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☀️Sunny and chilly, with highs in the 40s. Sunset is at 4:19 p.m.

Let’s take a closer look at the March of Dimes’ annual report, which looks at the state of maternal and infant health in the U.S. Massachusetts performed better than most states, with far fewer preterm births and infant deaths — ranking third out of 52 (including all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico) in both measures. However, significant racial disparities persist in the Commonwealth: fewer than 10% of white mothers reported inadequate prenatal care, compared to more than 20% of Black mothers. Infant mortality was also twice as high for babies born to Black mothers.

And our state’s rate of severe maternal morbidity is higher than the national average, ranking 37th. Severe maternal morbidity includes a wide range of complications that can occur during labor and delivery, explained Chloe Schwartz, the March of Dimes’ Massachusetts director of maternal and infant health initiatives, in an interview with GBH’s Craig LeMoult.

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“These are things like stroke, hemorrhage, a cardiac event and so many other things that can go wrong and can really alter the course of that patient’s life,” Schwartz said. “So that’s incredibly concerning.” Dig deeper into the report’s findings for Massachusetts and find national data here.

Four Things to Know

1. The heads of the Massachusetts Republican party said “we still don’t know the full story” about nine workers from the Allston car wash detained two weeks ago by federal immigration agents. “Presumably ICE investigated before they went in,” Mass. GOP Chair Amy Carnevale said in an appearance on GBH’s Boston Public Radio. She also said she did not know the head of Boston University’s College Republicans, who claimed to have sent ICE tips that led to the raid.

“I find it abhorrent, what that young man did,” Massachusetts Democratic Party Chair Steve Kerrigan said in response. “I find it even worse that leaders within [the Mass. GOP] have refused to stand up and say that. The whole idea that we can lean back on ‘worst first’ and catchphrases and all that stuff — that’s not what they’re doing. That’s not who they’re sweeping up.”

2. Harvard’s custodians are on the second day of a two-day strike, protesting the university’s offer of a 2.2% wage increase. “When we’re going to the market, everything is expensive. So we work hard at Harvard, right? ... It’s a hard job,” said Newton Christian DeJesus, who has worked at the university for 13 years. “We need more money. We need more assistance.”

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Elena Lavarreda, director of the janitorial division at their union, 32BJ SEIU, said custodians are aware that the university has faced federal funding freezes and threats from the Trump administration this year. “While we disagree with what the Trump administration has done, the consequences of that can’t fall on the backs of some of the lowest-paid workers on campus,” Lavarreda said.

3. In its first year, a former Amazon warehouse in Roxbury — converted by the city of Boston and the YMCA into a food storage and distribution center(with support from federal funds and Mass General Brigham — helped deliver about 1.5 million meals to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

“We took an old Amazon warehouse and turned it into a place that makes the food system work better for people without necessarily the capital to get that food,” David Shapiro, president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Boston, said yesterday. “Think about that.”

4. The lead singer of System of a Down, Serj Tankian, said he is hoping to use his visual art exhibit at the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown to walk visitors through his career in music, visual art and human rights activism. For the exhibit, “The Art of Disruption,” he created both paintings and a smartphone app with musical compositions for each piece.

“I started painting because I wanted to see my music,” he told GBH’s The Culture Show. “For me, the musical compositions and the paintings are one. They’re intermixed.”

A sitdown with Mass. Senate president: Spilka wants to ‘be bold’ on housing

Here are three key takeaways from the wide-ranging interview Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka gave GBH’s State House reporter Katie Lannan:

First: Spilka is hesitant to use the state’s rainy day fund — currently around $8 billion — to make up for federal cuts to programs like SNAP, Headstart and heating oil programs, which were frozen during the federal government shutdown.

“The SNAP benefits, though, are $220 million per month [in Massachusetts],” she said. “So if that went on for several months, we would rack up a lot of money that we would never get reimbursed. It’s a federal benefit, it’s a federal obligation.”

“The state just cannot jump in and cover that. It would mount up to billions of dollars pretty quickly,” she added. “We don’t tap into our rainy day fund unless our state funds don’t meet the amount that we’re banking on.”

Second: as her colleagues in the State House consider rolling back some 2030 carbon emission reduction goals, Spilka said she’s monitoring their work but hasn’t yet seen the final legislation.

“I think most residents of our commonwealth want us to continue that endeavor,” she said. “I believe you need some sort of goals, but I believe that the Senate has also led for many many years in both focusing on affordability and the climate — and I believe we can continue to do that.”

And third: you can expect more policy changes around housing affordability in the new year, though Spilka did not specify what those changes will be.

Sen. Julian Cyr, chair of the Senate’s Housing Committee, is looking at what makes it harder to build housing across the state (more on that here) and what lawmakers can do to help.

“I have sort of charged him with the task, ‘Be bold, nothing is off the table,’” Spilka said.

You can watch the full interview here. 

Dig deeper: 

-Massachusetts lawmakers hit pause on votes amid budget, wage, energy battles

-To fix Massachusetts’ housing crisis, we need to build. Here’s why that’s hard.