Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third

 

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER TO RECEIVE IT IN A TIMELY MANNER

Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2023

William Dudley, Former President of the New York Fed

The official that oversaw the secret funneling of trillions of dollars of bailout money from the New York Fed to the grossly mismanaged mega banks on Wall Street during the financial crisis of 2008 to 2010, had the temerity yesterday to pen an opinion piece at Bloomberg News pointing his finger at current Fed officials for today’s banking crisis – without once mentioning his role in getting us here.

The article was written by William (Bill) Dudley, who served as President of the New York Fed from January 27, 2009 to June 18, 2018. Prior to that Dudley was Executive Vice President of the Markets Group at the New York Fed, the group that runs its own trading floors in New York and Chicago and trades with the Wall Street mega banks it is also supposed to be supervising.

The New York Fed has become the official money spigot for Wall Street bailouts while being, literally, owned by some of the biggest banks on Wall Street. (See These Are the Banks that Own the New York Fed and Its Money Button.) Prior to joining the New York Fed in 2007, Dudley worked for two decades at – wait for it – Goldman Sachs, becoming a partner, managing director and chief economist.

Dudley’s broader agenda became clear in the opening sentence of his opinion piece yesterday. He writes that this is the “first banking crisis since 2008,” which dovetails nicely with the Wall Street lobbyists’ propaganda that there is nothing significantly wrong with the U.S. banking system so Congress shouldn’t start thinking about separating the Wall Street trading casinos from the federally-insured commercial banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act – which prevented systemic banking crises for 66 years until its repeal in 1999.

In fact, this is the third major banking crisis since 2008 and all three have occurred in the span of less than four years – a clear indication that the structure of the U.S. banking system is in desperate need of a major overhaul.

The first banking crisis since 2008 began on September 17, 2019 – for reasons the Fed has yet to explain with any credibility. In the last quarter of 2019, the New York Fed had to shovel emergency repo loans cumulatively totaling (on a term-adjusted basis) $19.87 trillion into Wall Street banks. As the chart below indicates, just six trading units of the mega banks on Wall Street received 62 percent of that amount. (Unadjusted for the term of the loan, the cumulative total was $4.5 trillion.)

Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, the Fed had to release the names of the banks that received these bailouts, and the dollar amounts of each loan, two years after the program began. While mainstream media went to court to get this information in 2008, there was a total mainstream media blackout when the Fed released the data for the 2019 bailouts. (See There’s a News Blackout on the Fed’s Naming of the Banks that Got Its Emergency Repo Loans; Some Journalists Appear to Be Under Gag Orders.)

The next banking crisis occurred in March 2020 and was blamed on the pandemic. The share prices of the four largest banks (by deposits) collapsed by as much as 40 to 60 percent between January 2, 2020 and March 18, 2020. (See chart below.) The Fed rolled out the same alphabet soup of emergency lending programs that it had rolled out in 2008 – with the New York Fed once again in charge of the bulk of those programs.

Three years later, in March of 2023, the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred: Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, respectively, were put into receivership by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). In addition, federal regulators had allowed Silvergate Bank, a federally-insured bank, to immerse itself with crypto outfits (including the crypto house of frauds owned by Sam Bankman-Fried) and it also experienced a bank run and was allowed to quietly wind down in March. It is far from clear that there will not be more bank failures before this latest crisis runs its course.

The good ole Fed is now doing something it has never done before in its 110-year history. It is accepting underwater bonds as collateral for emergency loans to teetering banks and paying 100-cents on the dollar on that collateral for loans of up to one year. (Historically, the Fed has imposed a haircut on collateral and made overnight loans through its Discount Window.) The Fed calls its new program the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).

Related Articles:

Is the New York Fed Too Deeply Conflicted to Regulate Wall Street?

The New York Fed Has Contracted JPMorgan to Hold Over $1.7 Trillion of its QE Bonds Despite Two Felony Counts and Serial Charges of Crimes

As Criminal Probes of JPMorgan Expand, Documents Surface Showing JPMorgan Paid $190,000 Annually to Spouse of the Bank’s Top Regulator

New Documents Show How Power Moved to Wall Street, Via the New York Fed 

Intelligence Gathering Plays Key Role at New York Fed’s Trading Desk 

LINK

At Year End, 4,127 U.S. Banks Held $7.7 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits; JPMorgan Chase, BofA, Wells Fargo and Citi Accounted for 43 Percent of That

 

SUBSCRIBE TO THIS NEWSLETTER TO RECEIVE IT IN A TIMELY MANNER

At Year End, 4,127 U.S. Banks Held $7.7 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits; JPMorgan Chase, BofA, Wells Fargo and Citi Accounted for 43 Percent of That

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 11, 2023 ~

If the dark secrets about the U.S. banking system that federal regulators have been keeping since the financial crash of 2008 are allowed to be aired in public Congressional hearings as a result of the current banking crisis – and mainstream media will grow a backbone and cover those hearings – it could help the U.S. avoid a catastrophic financial reckoning down the road.

For years, Wall Street On Parade has been reporting that just four banks in the U.S. control more than 85 percent of all the opaque derivatives in the banking system. We have also regularly reported how federal agencies have singled out these four banks for posing systemic risk to the financial stability of the United States. We’re talking about JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s Citibank.

On March 30, we crunched the numbers from the regulatory filings made by these banks (call reports) and reported that as of December 31, 2022, these four banks held a combined $3.286 trillion in uninsured domestic deposits. (Federal deposit insurance is capped at $250,000 per depositor per bank. Uninsured deposits taking flight were a key element in the recent bank runs that led to the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history.) As of December 31, 2022, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. held $2.015 trillion in deposits in domestic offices, of which $1.058 trillion were uninsured; Bank of America held $1.9 trillion in deposits in domestic offices, of which $909.26 billion were uninsured; Wells Fargo held $1.4 trillion in deposits in domestic offices, of which $721.1 billion were uninsured; and Citibank N.A. (parent, Citigroup) held $777 billion in deposits in domestic offices, of which $598.2 billion were uninsured.

We can now put that $3.286 trillion figure into sharper perspective. On May 1, the FDIC released its report on “Options for Deposit Insurance Reform.” Without mentioning that just four banks controlled $3.286 trillion of uninsured deposits at year end, the FDIC report did provide the figure of $7.7 trillion as the total of uninsured domestic deposits held by all banks at the end of 2022.

That means that just these four banks held 43 percent of all uninsured deposits at 4,127 federally insured commercial banks in the U.S. as of year end 2022.

The FDIC report reads as follows:

“Following the 2008-2013 banking crisis, the reliance by the U.S. banking system on uninsured deposits grew dramatically, both in dollar volume and as a proportion of overall deposit funding. From year-end 2009 through year-end 2022, uninsured domestic deposits at FDIC-institutions increased at an annualized rate of 9.8 percent, from $2.3 trillion to $7.7 trillion.”

Give your brain a few moments to thoroughly digest that statement. Federal regulators have known since the 1930s that uninsured deposits are the most likely to bolt in a banking crisis, and yet, after the worst banking crisis in 2008 since the Great Depression, both Congress and federal regulators have allowed uninsured deposits to more than triple at U.S. banks – as well as to become concentrated at just four banks.

If ever there was a screaming call to dramatically restructure federal oversight of banks – this is it.

The average American has no idea of just how dangerously concentrated banking has become in the United States. That’s because mainstream media never puts this information on the front pages of newspapers or reports it on the evening TV news.

We decided to help fill in this void by creating the graphic above, using data from regulatory filings. Our graphic shows the consolidated assets of the 31 largest banks in the U.S., which total $16.012 trillion.

The same four banks discussed above, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s Citibank, represent 0.0969 percent of the total 4,127 federally-insured commercial banks in the U.S. – and yet they are allowed by federal regulators and Congress to control a mind-boggling $9 trillion in consolidated assets.

All 4,127 federally-insured commercial banks in the U.S. held $22.3 trillion in assets as of December 31, 2022 according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Statistics at a Glance. The $9 trillion in assets held by just these four banks represents 40 percent of the total assets of all 4,127 banks.

Also disturbing, the 31 banks on the graph above held $16.012 trillion in assets, or 72 percent of the total assets of all 4,127 banks in the U.S. Three of those banks have failed this year.

How did this happen? See our article: In 16 Years, the Fed Has Approved 4,506 Bank Mergers and Denied One.

Against this backdrop, it is nothing short of gross incompetence (and/or regulatory capture) that federal regulators allowed JPMorgan Chase, already the largest bank by assets, deposits, derivatives and riskiness, to purchase the failed bank, First Republic, on May 1. 


LINK 

FOCUS: Julia Rock and Andrew Perez | Influenced by Dark Money, Clarence Thomas Has Reversed His Position on a Landmark Legal Doctrine

 

 

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

IS RSN CRYING WOLF? — Another reader comment and prevalent misconception. No. The donations have absolutely fallen off. As a result we are obliged to spend more time and more effort to raise our basic budget. That is what we and you, by proxy are experiencing. The situation is serious.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

FOCUS: Julia Rock and Andrew Perez | Influenced by Dark Money, Clarence Thomas Has Reversed His Position on a Landmark Legal Doctrine
Julia Rock and Andrew Perez, Jacobin
Excerpt: "Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has abandoned his own stated principles and changed his position on one of America’s most significant regulatory doctrines. Why? A dark money network of conservative billionaires is making his family rich." 

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas has abandoned his own stated principles and changed his position on one of America’s most significant regulatory doctrines. Why? A dark money network of conservative billionaires is making his family rich.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas changed his position on one of America’s most significant regulatory doctrines after his wife reportedly accepted secret payments from a shadowy conservative network pushing for the change. Thomas’s shift also came while he was receiving lavish gifts from a billionaire linked to other groups criticizing the same doctrine — which is now headed back to the high court.

The so-called “Chevron deference” doctrine stipulates that the executive branch — not the federal courts — has the power to interpret laws passed by Congress in certain circumstances. Conservatives for years have fought to overturn the doctrine, a move that would empower legal challenges to federal agency regulations on everything from climate policy to workplace safety to overtime pay.

Thomas wrote a landmark Supreme Court opinion upholding the doctrine in 2005, but began questioning it a decade later, before eventually renouncing his past opinion in 2020 and claiming that the doctrine itself might be unconstitutional. Now, Thomas could help overturn the doctrine in a new case the high court just agreed to hear next term.

Groups within the conservative legal movement funded by Leonard Leo’s dark money network and affiliated with Thomas’s billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow have organized a concerted effort in recent years to overturn Chevron. That campaign unfolded as they delivered gifts and cash to Thomas and his family in the lead-up to his shift on the doctrine.

In 2010, Crow bankrolled a dark money group led by Thomas’s wife, Virginia or “Ginni,” that paid her $120,000. Leo was on the group’s board of directors. In 2012, Leo’s dark money network steered undisclosed consulting payments to Thomas’s wife. The Leo network has funded Republican politicians and several nonprofits pressing the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron doctrine next term.

Crow, meanwhile, provided luxury travel to the Thomas family for two decades. The justice did not report those trips, and similarly failed to disclose that Crow bought his mother’s house, and allowed her to keep living there rent free, and paid his grandnephew’s boarding school tuition.

Last year, Crow’s wife joined the board of trustees at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank that pressed the Supreme Court to hear the new case aimed at ending the Chevron doctrine.

Crow also cofounded the Club For Growth, a pro-business dark money group that issued a memo pining for the end of the Chevron doctrine.

Spokespeople for Leo, Crow’s company, and the Supreme Court did not respond to the Lever’s requests for comment.

Thomas Reverses Himself

After revelations of the gifts and cash, Thomas’s most loyal defenders have sought to deflect criticism by depicting the justice as immune from influence, insisting that he “refuses to compromise his principles,” as Utah senator and former Supreme Court clerk Mike Lee (R) claimed in a tweet on Monday.

But in this situation, Thomas abandoned his own stated principles on an issue at the heart of one of the conservative movement’s most significant crusades to limit government regulation.

At issue is the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, brought by environmental advocates to challenge the Ronald Reagan administration’s weakening of air pollution regulations.

The Supreme Court deferred to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) interpretation of the Clean Air Act, over the protests of environmentalists. The ruling was initially seen as a win for polluters, but it created the so-called Chevron doctrine, which became a landmark principle in administrative law, empowering federal agencies to interpret and implement statutes.

Justice Thomas was initially a defender of the Chevron doctrine. In 2005, he penned a decision upholding it — over the dissent of his fellow conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

The case, National Cable … Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, addressed a federal agency’s ability to regulate cable companies under a 1934 law.

Thomas wrote the majority opinion, arguing that the lower court should have applied the Chevron doctrine to the case and deferring to the agency’s interpretation of the law.

“If a statute is ambiguous, and if the implementing agency’s construction is reasonable, Chevron requires a federal court to accept the agency’s construction of the statute, even if the agency’s reading differs from what the court believes is the best statutory interpretation,” Thomas wrote, defending both the legitimacy of the doctrine and its application in a landmark administrative law case.

But within the ensuing decade, Thomas changed course to crusade against Chevron deference, eventually arguing that his own opinion in the 2005 case had been ill-advised.

“In a period spanning less than three months in the spring of 2015, Justice Thomas issued five concurring or dissenting opinions that set forth a comprehensive, originalist take on the administrative state,” one of his former clerks, Elbert Lin, wrote in a Yale Law Journal article in 2017. “Though Justice Thomas himself had authored one of the Court’s most significant cases affording deference to administrative agencies — National Cable … Telecommunications Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Services — I argue it should come as little surprise that he would be the first to question that case if he felt the Constitution demanded it.”

One of those five opinions came in Michigan v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 2015 case challenging the EPA’s ability to regulate power plants under the Clean Air Act. Thomas joined the conservative majority, ruling that the EPA had overstepped its authority, and wrote his own concurrence arguing that Chevron deference unconstitutionally delegated power from the judiciary to the executive branch.

“Although we hold today that EPA exceeded even the extremely permissive limits on agency power set by our precedents, we should be alarmed that it felt sufficiently emboldened by those precedents to make the bid for [Chevron] deference that it did here,” Thomas wrote.

In 2020, he went even further, making the unusual move of renouncing his own decision in the 2005 Brand X case.

That year, conservative groups were petitioning the Supreme Court to take an administrative law case involving Howard and Karen Baldwin, two movie producers who had overpaid taxes to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and were trying to get their money back using an obscure argument about the postmark date of a letter.

The Baldwins lost their case at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which cited Brand X precedent in ruling against the couple. The Leo-linked New Civil Liberties Alliance petitioned the Supreme Court to hear an appeal and overturn Brand X. Leo’s dark money group donated $1 million in 2020 to the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

The Supreme Court voted not to take the case, with only Thomas dissenting.

“Although I authored Brand X, it is never too late to ‘surrende[r] former views to a better considered position,’” Thomas wrote, quoting from a 1950 court decision. “Brand X appears to be inconsistent with the Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and traditional tools of statutory interpretation. My skepticism of Brand X begins at its foundation — Chevron deference . . . Chevron is in serious tension with the Constitution, the [Administrative Procedures Act], and over 100 years of judicial decisions.”

Flipping the Court

Thomas’s stunning reversal did not happen in a vacuum — it happened amid a coordinated campaign by the conservative movement, led by a network that enriched him.

In the early 2010s, conservative groups began to take aim at the Chevron doctrine, building a case against it through law review articles, legal challenges to regulations, and by installing justices on the court who were willing to overturn it.

“Conservative jurists, commentators, began to see Chevron as empowering the administrative state in ways they didn’t like,” Thomas Merrill, a professor at Columbia Law School, told Bloomberg.

The Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers organization where Leo is cochair, was at the center of these efforts, publishing articles and touting theories undermining the Chevron doctrine and the administrative state. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where Crow sits on the board of trustees, was also agitating against the Chevron doctrine.

“The constant but erratic appeal to Chevron deference seems to us unsound not only for the exalted position that it confers on administrative expertise, but also for the massive political forces — think again of Sprietsma — that it unleashes at the highest levels inside the executive branch and administrative agencies,” read a 2011 publication by AEI.

A 2014 AEI publication lamented, “Chevron has become little more than a sedative for courts clearly anguished by the imaginative excesses of agencies, but unsure of the proper role of the judiciary in reining in those excesses.”

While conservative activists launched a judicial offensive funded by Leo’s dark money network, Leo and Crow were also moving behind the scenes to influence the justices with gifts and payments.

The Washington Post reported last week that Leo steered payments to Thomas’s wife, Ginni, through a polling company run by Donald Trump pollster Kellyanne Conway, and the expenses were quickly covered by Leo’s dark money network.

“No mention of Ginni, of course,” Leo wrote as he instructed Conway to give Ginni Thomas “another $25K.”

Leo, Ginni Thomas, and Crow were all involved with Liberty Central, a Tea Party–themed dark money group formed in 2010. The organization was initially funded with $500,000 from Crow, according to Politico, while Leo served on its board of directors. The organization paid $120,000 to Ginni Thomas.

Over the past two decades, Crow has frequently provided the Thomas family with private jet and superyacht trips that Clarence Thomas failed to disclose. Crow also bought a house owned by Thomas, and allowed his mother to live there rent-free, and paid at least two years of boarding school tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew whom the justice said he raised “as a son.”

Thomas’s fellow conservative on the court, Scalia, had also flipped from being one of Chevron’s staunchest defenders to suggesting it be overturned.

The largesse that flowed to Thomas was part of a larger movement to pack the court with the kinds of justices who would throw out long-standing precedents like Chevron.

As President Trump’s judicial adviser, Leo helped select three of the court’s six conservative justices — while his dark money network simultaneously spent tens of millions to boost their confirmation campaigns.

At least two of those justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were on record publicly opposing the Chevron doctrine.

When Gorsuch was nominated to replace Scalia in 2017, his hostility to Chevron deference was a key issue in congressional questioning. As a lower court judge, Gorsuch had penned an infamous opinion calling Chevron “a judge-made doctrine for the abdication of the judicial duty.” Gorsuch would not only be to the right of Scalia on Chevron, but also could push the court’s existing conservatives to overturn the doctrine.

“Gorsuch may be the one to bring the court together on fundamental questions of administrative power that have sparked so much controversy and divisiveness in recent years,” corporate lawyer and conservative commentator Andrew Grossman told Reuters.

The next Trump appointee, Kavanaugh, also opposed Chevron. Leo told the New York Times that reining in executive branch agencies was becoming a key priority for the conservative court: “It’s the next step in the national debate about the proper role of the courts. The administrative state is 75 years old,” he said, referring to the Administrative Procedures Act. “It’s become a huge, glaring issue.”

Trump’s third appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, had not indicated a clear position on Chevron in previous cases, and declined to reveal her position on Chevron during her confirmation hearing. “As a sitting judge and as a judicial nominee, it would not be appropriate for me to offer an opinion on abstract legal issues or hypotheticals relating to that precedent,” she said.

Club for Growth, the nonprofit cofounded by Crow, published a memo on the issue of Barrett’s position on “Chevron … Administrative Deference,” which noted: “If Judge Amy Coney Barrett were seated on the Supreme Court, her judicial philosophy would have a positive impact on limiting agency overregulation.”

Club for Growth spent $5 million boosting Barrett’s confirmation.

Leo’s Network Lobbies to Kill Chevron

Thomas’s reversal on the Chevron doctrine — and the conservative movement’s success in stacking the court — is more relevant than ever: last week, justices voted to hear a case that could kill the doctrine outright.

The case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, deals with a Commerce Department rule that stipulates how fishery inspectors are paid. But the substantive issue in the case is whether the Supreme Court should overturn Chevron — as a slew of Leo-backed groups is lobbying the court to do.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance, which received $1 million in 2020 from Leo’s network, filed a brief supporting Loper Bright Enterprises. Leo’s group additionally contributed $350,000 in 2020 and again in 2021 to the Independent Women’s Forum. That organization’s affiliate, the Independent Women’s Law Center, filed its own supportive brief in the case.

Leo’s network donated $1 million between 2020 and 2021 to Advancing American Freedom, a nonprofit led by former vice president Mike Pence that submitted a brief in Loper Bright Enterprises.

The Leo network has been the longtime top financier of the Republican Attorneys General Association, which elects GOP attorneys general. In December, eighteen Republican attorneys general filed a brief in Loper Bright Enterprises supporting the petitioners.

The Manhattan Institute, where Crow’s wife is on the board, also filed an amicus brief asking the court to hear the case designed to overturn Chevron.

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611

POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook: Zeroing in on Gen Z

 

View in browser   BY KELLY GARRITY , SOPHIE GARDNER AND LISA KASHINSKY THE Z FACTOR — Top Massachusetts Democrats are turning to a new generation to bolster their bases. Reps. Seth Moulton, Jim McGovern and Lori Trahan have each signed the “Youth Vote Champion” pledge from Voters of Tomorrow, a coalition focused on getting out the Gen Z vote. The goal for the trio — and the 33 other House Democrats on the roster so far — is straightforward: engage the youngest voters ahead of next year’s elections. Putting the pledge into action will look different for different members. Moulton’s team already engages with Gen Z through the DCCC’s youth fellowship program and with his own youth council of high school students. Trahan said she’s trying to meet Gen Zers where they are — visiting their schools and engaging with them on social media. But there’s an incentive problem for the Bay State’s pledge class. None of these Democrats faced a serious challenge last year. And if the same holds true next year, they likely won’t need a wave of Gen Z voters to ride to another term. That doesn’t mean they should ignore up-and-coming voters, though. Sometimes a sleeper reelection campaign can turn into a nail biter, and Gen Z activists can be a key to victory. Just ask Sen. Ed Markey. “It is increasingly becoming apparent to political actors , whether they're candidates or campaign managers or activists or whatever, that this generation is a critical and increasingly powerful voting bloc,” John Walsh, Markey’s 2020 campaign manager and current Senate chief of staff, told Playbook. Gen Zers have repeatedly shown their political muscle — whether it’s organizing to save the co-author of the Green New Deal from being defeated by a scion of one of the country’s political dynasties, or turning to TikTok to troll former President Donald Trump. And they’re increasingly flexing that influence in elections. Some Democrats credited the youngest voting-eligible demographic with stymieing the GOP’s “red wave” last year. Even if they don’t need younger voters to fend off a challenge , mobilizing that cohort could make a difference in down-ballot races and help fend off any GOP candidates that might emerge to take on Sen. Elizabeth Warren. “When I think of the state senators and the state reps who are running on the ticket next year, I think it's incumbent on all of us to energize young voters,” Trahan told Playbook. GOOD MONDAY MORNING, MASSACHUSETTS. Bring on the Heat! TODAY — Gov. Maura Healey, EEA Secretary Rebecca Tepper and Treasurer Deb Goldberg attend a Jewish American Heritage Month reception at 1 p.m. in the governor’s ceremonial office. Tips? Scoops? Email us: kgarrity@politico.com , sgardner@politico.com , lkashinsky@politico.com .   DATELINE BEACON HILL — “Tax-cap law, online lottery featured in thousand-plus Senate budget amendments,” by Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald: “A push to digitize state lottery sales and prevent changes to a once-obscure tax cap law are among the thousand-plus amendments senators filed this week to their fiscal 2024 budget proposal." — “Bill would allow gender changes on marriage licenses,” by Christian M. Wade, Eagle-Tribune: “Transgender individuals in Massachusetts can change their name and gender on birth certificates, state drivers' licenses, Social Security cards and other vital records. But they are still prevented from changing their gender on marriage licenses under a decades-old state Department of Public Health regulation.” — “George Floyd’s uncle visits Massachusetts State House: ‘This is about preserving life.’” by Ivy Scott, Boston Globe: “Selwyn Jones, whose nephew George Floyd became an international symbol for police reform in 2020 after he was murdered by Minneapolis officers, arrived in Boston on Thursday as part of a nationwide tour to push for the passage of the Medical Civil Rights Bill. If passed, the bill would establish a statutory right to medical care during any police interaction where a person appears to be in medical crisis or communicates they are in crisis.” — “New Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation commissioner eyes long tenure with new administration after turnover at the top,” by Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald: “A report from Save the Harbor/Save the Bay and the Metropolitan Beaches Commission said there have been six DCR commissioners in the past eight years, which has led to a lack of ‘leadership continuity, clear direction, and accountability at the top.’” — "Mass. Lottery director ‘optimistic’ for iLottery despite Senate budget exclusion," by Irene Rotondo, MassLive: "The lottery director is wary of next year’s sales, and said revenue from an online lottery introduced in 2024 is what the organization needs for a bright future."   DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT : The Covid-19 pandemic helped spur innovation in health care, from the wide adoption of telemedicine, health apps and online pharmacies to mRNA vaccines. But what will the next health care innovations look like? Join POLITICO on Wednesday June 7 for our Health Care Summit to explore how tech and innovation are transforming care and the challenges ahead for access and delivery in the United States. REGISTER NOW .     MASK-ACHUSETTS — “MGB changes new mask policy after protests from disability advocates,” by Cassie McGrath, Boston Business Journal: “On May 5, MGB sent patients an update to its masking policy with a link to to a FAQ page which said that as of Friday, May 12, patients cannot ask staff members to wear a mask ‘because our policies no longer require it. Our system is adhering to current public health recommendations.’ … Matthew Cortland, a patient of MGB and a lawyer who works for think tank Data for Progress, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice, and with the Massachusetts Attorney General Office about the issue.” FROM THE HUB — “Wu proposes new redistricting map to council with aim of keeping neighborhoods whole,” by Danny McDonald, Boston Globe: “In submitting a new political map to the City Council, [Boston Mayor Michelle] Wu said her goal is to have cohesive neighborhoods remain within a single council district, rather than split among seats as they were in the previous map. ... Now, under the watchful eye of the court, the council will have to devise a new map that complies with a complex tangle of federal legal requirements. And the most potential for chaos and confusion comes in neighboring districts 3 and 4, which cover different parts of Dorchester, and whose boundaries were at particular issue in the federal lawsuit." — “Boston Public Schools nearing agreement with city police to formalize relationship,” by Christopher Huffaker, Boston Globe: “The memorandum will not place police back in schools, the officials said, but instead will clarify when educators should call police to respond to incidents.” PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES — “At current pace, it would take the MBTA more than a decade to reach its staffing goals for next year,” by Taylor Dolven, Boston Globe: “The T has added just 141 people to its staff in the last 10 months, when accounting for people who have left the agency, chief human resources officer Tom Waye told board members. At that pace, it will take the T more than a decade to fill the 7,643 budgeted positions for next fiscal year with active employees, according to calculations by transit advocates and the Globe.”     AS SEEN ON TV — MONEY TALKS: Rep. Richard Neal talked debt ceiling negotiations and how Democrats are handling their inflation “perception problem” heading into the 2024 presidential election on WCVB’s “On the Record. ” Yet Neal, whose district includes the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home and whose uncle survived a bout of Covid-19 at the facility, wouldn’t say whether he agrees with the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision to reinstate criminal charges against two of the home's former leaders over the deadly 2020 outbreak. — THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Taunton Mayor and former GOP state lawmaker Shaunna O’Connell tells WBZ’s Jon Keller that Republicans need to focus on “working families and what they care about” to win more elections here. She also discussed her support for a city charter change that would impose term limits on all of Taunton's elected municipal officials, not just the mayor. She'd like to see term limits on Beacon Hill, too. But, as Keller said, "it'll be a cold day in July when they actually approve that." PARTY POLITICS — “MassGOP identifies $262G+ in media invoices it says Geoff Diehl campaign responsible for,” by Flint McColgan, Boston Herald: “The Massachusetts Republican Party says that its own audit of its whopping debt shows that at least $262,620 in media invoices should properly be billed to the campaign of Geoff Diehl, who lost his campaign for governor last year. … MITTCOM had billed nearly $440,000 to the state party — part of the huge $600,000 debt the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) said the party was on the hook for.” DAY IN COURT — “With probate court plan, Mass. lawmakers back the largest one-time expansion of a state bench in decades,” by Matt Stout, Boston Globe: “Massachusetts lawmakers appear poised to pass the largest one-time expansion of a state judicial bench since at least 2000, embracing plans to fortify a Probate and Family Court system that officials say is swamped with increasingly complex cases. The Massachusetts House and Senate both tucked language into their state budget proposals that would add eight judges, pushing the number of probate and family justices to 59 and the statewide judicial bench to 425.” — “Migrants shipped to the Vineyard push back on moving lawsuit against Ron DeSantis to Florida,” by Chris Van Buskirk, Boston Herald: “Attorneys representing migrants who were shipped to Martha’s Vineyard by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are pushing back against an effort to move a lawsuit against the Republican and his top deputies out of Massachusetts and into Florida.” — “Charlie Baker’s son, Andrew ‘A.J.’ Baker, arrested and charged with drunk driving: Mass State Police,” by Rick Sobey, Boston Herald.   GET READY FOR GLOBAL TECH DAY: Join POLITICO Live as we launch our first Global Tech Day alongside London Tech Week on Thursday, June 15. Register now for continuing updates and to be a part of this momentous and program-packed day! From the blockchain, to AI, and autonomous vehicles, technology is changing how power is exercised around the world, so who will write the rules? REGISTER HERE .     IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN — “Power Shift: In less than a decade, the state’s electric grid must dramatically transform. It won’t be easy,” by Sabrina Shankman, Boston Globe: “Giant offshore wind farms, thousands of new solar projects, sprawling transmission lines, and intrastate energy collaborations all must be completed on schedule, a rarity in any large-scale effort. And already each of the biggest clean energy projects the state is counting on is facing complications that could delay or even derail them. … Complicating the job is the fact that many experts continue to debate the amount of clean energy the state is actually using now.” FROM THE 413 — “Amherst teacher union takes no-confidence vote in Superintendent Morris, calls on assistant superintendent to resign,” by Scott Merzbach, Daily Hampshire Gazette: “The union representing teachers, paraprofessionals and clerical staff has taken a no-confidence vote in Superintendent Michael Morris and is calling for his assistant superintendent’s resignation. Saturday’s announcement by the Amherst Pelham Education Association’s executive board came a day after Morris said he would step aside for an unspecified length of time on orders from his doctor, with an intent to return, and just a few days after counselors at the middle school were alleged to have engaged in transphobic actions. Three staff members were later placed on leave.” — “ Judge Spikes Free Speech Violation from Moss Lawsuit,” by Matt Szafranski, Western Massachusetts Politics & Insight: “Hampden Superior Court Judge James Manitsas has already decided the fate of a claim that lawyers for Mayor Domenic Sarno and his former aide Darryl Moss did battle over on Tuesday. The court dismissed the claim that Sarno violated Moss’s First Amendment rights. … Moss lost his job over a Facebook post responding to a Donald Trump comment.” MEANWHILE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE — "New Hampshire governor offers path to legalize marijuana," by Kathy McCormack, The Associated Press: "A day after New Hampshire legislators rejected the latest attempt to legalize recreational marijuana in the state, Gov. Chris Sununu — a potential Republican presidential candidate — proposed a path forward Friday that is similar to how the state controls liquor sales."     HEARD ‘ROUND THE BUBBLAH TRANSITIONS — Shahid Ahmed Khan has been named to the President's Advisory Committee on the Arts. — Sarah Varney , a senior correspondent for KFF Health News based in Massachusetts, has been named a Nieman fellow at Harvard. HAPPY BIRTHDAY — to J. Patrick Brown, Jay Hulings and Kevin Connor . Want to make an impact? POLITICO Massachusetts has a variety of solutions available for partners looking to reach and activate the most influential people in the Bay State. Have a petition you want signed? A cause you’re promoting? Seeking to increase brand awareness among this key audience? Share your message with our influential readers to foster engagement and drive action. Contact Jesse Shapiro to find out how: jshapiro@politico.com .   Follow us on Twitter Lisa Kashinsky @lisakashinsky   Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook  |  Playbook PM  |  California Playbook  |  Florida Playbook  |  Illinois Playbook  |  Massachusetts Playbook  |  New Jersey Playbook  |  New York Playbook  |  Ottawa Playbook  |  Brussels Playbook  |  London Playbook View all our politics and policy newsletters FOLLOW US

POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA