GBH political reporter Adam Reilly is running down the big ways that the Trump administration and its decisions are intersecting with the politics and people in Massachusetts. Reilly joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share his analysis on last week’s developments. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mark Herz: The slashing of the federal workforce. This has been one of the biggest storylines of the Trump administration so far. Tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs, and tens of thousands more seem poised to across a wide range of departments. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has condemned these cuts, but she also seems to sense opportunity amid the chaos. What is going on here, Adam?

Adam Reilly: Yeah. Gov. Healey recently launched a website aimed at helping former federal employees who’ve lost their jobs find work here in Massachusetts. Could be with the state, could be with municipalities, could be with private sector employers in high-growth areas. The site has a memorable URL — it is mass.gov/fedup. So, a little double entendre there to make it stick in your brain.

And if you visit, you are greeted right away by a welcoming video from Healey in which she makes an earnest pitch to anyone who might be looking for work.

Maura Healey, pre-recorded: We’ll help you with your resume. You can get interview tips. You can talk to someone about what your next steps should be. Look, we’re here to support you because we need you. We need your skills, your knowledge and your purpose.

“It is the kind of thing, dare I say, that you can imagine popping up in a campaign speech down the road.”
GBH’s Adam Reilly, on Maura Healey’s new “Fed Up” website

Herz: So, Adam, you say this is both smart policy and smart politics. How is that?

Reilly: Yeah, I think it is. On the policy front: Remember that we have had trouble in Massachusetts in recent years with out-migration, with more people leaving the state than people coming in. So rolling out the red carpet for thousands of highly skilled, newly unemployed people all across the country, is, I think, a really smart and creative way to push back against that and address that problem.

And because it is smart and creative, it bolsters Maura Healey’s national political brand. Her profile, it is worth mentioning, is very much on the rise right now. She just did that big sit-down interview with the New York Times, she made an appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” and one of her big messages is that: Democrats need to work as hard as possible to show that they care about ordinary people, and that they’re working to meet the most fundamental needs of ordinary people. Here’s how she put it on “Seth Meyers.”

Healey, pre-recorded: The reason the Democrats lost is because the feeling, I think, was we weren’t with people. We weren’t empathizing with people. We weren’t recognizing everyday needs. Now is the time to run headlong into that. Talk about these things, educate, and show them, too, how we are going to actually deliver.

Adam Reilly: And the “Fed Up” program does, I think exactly what Healey’s talking about there. It demonstrates empathy and it’s built to satisfy an absolutely essential need: the need for a job. It is the kind of thing, dare I say, that you can imagine popping up in a campaign speech down the road.

Herz: I think you do dare to say.

Reilly: Apparently I do.

Herz: And you’ve said it before. I appreciate people aren’t afraid to prognosticate when it comes to politics, so thank you. Any idea how much of a response mass.gov/fed up is eliciting so far?

Reilly: Well again it’s been out for a week. A Healey administration spokesperson told me that the website itself has garnered about 14,000 views so far, so that’s a relatively modest total. But the state also posted about the program on LinkedIn, the networking site, and that post apparently has 100,000 impressions to date. So more of a reach there.

Herz: OK, not too shabby.

Let’s talk about another local politician looking to build their brand, former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. A bit of a blast from the past, Adam. He’s been thinking about running for Senate again, but this time in New Hampshire, where incumbent Democrat Jeanne Shaheen just announced she will not be seeking reelection in 2026. Here’s a bit of the announcement where she said she won’t seek that fourth term.

Jeanne Shaheen, pre-recorded: I ran for public office to make a difference for the people of New Hampshire. That purpose has never, and will never, change. But today, after careful consideration, I’m announcing that I have made the difficult decision not to seek reelection to the Senate in 2026. It’s just time.

Herz: Now, Brown of course, his last job was ambassador to New Zealand in Trump’s first term. He recently posted some pictures on Facebook of a visit he made to Washington, D.C., smiling next to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Senate Majority Leader John Thune. What does all this mean?

Reilly: Pete Hegseth, by the way, who Brown used to work with when he was a Fox News commentator, so they’ve got that affinity.

I think that this points to a Brown run. Brown seems to me like a better fit for this particular race, at this particular time, than another candidate who’s been talked about: former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu. Sununu, over the years, was pretty critical of Trump. Brown has been an enthusiastic Trump supporter from the get-go. He was the first current or past U.S. senator to endorse Trump, way back in Trump’s first run for presidency and, again, served in the first Trump administration.

But I would also add, I think Brown is probably going to run because it seems pretty clear that Shaheen does. After she announced that she wasn’t going to seek reelection, she took some digs at Brown, who ran against her back in 2014. Here’s a little bit of what she had to say: “When you write the stories, please write that he colors his hair, and I don’t.” She went on: “He’s not from New Hampshire. He hasn’t done anything in New Hampshire except pretend like he’s bringing candidates into the state. You ask him, his big accomplishment is he coaches a women’s basketball team — and it’s in Massachusetts!” That, by the way, as a reference to the Amesbury High girls basketball team .

Herz: What did Brown have to say about Shaheen not running?

Reilly: He was significantly more diplomatic. He sounded like someone who’s gearing up for a run, as opposed to someone who knows that they’re not going to have to go through the song and dance that a run entails. He said, when Shaheen said that she wasn’t going to run again: “I appreciate Shaheen’s service to our state and her support and vote for me as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Now it’s time for New Hampshire to have someone in the delegation who fights for our priorities and stands with, not against, the Trump agenda.”

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Herz: OK, well, in the last minute before we finish up, we’ve reported on some local incidents of vandalism perpetrated against Tesla car dealerships. Apparently, this was done by people who really don’t like Elon Musk, his Department of Government Efficency and cuts to the federal workforce that we were talking about previously. President Trump made some comments that might make potential vandals here or elsewhere think twice, right? What did he say?

Reilly: Yeah, probably always a good idea for anyone who’s thinking of defacing anyone’s property in any way, to think twice, three times, four times, maybe just not do it.

In that weird event that we had, the Tesla auto show at the White House recently where Elon Musk laid out a bunch of Teslas and President Trump decided he was going to purchase one of them. The president said that he wants to prosecute people who vandalize Teslas for domestic terrorism. I’m not sure how that would play out legally. As I always say, I’m not an attorney. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some prosecutors trying to follow Trump’s lead in the coming months, especially in red states.

The president also said something else I found really striking, namely that: boycotting Tesla is illegal. I don’t know how you make the case that choosing to not buy a product because you don’t like the person in charge of putting out that product violates the law. Again, I’m a non-attorney, but I can’t really wrap my brain around that.