| 🌧️ Mostly cloudy, with showers this morning and a high near 80. |
There's a promising Labor Day weekend forecast on the other side of today's rain. Danielle Noyes has the day-by-day outlook here for your barbecue planning purposes. But first, let's get to the news: Bettor beware: Massachusetts is moving to crack down on sports bettors who harass athletes. This week, the state's Gaming Commission announced it will work to ban people found harassing professional or college athletes from betting on sports in Massachusetts. The initiative is aimed at what's become a pressing issue due to social media and the explosive growth of sports betting. "We have tools at our disposal to actually make sure that if you are doing this behavior, we can actually pull you off of the apps," Jordan Maynard, the chair of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, told WBUR's John Bender. - How it works: The Gaming Commission created an online portal and email address through which anyone can report harassment of athletes. State officials will then investigate the claim. And if the harassment meets a certain level of seriousness, officials will put the person on the state's exclusion list, which bans them from sports betting apps and casinos. (The process also includes a 30-day window for people to appeal.)
- By the numbers: Last fall, the NCAA released a report that found 7% of Division I men’s athletes reported being on the receiving end of betting-related harassment. But that number was higher among certain groups. For example, 36% of D1 men’s basketball players reported betting-related social media abuse. (NCAA President Charlie Baker — who appointed Maynard to the Gaming Commission when he was governor — has cited the harassment as reason to ban prop bets on college sports.)
- The Gaming Commission also launched an anti-harassment public awareness campaign featuring a number of pro Boston athletes. " No one's going to listen to me, right? ... I'm the chair of the Gaming Commission," Maynard said. "But we thought that people may listen to Griffin [Yow] or Garrett [Crochet] or Jeremy [Swayman] or Brad [Stevens]."
Primary effects: It looks like at least one Boston-area state senator will be ousted after all — though perhaps not one many expected. The Associated Press has declared attorney Persis Yu the winner over incumbent state Sen. Mike Rush, a moderate Democrat from West Roxbury, in the primary for Norfolk and Suffolk Senate seat. With 98% of ballots counted, Yu was up by more than 600 votes as of Thursday morning. - The outcome is a somewhat ironic twist, as Boston Mayor Michelle Wu boosted progressive challengers to two local state senators who thwarted her proposal to temporarily shift more of the city's property tax burden from homeowners to businesses. Meanwhile, Rush was the Senate sponsor of Wu's proposal and had the mayor's endorsement.
Not guilty: Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins was quickly acquitted by a jury yesterday on federal extortion charges. Tompkins was accused of pressuring the co-founder of a Boston cannabis business to sell him $50,000 worth of stock in the company before it went public — and then demanding a refund when the value plummeted. However, Tompkins maintained his innocence. His lawyers argued the government's case was “sheer fiction” from an “untrustworthy” source who testified to get immunity. The jury returned its verdict less than four hours after closing arguments wrapped up. WBUR's Eve Zuckoff has more details from inside the Moakley Courthouse here. - What's next: Tompkins — who stepped away from his role as sheriff just over a year ago after the charges were first announced — hopes to return to work soon, according to his lawyer. "I'm personally glad that Suffolk County can get their elected sheriff back to work in the very near future," attorney Martin Weinberg told Eve, though he couldn't say when exactly.
Meanwhile: Jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial are set to resume deliberations for a sixth day today. Plymouth Superior Court Judge William Sullivan again ordered the group to keep trying to reach a unanimous decision yesterday. (It was the second time this week they told the judge they remained deadlocked.) Sullivan issued what’s called “Tuey Rodriguez" instructions, essentially telling the jurors they’re in the best position to decide the case. WBUR's Deb Becker reports those instructions — referred to by some legal experts as the "dynamite option" — are usually the last chance for a jury to decide before a judge could declare a mistrial. P.S.— Today and Friday are expected to be the busiest days on the road ahead of Labor Day weekend, so leave early if you're traveling for the holiday. Unlike other holiday periods, AAA says Labor Day travel is often concentrated into a shorter window, meaning tougher peak traffic times. Click here to find out when AAA estimates the traffic will be at its worst each day. |
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| | | Nik DeCosta-Klipa Senior Editor, Newsletters | | |
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While many residents are celebrating the project's cancellation, clean energy advocates say it highlights a big barrier to clean energy development: exorbitant interconnection fees. Read more. excerpt: The company behind a large and controversial proposed battery project in Tewksbury pulled the plug on the development this week after learning it would have to pay $65 million to connect to the electric grid. That's more than three times what the company, East Point Energy, had expected to pay to bring its project online. Grid-scale battery energy storage systems like the one proposed in Tewksbury are designed to absorb and store excess — and relatively cheap — electricity from the grid, and then release it when demand or prices spike. If built, the Tewksbury project would have housed 134 lithium-ion batteries, each about the size of a tractor trailer. The batteries were going to be placed on a former industrial site by an existing National Grid substation, and near a residential community. They'd have a collective capacity of 125 megawatts — enough energy to power 125,000 homes for four hours — making it a prime example of the sort of battery park the state has made a big push to build in recent years. When East Point Energy first proposed the Tewksbury project last March, the developer knew it would have to pay several million dollars to connect to the grid — money that would go to cover the cost of improving a nearby substation and upgrading other grid infrastructure. But last month, ISO New England notified the company it would have to pay $65 million. "The deployment of storage resources is central to Massachusetts’ affordability, reliability, and clean energy strategy," state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper wrote in a letter to the head of ISO New England, the regional grid operator, earlier this summer. "Storing electricity when it is abundant and delivering it when needed helps lower costs for consumers, strengthens grid reliability during peak electricity demand, and enables greater integration of clean energy resources like solar and wind." There are a handful of operating grid-scale battery projects in Massachusetts, though the state wants many more in the coming years. Earlier this year, Gov. Maura Healey set a goal of getting 5,000 megawatts of new energy storage online or in development by 2035. Matt Kakely, a spokesperson for ISO New England, declined to comment specifically on the Tewksbury project, but said that its interconnection fee was actually on the low side. Of the 23 projects the organization looked at in its most recent interconnection study — 18 of which were battery projects — the average interconnection fee was $178 million, he said. |
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At a time when women were largely limited to domestic roles, Steinem challenged gender stereotypes and championed feminist ideals like equality, sisterhood and reproductive freedom. Read more. |
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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday but she had plenty riding on the primary. For months, Wu has been posting videos, headlining fundraisers, and sending mass texts to voters, urging them to support candidates looking to knock out her foes in the state Senate. Read more.
MUST READ! BIG BEAUTIFUL DISASTER APPROVED BY REPUBLICANS MAKES HUNGRY KIDS! NOT ONE SINGLE REPUBLICAN HAS SPOKEN OUT FOR FULLY FUNDING SNAP! |
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Food stamps have a direct link to other critical resources, such as free breakfast and lunch at school. Now, experts say they're starting to see that link break. Read more.
excerpt: That's because SNAP connects children with other critical resources, such as free breakfast and lunch at school. So when a family loses access to food assistance, the family's child may stop automatically receiving free food at school. And when scores of families fall off SNAP, universal free meal programs at tens of thousands of schools fall into jeopardy. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that over a million children have lost food benefits since July 2025, when the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was signed into law. Among the changes, the legislation led to stricter work requirements to receive food assistance. Going into this academic year, dozens of schools nationwide have ended their universal free meal programs — including schools in San Antonio, Houston and Miami-Dade County. School nutrition experts say it's unclear to what extent a decline in SNAP participation played a role. But Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, which represents about 50,000 school nutrition professionals in the U.S., says that the full impact on free school meals will emerge in the coming years as SNAP changes take effect.
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In the unprecedented absence of federal guidance, leading medical groups are issuing their own recommendations for who should get the COVID-19, flu and RSV immunizations. Read more. |
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- The Boston Ballet just got a $10 million anonymous donation — the largest gift in the dance company's 63-year history. The donation will allow the group to endow its artistic director position.
- A federal judge in Boston will hear arguments today on whether to extend her order blocking the U.S. Postal Service from requiring states to use a new mail balloting system for the midterms, as ordered by President Donald Trump. The hearing comes the day before the first state begins sending mail-in ballots to voters.
- All four Massachusetts governor's councilors who faced a Democratic primary challenge survived Tuesday — meaning the group is set to remain the same as it's been over the past two years.
- Trying to get into classic cinema? The Coolidge Corner is showing director Carol Reed’s 1949 masterpiece "The Third Man" on the big screen this weekend. Film critic Sean Burns writes it's an ideal introduction to the genre: "It may be 77 years old, but there’s nothing musty about the movie — a chatty, propulsive mystery that still crackles with insouciant energy."
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Wendy Taylor opened West Place Animal Sanctuary in 2007 after her nine pets perished in a house fire. Read more. |
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