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.
❄️Snow! Expect between 1 and 3 inches across most of the state. Sunset is at 4:15 p.m.
This is the time of year when a lot of people find themselves busier than usual. There are family events, religious gatherings, work parties, reunions with out-of-town visitors, and so much more. Sometimes that overloaded calendar comes with a temptation: what if instead of going to that party… you just canceled those plans?
I understand the allure of a cozy night in on the couch and have fallen for its siren song many times. But canceling plans may not be the best thing for our social connections. Rebecca Saxe, who teaches brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, told GBH’s Morning Edition to think about it this way: people with stronger communities and social connections tend to have better physical and mental health. And opting in to social gatherings — resisting the urge to flake — can help build those connections.
“A hundred years ago, you didn’t really have to opt in to social interaction, right? Nobody’s houses were big enough, workplaces weren’t big enough. Basically, you had to see people all the time,” Saxe said. “And then through affluence and luxury, more and more people got to choose to be alone. But now, we’ve created a situation where if you don’t choose the uncomfortable thing of being around other people, you won’t.” You can hear her full interview here.
Four Things to Know
1. Hitting the road today? Good luck. AAA Northeast says around 122.4 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles in the 13 days between Dec. 20 and Jan. 1.
“The story is that Americans are just really determined to travel,” said Mark Schieldrop, spokesperson for AAA Northeast. “The trend since COVID really has been that travel is a major priority for Americans. In lieu of higher prices across other categories, people are doing what they must do to make travel happen in their lives today.”
2. The Trump administration suspended the leases of Vineyard Wind and four other offshore wind farms under construction from Rhode Island to Virginia yesterday. The suspension means construction on these projects, some of which are almost complete, can’t continue. The administration said it has security concerns over the turbine blades creating radar interference.
But the federal government had already reviewed and permitted the projects, taking national security concerns into consideration. “The record of decisions all show that the Department of Defense was consulted at every stage of the permitting process,” National security expert and former Commander of the USS Cole Kirk Lippold told the Associated Press. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the move “looks more like the kind of vindictive harassment we have come to expect from the Trump administration than anything legitimate.”
3. When government officials seized the website Backpage in 2018, they ended up with about $200 million from the people who ran the online sex marketplace routinely used by human traffickers. Now advocates for survivors of human trafficking are encouraging those survivors who appeared on the website to apply for compensation. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has a list of volunteer lawyers who can help, and the deadline for applications is March 31, 2026.
“Finally, finally, after so many years, survivors have a chance to receive some monetary relief for the victimization they suffered at the hands of Backpage,’’ Yiota Souras, chief legal officer for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Though the money won’t erase what happened to the survivors, she said, they can use it to seek treatment if desired.
4. After the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it will investigate whether Boston’s housing policies discriminate against white people, local housing and civil rights advocates held a press conference calling the investigation baseless.
“Boston’s efforts that HUD cites in its letter to direct resources and opportunities in home buying and lending to residents of color and to invest in underserved communities do not and cannot violate the Fair Housing Act because they are exactly the types of efforts that the Fair Housing Act requires,” said Jillian Lenson, senior attorney with Lawyers for Civil Rights.
Despite scrutiny in life and death, Phillis Wheatley endures as a trailblazing poet
The life of the first person of African descent to publish a book in North America life began in West Africa. At age seven or eight, capturors took her from her home and brought her to what was not yet the United States. She was trafficked to Boston in 1761, where her enslavers gave her the name Phillis — after the ship she arrived on — and their own last name, Wheatley.
“She has one poem where she uses the phrase, ‘I believe, I was snatched from my father’s arms,’” said Cornelia Dayton, a history professor at the University of Connecticut.
Phillis Wheatley learned English and started reading in Latin with her enslavers’ children. She published a book, “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” in London in 1773.
And today, actor Cathryn Philippe gets to read the former Bostonian’s work at the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum:
“Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind.”
GBH’s Marilyn Schairer took a deep look into Wheatley’s life story, historical myths about her, and an enduring mystery of her burial. Check it out here.
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