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☁️Cloudy day with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 7:57 p.m.

Massachusetts is one of a few states where lawmakers are trying to restrict law enforcement agents from wearing masks that hide their faces on the job.

A proposed bill would make it a misdemeanor for law enforcement at any level to wear “any mask or personal disguise while interacting with the public in the performance of their duties,” with exceptions for SWAT teams, medical providers, and those who need protective masks for exposure to pollutants like smoke.

Local legislatures can’t directly make policy for federal agencies, but state-level lawmakers say they feel they have a role to play in this issue. 

“We’ve all been seeing this in the news, and I can say for me, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about this, how bad it’s become,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim Hawkins, a Democrat from Attleboro, who said he filed the bill in response to masked immigration agents detaining people in his city.

So will this bill become law? It has some support, GBH’s Katie Lannan reports: 22 other lawmakers have signed on as supporters, but it has not been referred to a committee or set for a public hearing.

Four Things to Know

1. The group that oversees police cadet curricula in the state, the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee, has designated Moms for Liberty as an anti-government group based on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation, GBH’s Phillip Martin reports. (You can learn more about the group here.) 

“Moms for Liberty has been designated as an anti-government group by us since 2022,” said Maya Henson Carey, a senior research analyst with the SPLC. “I think that it’s very admirable that any organization would look at this information and use it to help prevent crimes and discrimination against members of their community.”

2. Since 2020, about 16,000 fewer children have enrolled in Massachusetts public schools, as more families opt for private education or homeschooling, according to a study from Boston University. 

“We’re now five years out [from COVID’s onset], and the fact that we still see differences in families’ choices about where to send their children to school suggests that there’s something else going on,” said Boston University Education Policy Researcher Joshua Goodman.

3. Federal immigration agents entered a pizza shop in Acton during lunchtime last week and detained an employee. Lucas Ribeiro Dos Passos, 28 and from Brazil, has a pending asylum case, no criminal record and has worked at Sorrento’s Pizzeria for about two years, his attorney said.

“They were after him because of an alleged driver’s license that was suspended. We looked it up and he does not have a suspended license,” said his immigration attorney, Eloa Celedon. “It must have been old information, and that’s very common with agents.”

4. Boston city officials are giving 27 small businesses, all of them minority-owned or women-owned, grants of up to $200,000 each to help them grow. It’s part of the city’s SCALE Business Accelerator Program, funded with $6.5 million from the 2021 federal American Rescue Plan Act.

“It means ability to, one, create jobs, but also to actually have products manufactured in the United States,” recipient Tonya Johnson, owner of plant-based bakery The Ancient Bakers, told GBH’s Magdiela Matta.

News analysis: How political candidates talk about Mass. and Cass

By Adam Reilly

It’s strange to talk about Mass. and Cass in political terms. There is so much human misery on display at that intersection, which has been a gathering place for years for people struggling with homelessness, mental illness and addiction. By talking about it as a political issue, I don’t want to minimize the human toll that’s on display there every single day.

Having said that: Mass. and Cass is a tough issue for Mayor Michelle Wu to talk about. When she does, she tends to stress that the city is making tangible progress by reducing the number of people living on the street and cutting the number of overdoses, while also acknowledging that the status quo is unacceptable.

One of the saddest things about the misery on display at Mass. and Cass is that people who don’t spend a lot of time there can become inured to it. But I think that when a 4-year-old child steps on a needle and has to get medical treatment, or journalists for the paper of record describe being chased into a building by several men carrying hammer-like tools, it cuts through that complacency.

Right after the Boston Herald reported on the 4-year-old stepping on a needle, businessman and mayoral candidate Josh Kraft put out a statement demanding that Wu take what he called “emergency measures” to pick up discarded needles across the city. He said he wanted to bring back a program that ran from 2020 to 2024, which gave people a small cash payment for returning discarded needles.

In the wake of what happened in South Boston, Wu said it’s unacceptable that people need to worry about discarded needles on the ground. When I asked a mayoral spokesperson about bringing back the program Kraft mentioned, I didn’t get a reply.

I think one problem Kraft runs into is that he makes it sound like the mayor has done nothing at all to try to address the problems at Mass. and Cass and elsewhere, when even people who think she needs to do more acknowledge that she’s trying. For example, in 2022 she cleared all the street encampments at Mass. and Cass, and by winter 2023, she introduced a comprehensive plan to provide housing and coordinated care for those with addiction and mental illness.

The problem is that drugs keep flowing into the area, and people keep coming to use them — if they don’t stay at Mass. and Cass to do it, they’ll move on to other areas in the city.

Wu often calls Boston the safest major city in the country. The truth is, Boston remains a very safe city. But it’s grappling, at Mass. and Cass and elsewhere, with problems that are plaguing many American cities; problems that defy easy solutions. It’s harder to brag about Boston’s comparative safety, which is real, when stories like the ones we’re talking about today are making headlines.

Dig deeper: 

-Wu: Mass and Cass is ‘One step forward, two steps back, three steps forward’

-Boston Councilor pushes for neighboring towns to help pay Mass and Cass costs

-Kraft criticizes Wu, offers a ‘recovery first’ plan for Mass and Cass

-Boston mayor says police will increase enforcement of public drug use laws