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🥶Sunny and freezing, with highs in the low 30s. Sunset is at 4:15 p.m. and our days are officially getting longer.
In the next two weeks we’ll be checking in with our reporters and looking back on the stories they covered in 2025. Are there any stories you’d like to hear more about, or issues you’d like to catch up on after a very hectic year? Reply to this email or send us a note at daily@wgbh.org.
Four Things to Know
1. In the hours after law enforcement found a man they believe killed two students at Brown University and an MIT professor in Brookline, the Trump administration announced it suspended the green card lottery program. It’s the same program that man, who was born in Portugal, used to get his green card in 2017. Immigration lawyers said they believe the administration’s move is reactive and not necessary.
“I think we need to honor those who are fallen and look at this as a tragedy,” said David Keller of Keller Law Group in Worcester. “But the diversity program did not cause the tragedy, and suspending it would not have prevented it. This is one of those instances where I feel this administration is using fear to promote its immigration policies.”
2. Members of the Trump administration said they will appeal a federal judge’s order to restore $2 billion in funding to Harvard University in the form of already-awarded federal grants and contracts the administration had frozen. In the months since the ruling, Harvard has recovered most of the money at stake.
“Harvard is not entitled to taxpayer funding, and we are confident the university will be held fully accountable for their failures,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement. University officials said that they’re confident they’ll prevail in an appeal.
3. Massachusetts has a higher share of high schoolers who identify as transgender or nonbinary than the U.S. at large — 3.9%, compared to 1.4% across the United States, according to a survey from the Williams Institute. That means the Trump administration’s move to block gender affirming care for minors may be especially impactful here.
“This is only going to make us fight harder and stand stronger, because we have to. Because our trans youth are our future and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they get the care that they need,” said Chastity Bowick, the Boston-based executive director of the transgender advocacy nonprofit Marsha P. Johnson Institute.
4. The Steamship Authority, the public body that runs ferries between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, spent $4 million on a website for ticket reservations that never went live — and is now spending another $5.7 million on another reservation system, according to a report from Massachusetts Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro.
“A public agency that is spending money has an obligation to spend it wisely and appropriately and thoughtfully,” Shapiro said. “If the music stopped today, $2.3 million was either wasted or mismanaged from this project. It’s debatable if the project that has been shelved can ever come back to life. If it isn’t, that $2.3 million will go to $4.1 million, and it may go on beyond that.”
For homeless teen, a guaranteed income helps provide a step towards stability
Craig Raspberry is part of an experiment: what happens when you give 15 young people experiencing homelessness $1,200 a month, no strings attached?
GBH News reporter Craig LeMoult has been checking in with Craig since this summer. Craig Raspberry moved to Massachusetts from Texas in 2024 after his father threatened to send him to conversion therapy because he is trans, he said. He’s been trying to find stability since: sleeping in shelters, dealing with the cold, looking for jobs and friends.
The program he’s in, called BAY-CASH, also offers advisors and other forms of support, like a one-time payment of $3,000 that Craig used to get into a hostel in early fall. He had applied to 113 jobs and was making plans to go to school for social work.
“I was able to get an extended stay at a hostel and I have a shower facility, a bed to sleep in, I’ve got storage,” he told LeMoult in September. “And I’ve been able to be more productive recently because I have somewhere to sleep and take my medicine and know that I can sleep safely throughout the night.”
By October, that money had run out.
“Whenever you have to pay for a place to sleep every single night it adds up really, really fast,” he said. He was weighing his options for where to sleep: shelters, stoops, couches.
Still, the temporary housing was a big help, he said. He had gotten some job interviews, though none had led to a job yet.
“The only reason I think that I secured those interviews is because I had a place to sleep and I had a place to go back to, and there was a place where my things were where I could hold them and I wouldn’t have to bring them all with me to the interview,” he said.
After some more uncertainty around his housing, Craig got some good news: he received a housing voucher and has been approved for an apartment in Lynn. Once he gets a job, he’ll pay 30% of his income in rent. He’s starting a culinary training program in January, and wants to go to school for social work in the future. For now, he’s making plans for his new place.
“I’m just gonna have to grow out of feeling like every building that I’m in is — it isn’t mine,” he said. “I guess I have to have a new relationship with where I’m staying.”
You can hear Craig’s story in his own words here.
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