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☁️Cloudy day, rainy night, with highs in the 30s. Sunset is at 4:27 p.m.
Five years ago today, Winston Pingeon was a Capitol Police officer protecting Congress during the now infamous insurrection. About 10 months later, he quit his job and moved back to Massachusetts, where he had grown up. He’s since started painting his memories of that day in watercolor. And today he’ll be back at Congress, testifying about his experience.
“What little justice there was, was washed away when the violent criminals got pardoned,” Pingeon told GBH’s Hannah Reale. “As an officer who was there that day, I think so many of us want justice and accountability for the crimes that happen — not just against us, but for the broader country and what it means that we all saw how fragile our democracy is.”
NPR has a full visual archive of what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. You can see it all for yourself here.
Four Things to Know
1. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu officially began her second term yesterday with promises to “not appease or abet any threat to our city, and we’ll not wait for permission to build the world our families deserve.”
Meanwhile, city councilors elected Councilor Liz Breadon of Allston-Brighton as council president. She will serve for the next two years. “We don’t know what further cuts are going to be made to our budgets, et cetera, but we have to work together,” she said. “As a long-serving counselor from Northern Ireland who appreciates that political difference is very profound at times, we cannot let political difference and ideology or misunderstandings get in the way of doing the work for the people of Boston.”
2. In Brockton, Moises Rodrigues began his term as mayor, pledging to make the city’s leadership more representative of its diverse population and to make sure city services are available in different languages and to people of different cultures. Rodrigues previously served as an at-large city councilor and is a longtime leader of the Cape Verdean Association of Brockton.
“Diversity is not just a word — it’s a standard we must meet in economic development, in improving the quality of life of our residents and educating our children,” Rodrigues said.
3. It’s been three years since a Cambridge police officer shot and killed 20-year-old Sayed Faisal, a UMass Boston student. In the aftermath of the shooting, the city committed to outfitting its police force with body cameras. Now some city councilors say the city is still taking too long to release body-camera footage to those who request it.
Advocates, including Fatema Ahmad of the Muslim Justice League, say that cameras alone will not prevent another such shooting. “If you acknowledge that the real problem is that we sent the police to chase after a young man who was in a mental health episode and they killed him, then body cameras don’t solve that,” Ahmad said.
4. Almost 23,000 people enrolled in 2025 health insurance plans through the Massachusetts Health Connector — the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace - have dropped their coverage this year. But the number of people on ACA plans in Massachusetts will remain about the same: another 23,596 residents who previously had coverage elsewhere signed up for plans.
Those on unsubsidized plans — either people who didn’t qualify for tax-supported coverage last year or whose subsidies expired when Congress voted not to renew them — were more likely to cancel, according to Health Connector data.
The proposed Everett soccer stadium’s environmental impacts
Now that the proposed 25,000-seat New England Revolution soccer stadium in Everett is one step closer to breaking ground (if you missed that news, catch up here), GBH’s Liz Neisloss explored how it could impact the neighborhoods around it.
First: our health. The Kraft Group wants to build the stadium on the banks of the Mystic River, at the former site of the Mystic Generating Station. That power station burned mostly natural gas to produce electricity for the region. Even after it went offline in 2024, pollutants in the surrounding ground and water remain.
The Kraft Group says it will dedicate $100 million to cleaning up the site but has not yet submitted its plans to the state. The company did not respond to Neisloss’ request for comment.
“Probably of greatest environmental and public health interest for everybody should be the demolition of the site,” Patrick Herron, executive director at the Mystic River Watershed Association, told Neisloss. “Demolition can mobilize dust and debris in a way that would be more likely to impact people than once the construction starts and the capping of the material starts.”
Next: traffic. Getting up to 25,000 fans (plus concessions workers, players, and more) to and from the stadium in an already densely populated area is a feat — ask anyone filing into Boston for a Red Sox, Celtics, or Bruins game. Current plans call for just 75 on-site parking spaces, with the idea that most fans will take the Orange Line to nearby Sullivan Square station in Charlestown or Assembly station in Somerville.
The Kraft Group has agreed to help pay for a new entrance to Assembly station and a connection to a pedestrian bridge over the Mystic River. They’ve also agreed to give Boston $5 million for infrastructure improvements in Sullivan Square infrastructure, plus another $5 million over 15 years.
Brad Campbell, CEO of the Conservation Law Foundation, compared it to the agreement Wynn Resorts made to build the Encore Boston Harbor casino next door: that deal had Wynn Resorts paying for some improvements to Sullivan Square, but traffic still clogs the neighborhood.
“We need to make sure that those benefits aren’t outweighed by deterioration of air quality and even more misery for commuters and motorists traversing the Sullivan Square area,” Campbell told Neisloss.
And last, at least for today: public access to the waterfront. Herron said he encourages Everett residents to take part in the public comment period and help design the waterfront park planned near the stadium as part of the deal.
The Mystic River, he said, is “home to one of the largest river herring runs in Massachusetts. And investing in this park can improve climate resilience and provide public access where it’s been missing for so many years,” Herron told Neisloss.
Read the full story here. We’ll keep covering other aspects of this project as it moves forward. If there are areas you’d like us to look into — the cost of housing, economic impacts, or how a more prominent men’s soccer team might shape the city — reply to this email or drop us a line at daily@wgbh.org.
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