policy

Gov. Maura Healey is looking on state lawmakers to drastically change the state's unique right-to-shelter law as critics exacerbate safety concerns at shelters across Massachusetts.

Healey, a Democrat in his first term, proposed a series of legislative changes that passed in 1983 to ensure emergency housing assistance to families and pregnant women. Right now it's overwhelmed by the “waves and waves of people” which have arrived within the state recently, Healey said last week.

The changes include a family residency requirement and stricter criminal background checks, that are particularly timely after Healey admitted that while she ordered comprehensive criminal background checks months ago, they were never carried out.

The residency requirements could effectively override current law, meaning newly arrived immigrants is probably not eligible for beds.

However, the day before Healey's State of the Commonwealth address, the governor didn’t submit the amendments herself senior lawmakers asked including Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano to submit the amendments to be included within the emergency supplemental budget.

“I believe these changes are appropriate and necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability of the state’s protection system in a manner consistent with the original intent of the law,” Healey said in an announcement. “These proposed changes will allow us to continue to ensure the security of our system, help cities and towns address the needs of unhoused families in their communities, and put us on the path to a more financially sustainable shelter system.”

Families would must be residents of Mass. be and “show the intention to stay.”

According to Healey's office, it’s currently assumed that anyone looking for housing is eligible, meaning applicants will be accommodated before they supply the required documents. Now families must confirm their identity, residency and other eligibility criteria before placement, aside from domestic violence or natural disasters.

Their changes would require families to be residents of Massachusetts and “demonstrate an intent to remain in the state” through “independent documentary verification” or three months of physical presence within the state, their letter to lawmakers said.

Previously, residency was “proven solely through self-certification,” Healey’s letter states. Several advocates said the changes goal immigrants.

“How would you present these requirements?” said Dieufort Fleurissaint, referred to as Pastor Kekea frontrunner of the Haitian-American community. “I don’t understand how they can prove their intent,” similar to staying within the state, he told the newspaper.

The changes would also codify the policy for conducting Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) checks prior to placement. Currently, “the law does not regulate criminal background checks.”

Healey's handling of the shelter system got here under scrutiny after a person was accused of raping a 15-year-old girl at a Rockland migrant shelter and an undocumented immigrant was allegedly found with an assault rifle and fentanyl at a Revere shelter in December.

Another change would require all people in a household to prove their citizenship or legal residency status, versus the present standard of a single member, in keeping with a letter Healey sent to lawmakers. A “rare exception” can be households with a baby who’s a citizen or lawful everlasting resident.

Healey also proposed imposing a geographic limit on eviction eligibility, meaning only people evicted from homes in Massachusetts can be eligible for the protection system.

While Republicans are also calling for changes, it's unclear whether lawmakers will give Healey's approval

Healey's announcement got here the day after Massachusetts House and Senate Republicans held a gathering to put out their problems with the shelter system. Her changes included limiting stays in shelters, empowering local police and courts to detain ICE detainees and increasing transparency from the Healey administration.

Unlike Healey's changes, the MassGOP wanted people to exhibit a “lawful presence” within the state for at the least a 12 months. They also wanted a six-month limit on all stays in emergency accommodation, something Healey had already proposed late last 12 months.

In an announcement, a spokeswoman for Spilka said, amongst other things, that she “has long recognized our moral responsibility to keep families in crisis off our streets and will work with her colleagues to consider this proposal with the seriousness it deserves.” “

Mariano didn’t reply to a request for comment Wednesday evening, but reported state leaders had not committed to any changes.

Healey's office didn’t reply to a request for comment on whether and when the changes would affect those currently housed within the system.

Read Healey's proposed changes here.

policy

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to impose sweeping latest tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China once he takes office as a part of his efforts to crack down on illegal immigration and medicines.

If the tariffs were imposed, prices for every thing from gasoline to cars could rise dramatically. According to the most recent census data, the United States is the world's largest importer of products, with Mexico, China and Canada being the highest three suppliers.

Trump made those threats Monday evening in two posts on his website Truth Social, through which he railed against the influx of illegal immigrants at the same time as the variety of border crossings within the South is at its lowest level in 4 years.

“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will be signing all the necessary documents to impose a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada on ALL products imported into the United States and the ridiculous open borders,” he wrote, complaining about it, “Thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, pushing crime and drugs to unprecedented levels,” at the same time as violent crime is down from pandemic peaks.

He said the brand new tariffs would remain in effect “until drugs, especially fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country!”

Trump also directed his ire at China, saying he has had “many discussions with China about the massive amounts of drugs, particularly fentanyl, that are being sent to the United States – but to no avail.”

“Until they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% tariff on top of any additional tariffs on all of its many products entering the United States of America,” he wrote.

It is unclear whether Trump will actually perform the threats or whether he’ll use them as a negotiating tactic before taking office in the brand new yr.

The variety of arrests for crossing the border illegally from Mexico has fallen and remained at about its lowest level in 4 years in October, in response to the most recent U.S. figures

The Border Patrol arrested 56,530 people in October, lower than a 3rd of the number from last October.

Much of America's fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico. Border seizures of the drug surged under President Joe Biden, with U.S. officials counting about 21,900 kilos (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl seized in fiscal yr 2024, in comparison with 2,545 kilos (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.

Trump's nominee for treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, if confirmed, could be considered one of several officials answerable for imposing tariffs against other nations. He has said several times that tariffs are a method of negotiating with other countries.

He wrote in an editorial on Fox News last week before his nomination that tariffs were “a useful tool for achieving the president's foreign policy goals.” Whether it's getting allies to spend more on their very own defense, opening foreign markets to U.S. exports, ensuring cooperation in ending illegal immigration and banning the fentanyl trade, or deterring military aggression, tariffs can play a central role play.”

If Trump were to implement the threatened tariffs, the brand new taxes could be an unlimited challenge, especially for the economies of Canada and Mexico.

They would also raise doubts concerning the reliability of the largely Trump-brokered 2020 trade deal, which is as a result of be reviewed in 2026.

Spokespeople for Canada's ambassador to Washington and her deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, who chairs a special Cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations to deal with concerns about one other Trump presidency, didn’t immediately comment.

Freeland said Trump's promise to start mass deportations was a key issue on the Cabinet committee.

A senior Canadian official had said before Trump's post that Canadian officials expect Trump to issue executive orders on trade and the border once he takes office. The official was not authorized to talk publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mexico's Foreign Ministry and Economy Ministry also didn’t immediately reply to Trump's comments. The president often addresses such necessary topics at her morning press conferences.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris promotes clean energy and Donald Trump makes misleading claims and false claims None of the candidates have presented a comprehensive energy plan. Even if it did, a gridlocked Congress can be unlikely to pass it.

Instead, the subsequent president could have his best impact on clean energy by coping with the laws and regulations enacted since 2021 under the Biden-Harris administration. As Environmental engineer who studies Energy and climate changeI expect Harris, who has strongly supported these policies, to implement them, while Trump's record as president suggests he would seek to reverse them. Trade policy towards China, the leading producer of fresh energy technologies, may even be crucial.

Laws and regulations

Three bills passed by Congress under Biden and Harris – the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs ActThe Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act – have modified US energy policy. The three bills allocated a whole lot of billions of dollars to construct infrastructure, incentivize the production and buy of fresh energy, and fund clean energy research.

It is probably going that none of those measures will probably be completely repealed, as each of those measures provides quite a few resources Projects in red states. However, implementation by the subsequent administration will determine how effective they’re in promoting clean energy growth.

For example this Ministry of Finance And Energy departments will determine which projects can receive incentives and loans. Other agencies, equivalent to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energyreferred to as ARPA-E, will provide clean energy research funding.

The Environmental Protection Agency may even play an important role. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the EPA enacted the strictest emissions control regulations ever Fossil fuel power plants And Motor vehicles. These rules could speed up the transition to scrub electricity and electric cars.

But a Trump-led EPA could reverse course, just as it might repeal Obama-era regulations designed to accomplish that Reducing CO2 emissions from power plants in 2019 and weakened emissions regulations for vehicles in 2020. Trump also appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to limit the EPA's powers to scale back emissions.

The role of market forces

Whatever policies the subsequent president decides on, domestic energy trends will depend largely on market forces. Both Trump and Biden ensured a boom in domestic oil and gas production. At the identical time as the associated fee of Wind turbines, Solar panels And Utility-scale batteries have collapsed, these technologies have collapsed dominated latest electricity generation capability.

There is currently one within the USA Order backlog of virtually 2,600 gigawatts of projects waiting to be integrated into the country's power grids. That's about eight times the quantity wind And solar Generation capability in US grids today.

However, Congress is deadlocked versus competing proposals to streamline licensing requirements. State and native governments in addition to regional network operators also play a key role and usually are not easily influenced by federal measures.

Nevertheless, the subsequent president can influence policy through the number of his commissioners Federal Energy Regulatory Commissionwhich regulates the interstate transmission of oil, gas and electricity. Presidents may also push Congress to pass licensing reforms.

Trade policy

As quickly as clean energy production and deployment has grown within the U.S. under the Biden-Harris administration, that increase is dwarfed by China's production. Chinese firms produce over three quarters of world production Solar cells and modulesgreater than half of the world's population Wind turbines and three quarters of it advanced batteries needed for power storage and electric cars. China too sells more electric cars than the remaining of the world combined.

Like it or not, for America to quickly deploy clean energy and electric cars, not less than some materials will should be imported from China. After a long time of backlog, there’s simply no technique to increase production fast enough within the United States achieve national climate goals. Even if solar panels, batteries or electric cars are installed here, they rely on it critical minerals that are mostly refined in China.

As president, Trump waged a trade war with China. He has promised to increase existing tariffs on other products from China if he’s elected for a second term.

Biden and Harris have also sought to vary the playing field in favor of US firms. The administration offers Loans And Incentives for domestic manufacturing and has also imposed a 100% tariff on electric vehicles and a 50% tariff on solar cells from China.

Such a policy may protect domestic manufacturers for some time, but is unlikely to make them competitive in global markets Switching to electric cars And Solar energy.

Also crucial will probably be compliance with the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, a legally binding treaty that sets goals to curb climate change. Countries all over the world have committed to switching to scrub energy to scale back emissions. The European Union enacts CO2 border tariffs This puts imports from manufacturers with high emissions at an obstacle.

If Trump again withdraws the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, as he did in 2017, and rolls back emissions regulations, U.S. manufacturers could face latest hurdles exporting their products abroad. For her part, Harris did supported the Paris Agreement and criticized Trump's decision to withdraw the US from it.

No reversal of the revolution

Markets are worldwide The rapid transition to renewable energy and electric carsthat will probably be cheaper, cleaner and more attractive than their fossil fuel alternatives. Popular Clean Energy Subsidies can be difficult to win back. China's dominance in clean energy technologies won’t be shaken anytime soon, irrespective of what trade policies the subsequent administration pursues.

Based on her record, Harris can be expected to construct on the laws and regulations passed under the present administration, while Trump would likely roll back some, but not all, of his advances. None of the candidates are proposing measures as transformative as those passed lately. Whoever is elected will govern in a clean energy landscape reshaped by these policies and by market forces beyond a president's control.

GREENFIELD, Iowa — Powerful storms ripping through the Midwest spawned several tornadoes, including a fierce twister that ripped through a small Iowa town Tuesday, leaving a desolate landscape of destroyed homes and businesses, downed trees, smashed cars and widely scattered debris, and causing an unknown variety of injuries.

Iowa State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla said several people were injured in Greenfield, a town of about 2,000 people about 55 miles southwest of Des Moines, and there was extensive damage within the town. He didn’t know the extent of the injuries.

After the storm, parts of Greenfield seemed to be destroyed. Mounds of broken wood, branches, automotive parts and other debris littered the lots where homes once stood. Cars lay broken and bent while damaged houses stood askew against the grey and overcast sky. The trees had hardly any branches or leaves.

Multiple tornadoes were reported across the state, and one also appears to have brought down several 250-foot-tall wind turbines. Television station KCCI-TV in Des Moines, Iowa, showed a minimum of three wind turbines toppled by an apparent tornado in southwest Iowa, and a minimum of one was on fire with black smoke billowing from the bent structure.

Wind farms are built to resist tornadoes, hurricanes and other strong winds. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, turbines are designed to shut down when winds exceed certain thresholds, typically around 55 miles per hour. They also lock and feather their blades and switch into the wind to attenuate stress.

The Adair County Health System hospital in Greenfield was damaged by the storm, but Mercy One spokesman Todd Mizener said he had no further details. The hospital is connected to Mercy One and officials were en path to Greenfield to evaluate the damage.

The city describes itself as “the friendly wave as you walk,” with tree-lined streets — before the storm — and “the bang of fireworks or the twinkle of lights” on special holidays. Greenfield also calls itself the “perfect place to grow” and prides itself on being a town where business owners know their name and neighbors help their neighbors, in response to its visitor page.

Mary Long, the owner of Long's Market in downtown Greenfield, said she rode out the storm at her store on the community's historic town square, which was largely spared damage. Long said there appears to have been widespread damage on the east and south sides of town.

“I could hear this roar, like the proverbial freight train, and then it was just over,” she said.

Camille Blair said the Greenfield Chamber of Commerce office where she works closed before the storm around 2 p.m. She left her house to explain the extensive damage and debris lying around.

“There is pretty significant roof damage on several homes that I know will need completely new roofs,” she said. “And I can see from my house that it was kind of straight down the street.”
In far southwest Iowa, a video posted on social media showed a tornado northwest of Red Oak. Further east and north, the National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings for areas near the cities of Griswold, Corning, Fontanelle and Guthrie Center, amongst others.

Iowa was already prepared for severe weather after the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center gave many of the state a high likelihood of severe thunderstorms with the opportunity of strong tornadoes. Des Moines public schools ended classes two hours early and canceled all evening activities prematurely of the storms.

Earlier within the day, residents in west Omaha, Nebraska, woke as much as sirens blaring and widespread power outages as torrential rain, strong winds and enormous hail hit the realm. The deluge of greater than 5 inches of rain in lower than two hours flooded basements and swamped cars. Television station KETV showed firefighters arriving to rescue people from vehicles.

In Illinois, dust storms forced authorities to shut sections of two highways on account of poor visibility. Wind gusts between 35 mph (56 km/h) and 45 mph (74 km/h) hit the McLean area, in response to National Weather Service meteorologist Chuck Schaffer.

“There is no visibility at times,” the state police posted on the social media platform X.

The storms followed days of maximum weather that devastated much of the central a part of the country. Strong winds, large hail and tornadoes swept across parts of Oklahoma and Kansas late Sunday, damaging homes and injuring two in Oklahoma.

Another round of storms ravaged Colorado and western Nebraska on Monday night, seeing the town of Yuma, Colorado, covered in hail the dimensions of baseballs and golf balls, turning streets into rivers of water and ice. Front-end loaders were used Tuesday to maneuver half-foot-high hail.

Tuesday's storms are expected to bring similarly strong winds, heavy rain and enormous hail to Minnesota and parts of northern Missouri, said Bob Oravec, chief meteorologist on the National Weather Service.

He said the system is anticipated to maneuver south on Wednesday, bringing even worse weather conditions to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri.

McFetridge reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Beck reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Josh Funk in Omaha, Colleen Slevin in Denver and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.