer who served as the White House's point person, said the president 'never felt exposed' because 'he thought he had a legitimate gripe.' The situation is different this time now that the Justice Department has been stocked with loyalists. 'The people that he has to get mad at are basically his people as opposed to his inquisitors and adversaries,' Cobb said. In fact, Trump's own officials are the most responsible for bringing the Epstein case back to the forefront. FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, regularly stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein before assuming their current jobs, floating the idea the government had covered up incriminating and compelling information that needed to be brought to light. 'Put on your big-boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,' Patel said in a 2023 podcast. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi played a key role too. She intimated in a Fox News Channel interview in February that an Epstein 'client list' was sitting on her desk for review — she would later say she was referring to the Epstein files more generally — and greeted far-right influencers with binders of records from the case that consisted largely of information already in the public domain. Tensions spiked earlier this month when the FBI and the Justice Department, in an unsigned two-page letter, said that no client list existed, that the evidence was clear Epstein had killed himself and that no additional records from the case would be released to the public. It was a seeming backtrack on the administration's stated commitment to transparency. Amid a fierce backlash from Trump's base and influential conservative personalities, Bongino and Bondi squabbled openly in a tense White House meeting. Since then, the Trump administration has scrambled to appear transparent, including by seeking the unsealing of grand jury transcripts in the case — though it's hardly clear that courts would grant that request or that those records include any eye-catching details anyway. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has taken the unusual step of interviewing the imprisoned Maxwell over the course of two days at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla., where her lawyer said she would 'always testify truthfully.' All the while, Trump and his allies have resurfaced the Russia investigation as a rallying cry for a political base that has otherwise been frustrated by the Epstein saga. Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who just weeks ago appeared on the outs with Trump over comments on Iran's nuclear ambitions, seemed to return to the president's good graces this week following the declassification and release of years-old documents she hoped would discredit long-settled conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election. The developments allowed Trump to rehash long-standing grievances against President Obama and his Democratic advisors. Trump's talk of investigations into perceived adversaries from years ago let him, in effect, go back in time to deflect attention from a very current crisis. 'Whether it's right or wrong,' Trump said, 'it's time to go after people.' Megerian and Tucker write for the Associated Press.
