Boston Public Radio

The proposal’s been pending on Beacon Hill for months. Senate President Karen Spilka has been skeptical, but Boston’s mayor says conversations are ongoing.

Eng said Monday on Boston Public Radio, he wants to help people who need more transit options after midnight.

A Stoughton police detective was indicted on federal charges of murdering Birchmore in 2021. Governor Healey said she was 'horrified' of detective's conduct.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also criticized Deaton's nomination being funding from cryptocurrency billionaires and defended her own record on fighting for working families.

A new nonprofit formed to take over the black box Oberon Theatre in Harvard Square. Now, an 11-day festival will showcase local performance artists and renovated performance spaces.

Boston Medical Center's Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett said the international medical community should be paying attention to the mpox outbreak in the Congo.

Medical ethicist Art Caplan spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s behavior towards a potential COVID-19 vaccine. “Trump has really done severe damage - he’s beaten up the CDC, he’s beaten up the FDA, he’s gone after Fauci, and he definitely has put on the sidelines his own coronavirus task force,” he said. “He’s basically said, ‘I’m going on the anti-science platform.’” Caplan worries about anti-vaxxers, regarding COVID-19. “If we get a vaccine and we don’t get a lot of people taking it then a lot of the impact of the vaccine is gone,” he said. “When people start to say ‘Forget it, I’m not taking a vaccine,’ that’s horrible news for science.” Art Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Joe Biden has blamed President Donald Trump for inciting the alleged domestic terrorist plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Trump tweeted "liberate Michigan" back in April, and this past Saturday joined in on ‘lock her up’ chants, referring to Whitmer, at a rally in Muskegon. Homeland security expert Juliette Kayyem spoke with Boston Public Radio on Wednesday about Trump’s behavior. “It’s not enough to say that Trump incites violence; he incites a particular kind of violence known as terrorism that’s the use or threatened use of violence for political or social purposes,” she said. “He’s been doing this for years, but the Michigan thing made it take off, and we need to call it terrorism.” Trump incites violence in a particular way, such that he can have plausible deniability, Kayyem noted. “It’s called stochastic terrorism - you can call it random terrorism - which is simply a way of describing how a leader uses his words and platforms to incite his followers in which it’s vague enough that he can have plausible deniability and say it was just a joke,” she said. “But his listeners hear what he’s saying as a calling card.” Kayyem is an analyst for CNN, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Today on Boston Public Radio: We opened the show by talking with listeners about the worrying rise of coronavirus cases throughout the U.S. Carol Rose discussed the impact Judge Amy Coney Barrett could have on future Supreme Court rulings around voter rights, and why voter suppression is a real threat, even in liberal Mass. She also talked about abortion rights in the state, and State House legislation that would expand abortion access in the Commonwealth. Rose is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. Larry Calderone responded to a series of to city-wide police reforms being touted by Mayor Walsh, from use of body cameras by officers working overtime, to the establishment of an external Office of Police Accountability and Transparency. Calderone is president of Boston’s Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union. We reopened lines to discuss the new no-strings-attached stipend program for low-income residents in Chelsea, Mass., and hear how getting an extra $200-400 check would impact your life. Jelani Cobb called in to talk about the latest FRONTLINE documentary on voter suppression, called “Whose Vote Counts.” Aside from being the correspondent on the documentary, Cobb is an award-winning journalist, staff writer for the New Yorker, and professor of journalism at Columbia School of Journalism. John King offered a debrief on the latest national political headlines, two weeks away from the November presidential election. King is CNN's Chief National Correspondent and anchor of "Inside Politics,” which airs weekdays and Sunday mornings at 8 a.m.

Today on Boston Public Radio: Media maven Sue O’Connell and GBH’s Adam Reilly weighed in on the national political headlines of the day, including ongoing negotiations in Washington over additional COVID stimulus funding. They also touched on a few statewide stories, from Gov. Baker’s formal announcement that he won’t be voting for Trump, to Saturday’s end of the Mass. eviction moratorium. We opened lines to talk with listeners about recent reporting in the Boston Globe on the dozens of Mass. State Troopers who've engaged in criminal behavior without facing repercussions on the force. GBH News analyst and GroundTruth Project CEO Charlie Sennott broke down the latest international headlines, discussing the steady reemergence of COVID-19 across Europe, the reelection of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and political unrest in Chile. Boston Globe business columnist Shirley Leung talked about a pilot program offering no-strings-attached checks for low-income families in Chelsea, and recent reporting in the Boston Globe on economic revival in Brockton. She also gave us a glimpse into how her two kids are handling remote learning, a month into the school year. Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III, hosts of GBH’s All Rev’d Up, weighed in on the spiritual leanings of Democrats and Republicans, and discussed what we understand about Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s attitudes towards racism in the criminal justice system. Closing out the show, we opened lines to ask: seven months into the coronavirus pandemic, how much are you missing hugs and physical contact?

Food writer Corby Kummer spoke to Boston Public Radio on Friday about hibernating restaurants, which will close during the winter due to COVID and try to reopen in the spring. “There’s only one choice many restaurants have since the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) money ended, which is look at their expenses, see how much it would cost to try to stay open with extremely limited capacity, and say ‘We’re closing the doors and hoping in warmer weather we can bring back outdoor dining,’” he said. Many Boston restauranteurs have told Kummer that they’re hoping to hang on until April, he noted. “But what I thought was ‘You really think there’s going to be a vaccine in wide use by April?’” he said. “But I think that the realistic calculus here is that once warm weather opens, there are more takeout possibilities, more outdoor dining possibilities, and restaurants can try to stay on.” Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic, an award-winning food writer, and a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Policy.