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☔Rainy and cool, with highs around 60. Sunset is at 6:04 p.m. It’s day 13 of the federal government shutdown.

People had big plans for an undeveloped 42-acre lot next door to the ferry terminal in Salem. The plan was to build a terminal for the offshore wind industry. Businesses could bring in windmill parts, assemble them on shore and then ship them back out into the ocean where they would be installed.

“It’s really kind of special to think that our community would be playing our part in supporting that energy transition,” said Bonnie Bain, executive director of the Salem Alliance for the Environment.

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But now the Trump administration has cancelled grants and ordered wind energy projects to stop work. That’s disappointing and enraging for people like Bain and her neighbors who supported the project. They hope it can somehow find a way to go forward anyway.

“Offshore wind is still a good idea. It didn’t become a bad idea because Donald Trump didn’t like it,” Amber Hewett of the National Wildlife Federation’s Offshore Wind Program told GBH’s Craig LeMoult. “This is still worth pursuing, as is demonstrated by how much success it has seen elsewhere in the world.” You can check out the full story here.

Four Things to Know

1. MIT’s president said she “cannot support” a proposal that would require the university to adopt the Trump administration’s political priorities in exchange for preferential treatment in federal funding — a deal reportedly offered to eight universities nationwide. MIT is the first school to publicly respond. The administration’s requests included prohibiting consideration of race and sex in admissions, banning gender-neutral bathrooms and transgender athletes from sports teams, and requiring SAT or ACT scores for all applicants. The proposal also included mandatory tuition freezes, and caps on the number of international students universities could enroll.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth said she believes the government should award funding based on scientific merit. “With respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education,” she wrote in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon.

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2. People seeking legal help in places like housing court —where nearly 90% of whom don’t have an attorney — might be able to find basic answers at their local library or courthouse. A state program called the Public Library Initiative is putting legal resources in every state court house as well as in local libraries in Boston, Andover, Eastham, Northampton, Canton, Quincy, Randolph and more.

“Access to justice requires access,” said Robert DeFabrizio, senior manager of law libraries at the Massachusetts Trial Court Law Library. “People are forced to represent themselves and we’re just trying to give them resources to help them exercise their rights and hopefully get an outcome that is equitable for them.”

3. A group of fisheries, researchers, government workers and technology businesses on Cape Cod are finalists for a National Science Foundation program with a $15 million prize — money they say will help them make the region’s seafood industry more sustainable and competitive. The group, one of 15 finalists for the prize, calls itself the New England Seafood Partnership for Innovations, Research and Engagement, or NSPIRE for short.

“If we get it and we are successful in the first two years, and we are showing good progress, it unlocks the possibility for another eight years of funding,” said Melissa Sanderson, chief operating officer of the Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance. “So we could be looking at an infusion of $160 million into the region to revolutionize the seafood industry.”

4. Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has guided tours for people with dementia (or other kinds of memory loss) and their caregivers. Guides focus on staying in the moment as they walk through the museum, asking people about the works in front of them and prompting them to talk about what they see. You can watch a one-minute video from a recent tour here.

“I’m finding it very interesting. Most of the people were very happy and knowledgeable about what was being shown,” said Martine Lebret, who was diagnosed with dementia five years ago. She came with her partner of more than 30 years, Maria Gonzalez. “I’m looking forward to talking to her more about what she saw.” The next tour is scheduled for Oct. 25, and the cost is included in regular museum admission. You can find more dates and information about registering here. 

Three Northeast states banned religious exemptions for vaccines. What about Massachusetts?

Three of our neighbors — Maine, Connecticut and New York — have drawn a legal line on childhood vaccinations: parents who do not want to vaccinate their children cannot cite religious reasons. There are still medical exceptions, for which kids need a doctor’s note. As a result, kindergarteners in those states had the highest vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella in the country this year: Connecticut came in at No. 1, New York second and Maine third, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Massachusetts isn’t too far behind on the MMR vaccine — No. 6, after Mississippi and Rhode Island. But the share of religious exemptions for last year’s kindergarteners was at 1.3%, the highest it’s been since the state’s Department of Public Health started collecting data four decades ago, GBH’s Katie Lannan reports. And with more widespread measles cases in the U.S., public health officials and some politicians here want state lawmakers to do more to raise our vaccination rates.

Vaccines, the subject of widespread misinformation from social media to the White House, can bring out big emotions these days: a hearing in June at the Massachusetts State House on a bill that would have banned religious exemptions drew eight hours of testimony, including from dozens of parents who said they worried about the pharmaceutical industry and government overreach. But a poll from the group Massachusetts Families for Vaccines found that 70% of all voters would support an end to religious exemptions, a figure that rose to about 75% for parents with school-age kids.

State Sen. Becca Rausch has been filing bills that would require the state to create standardized paperwork for parents seeking religious or medical vaccine exemptions since 2019. Those bills have not come to a vote.

“I think sometimes it’s not necessarily a roadblock so much as we need a lot of motivation,” Rausch said. “And I think — I hope — that the national decimation of our public health strategies and policies and protocols by Trump and RFK Jr. are the motivation we need to put this infrastructure into place.” You can read Katie Lannan’s full story here. 

Dig deeper:
-Connecting the Commonwealth’s Unraveling Immunity: exploring vaccination rates and the stories behind them across Massachusetts

-These Massachusetts parents sought religious exemptions to vaccines. We asked them why.