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☀️Certified nice day: sunny with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 8:16 p.m.

Welcome to June. Our colleagues at Under the Radar with Callie Crossley have curated a summer reading list with recommendations from local librarians. Highlights include a biography of an American fashion pioneer, a novel about a woman who yearns to go to space, and a cozy read about sentient robots in post-war California. Check out all of their summer reading picks here. Have a book you’ve been enjoying that you think other GBH Daily readers would love too? Send a note telling us what the book is about and why you recommend it to daily@wgbh.org.

Four Things to Know

1. Rep. Stephen Lynch of Boston is seeking the lead Democratic role on the House’s top investigative committee, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Committee members can essentially investigate any topics they choose. The role became vacant following the passing of Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the committee’s former Democratic leader.

Other Democrats seeking the same role: Reps. Jasmine Crockett from Texas, Robert Garcia from California and Kweisi Mfume from Maryland. “The most important thing about this election is that however it comes out — and it might be a jump ball — however it comes out we need to be together,” Lynch said. “We need to support whoever ends up in that ranking member position, because the situation and the circumstances are so consequential.”

2. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision allowing the Trump administration to proceed with taking away the legal immigration statuses of about half a million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela will affect thousands of Haitian immigrants in Massachusetts, said The Rev. Bishop Nicolas Homicil, who leads the Voice of the Gospel Tabernacle in Mattapan.

“[Immigrants] contribute to the economy of America, and to just keep pushing them away, I think this is a terrible decision,” Homicil said. “Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have any backup, because this new government [is] against the immigrants. What this government is ignoring is that the United States is built on immigrants.”

3. Holy Family Hospital in Haverhill, – formerly part of Steward Health Care and acquired byh Lawrence General Hospital during Steward’s 2024 bankruptcy –, plans to close its emergency department by the end of the year. The hospital will instead run an emergency medicine center in Methuen.

Holy Family Hospital has 59 inpatient beds in Haverhill, but usually only sees about nine patients, an attorney representing the hospital said. Those patients “can be served by the Methuen campus and [Lawrence General Hospital],” Husch Blackwell LLP attorney Crystal Bloom said.

4. Local community leaders and elected officials broke ground on a new Holocaust museum, slated to open along Boston’s Freedom Trail near the State House, in late 2026. “We’ve seen these museums in a lot of cities; we assumed Boston had one. And we said, 'geez, I wonder if it has one or not?” said Todd Ruderman, who co-founded the Holocaust Legacy Foundation with Jody Kipnis.

“This museum calls each of us to something higher,” Kipnis said. “It challenges us to choose courage over comfort, truth over convenience.”

Amid crackdown fears, Mass. undocumented immigrants seem to be still getting driver’s licenses

Let’s take a look at the story behind the number of people applying for new drivers’ licenses in Massachusetts. In the past 21 months, Massachusetts RMVs have issued 244,000 new driver’s licenses to adults — roughly 100,000 more than in the 21 months prior.

That’s at least in part because Massachusetts passed a law allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses. It’s hard to say exactly how many licenses are being issued to immigrants without legal status: the state does not ask for that data. But though the initial surge in interest seems to have subsided, the RMV is still seeing about 50% more requests for licenses than it did two years ago.

But with federal immigration agents detaining more people, immigrants without legal status have a difficult choice to make: should they get a drivers’ license and hope it keeps them off federal agents’ radars? Or should they forego the licenses and risk being pulled over and facing criminal charges, which could also lead to deportation?

The idea behind the law was simple: if more people are licensed to drive, more drivers will learn and be tested on road safety practices. Data from the state’s court system shows criminal cases of driving without a license fell by 16% since July of 2024, as compared with the same time period before the law was enacted.

One undocumented immigrant who spoke to GBH News said he still plans to go through with the process.

“I’ve never had an accident in Brazil or here. I have a record of good driving,” he said through a Portuguese interpreter. “I just ask God that nothing happens from now until I get my license.”

Gladys Vega, head of the Chelsea nonprofit La Colaborativa, said the demand for licenses shows people want to follow the laws — but emphasized that the administration is still targeting those who do so.

“Right now, they’re detaining people with residency, people with work authorization,” she said. “The vast majority [in Chelsea] have been people on their way to work.”

State law prohibits the RMV from releasing data about driver’s licenses to any agency whose primary job is enforcing immigration law, she said.

“There’s no way that that information can be ever released,” Vega said. “That’s what we have told our community from the get-go: that it was going to be protected by the state government. We’re sticking to that promise.”

Read Chris Burrell’s full reporting here. 

Read more: 

-Immigrant taxpayers hesitate, delay filing amid fears of deportation

From 2023: 

-For undocumented immigrants, Massachusetts driver’s license law opens opportunities

-Despite new law, undocumented immigrants face issues getting driver’s licenses in Massachusetts