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☀️Sun’s out, with a slight chance of afternoon showers and highs in the 70s. Sunset tonight is at 7:52 p.m.

It’s time for Real ID — really: after years of delays, yesterday was the first day Americans flying domestically had to use a Real ID, passport, or another federally-issued ID to go through airport security checks. Despite the deadline, TSA agents were still making exceptions, as ordered by the Department of Homeland Security. People without a qualifying ID had to go into a different line for extra screening.

One of them was Aidan Fallon, who was flying from Logan to Philadelphia: “I’ve procrastinated too long. So, you know, I had a few years to get it and I didn’t. I’m in a bit of a pickle here,” he told GBH’s Robert Goulston. How can you tell if your Massachusetts driver’s license qualifies as a Real ID? Look for a star inscribed in a yellow circle on the top right corner.

Four Things to Know

School cell phone ban: Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka said she’s interested in legislation that would limit cell phone use in Massachusetts schools. At least 18 other states already have such laws, and students usually have to put their phones in special pouches or phone holders during the school day.

Spilka said she took up the issue because her son is a public school teacher, and because she herself has had a hard time processing “the constant stream of negativity I receive through various digital channels… I can’t imagine what 24/7 content, both impersonal and very personal, must do to a child trying to navigate learning while juggling emotions and the normal pressures of growing up,” she said. 

Federal appeals judges ruled that Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts graduate student who has been in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center for six weeks, should be moved back to a jail in Vermont, the state she was held when her attorneys first filed her case after plainclothes ICE agents detained her on a Somerville street.

A federal judge had already ordered federal officials in April to return Öztürk to Vermont, but the Department of Justice had appealed the order. This week, appeals judges wrote that the government failed to show their case would succeed. “The government argues that the decision where to detain a noncitizen pending removal proceedings is committed to the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security and that the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] precludes judicial review over such discretionary decisions,” the judges wrote. “The government is unlikely to succeed on that argument.”

Indian and Pakistani immigrants living in the Boston area said they are worried about what’s happening in their home countries. On Wednesday, India launched attacks into Pakistani territories killing 31 people and calling it a response to an attack on tourists in Kashmir last month that killed 26 people.

Ammara Khan, who leads the Pakistan Association of Greater Boston, said local people from both diasporas want to see peace. “We want tensions like this to not flare up. Because at the end it serves no purpose to either of us,” Khan said.

Herrings’ return: With dams from Massachusetts’ industrial era gone, herring can once again swim upstream in Braintree’s Monatiquot River. The Armstrong and Ames dams were once used to power rubber and cork factories, and were ripped out last summer. There are about 3,000 dams remaining across the state.

“I really think if you look coast-wide, this has some of the highest potential among all restoration sites in coastal Massachusetts to increase diadromous fish populations,” said Brad Chase, a Division of Marine Fisheries biologist.

“Right now we’re in a hurricane, I’d guess you call it, of evictions.”
-Grace Ross, chair of the Worcester Anti-Foreclosure Team

As chair of the Worcester Anti-Foreclosure Team, Grace Ross has seen plenty of people being evicted. Sometimes, judges will order a constable — not a police officer, but a person elected or appointed for the job, whose role is making sure people getting evicted leave their properties. Ross said she’s seen those constables shoving or restraining people, and that they have used force on her when she protested evictions.

“What needs to happen right now is that anybody who is going to be evicting anybody must be trained in use of force,” Ross said. “Because right now, we’re in a hurricane, I’d guess you call it, of evictions.”

State housing courts have recorded at least 3,000 new eviction cases every month since the end of 2022. Some get settled and others end with constables being dispatched.

The Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, the statewide board created after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, is trying to set new standards for constables, training them about responsible use of force. The board’s members argued that constables are essentially making arrests when they remove people or belongings from properties.

“It’s accountability,” said POST Commission Executive Director Enrique Zuniga. “Everybody has to be at a certain level of training. They have to comply with the regulations.”

The Massachusetts Trial Court disagrees. Daniel Sullivan, general counsel of the Trial Court, wrote POST a letter saying that constables’ jobs are “at most a momentary seizure.” Requiring them to go through the same training as police officers would be too time-consuming, he wrote.

“Municipal constables don’t respond to 911 calls. They don’t make traffic stops,” Massachusetts Bay Constables Association President Richard Ramponi said. “They’re an entirely different subset of the so-called law enforcement, and to train a municipal constable to the same level as the police, it just doesn’t make sense.”

Read Sam Turken’s full reporting here.