This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
🥶Sunny and cold with a chance of morning flurries and highs in the 20s. Sunset is at 4:11 p.m.
Despite a federal vaccine advisory committee’s decision to stop recommending hepatitis B shots for newborns, public health officials in Massachusetts said the vaccines will remain available — and insurance will continue to cover them.
“I think this was a reckless decision, a decision not based in science or based on the data that are available, but instead a decision that was based on the ideology of the members of this committee,” Dr. Robbie Goldstein, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, told GBH’s Craig LeMoult.
So why do babies receive hepatitis B vaccines soon after birth? The virus can pass from mother to child during delivery, and vaccinating newborns helps prevent that transmission. Left untreated, an infection can lead to chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and even liver cancer. Members of the federal advisory committee now recommend the vaccine only for babies whose mothers either tested positive for hepatitis B or were not tested at all. But waiting for those results can leave babies vulnerable, said Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, Boston’s commissioner of public health.
“There are pregnant people who do not have adequate prenatal care, even here in Boston,” Ojikutu said. “And therefore they may not receive the recommended hepatitis B testing, or they may acquire hepatitis B after the initial test. And any delay in vaccination opens up opportunity for exposure, putting infants at risk. So certainly this is a concern, even here in Boston.”
Four Things to Know
1. Some immigrants who came to Faneuil Hall last week for their U.S. citizenship ceremony — the last, usually symbolic step in a years-long process of waiting, applying, and being vetted — were told by federal agents to step out of line and that they could not become U.S. citizens that day because the Trump administration considers their countries of origin “high risk.”
Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship, described the experience of one of person turned away in Boston last week, a Haitian woman in her 50s: “She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled,” Breslow said. “People were plucked out of line. They didn’t cancel the whole ceremony.”
2. U.S. Representative Richard Neal said wants a more thorough investigation into strikes in which the U.S. military killed people on boats in international waters near Venezuela. The Trump administration has said those boats were carrying drugs bound for the U.S.
“Let’s find out whether or not a war crime was actually committed,” Neal said. “There’s certainly conflicting testimony at the moment coming from the President, coming from the secretary of defense and now we will await what the orders actually were intended to do and what they actually will tell us was accomplished. Who did this should be at the top of the agenda.”
3. New England is warming faster than almost anywhere else in the U.S — second only to the Alaskan Arctic — according to research published in the journal Climate.
“New England has warmed over four degrees Celsius in the minimum winter temperatures. In the past it was 28 degrees and snowing; it’s now 32, 33 degrees and raining,” Salem State professor Stephen Young, one of the study’s authors, told GBH’s Hannah Chanatry. “It certainly is going to continue to warm. Whether it continues to speed up as it has been, that we’re unsure about.”
4. When the Bourne Bridge comes down — and is rebuilt — in the coming years, the small signs along its edges will disappear too. CAI reporter Jennette Barnes took a closer look at those markers: a 4-H sign welcoming visitors, installed in the 1990s after a Cotuit woman saw similar signs in other communities; and a plaque honoring Deanne Fitzmaurice, a photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for her photojournalism documenting the life and recovery of a boy injured in Iraq.
“I think it’s really nice when the town that you live in decides to recognize positive things that are happening that bring people together,” said Fitzmaurice’s brother, Scott Fitzmaurice, who lives in Pocasset. “It’s really what life is about in so many ways.”
Dual exhibits showcase the myriad work and passion of Boston artist Allan Rohan Crite
If you want to explore Boston in the next month and a half — but do so indoors, away from the bitter cold — here’s a suggestion from our colleagues at GBH’s Under the Radar with Callie Crossley: two exhibits showcasing the work of artist Allan Rohan Crite, a Bostonian who painted scenes capturing the city’s Black communities.
“Allan was documenting his neighborhood and his neighbors and his spiritual activity,” said Ted Landsmark, co-curator of the new retrospective “Allan Rohan Crite: Urban Glory” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on view through Jan. 19. “He gave me a much clearer sense of the underlying spirit that existed within Boston’s African-American community.”
You can also see Crite’s work at the Boston Athenaeum exhibit “Allan Rohan Crite: Griot of Boston” through Jan. 24.
Crite’s family moved to Boston when he was a year old, and he lived in the city’s South End until his death in 2007 at the age of 97. His home contained a collection of art that left artist Johnetta Tinker feeling awestruck.
“The first time I walked into his house, I said the craziest thing: ‘Is this all your work?’” Tinker said. “It was just overwhelming — layers and layers and layers of art. I thought then I would never be able to catch up.”
The exhibits offer a chance to reflect on the city, its communities and on Crite’s body of work.
“Allan was extremely modest in terms of the way he presented himself to a wider public,” Landsmark said. “He was very intimately involved with the artist community in Boston, but he was involved with that community at a point in time when most of the media were not showing, representing or critiquing the work of artists of color.”
It’s also an opportunity to look inward.
“He really was like our father in the arts,” said Ekua Holmes, community activist, mixed-media artist and one of Crite’s mentees. “And we were proud of him. We were proud to be associated with him. And we felt his love for us as individuals and also as this community. So I just hope that people that see these exhibitions will allow themselves to be moved to be better.”
Hear the full conversation here.
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