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 with no break in the cold: Highs in the 20s and lows in the single digits. Sunset is at 5:03 p.m.
Earlier this week a federal judge ruled that Haitian people in the U.S. legally under a program called Temporary Protected Status — including 19,000 people in Massachusetts — can keep their rights to live and work here while a legal fight over their program proceeds.
But Tribute Home Care, a Massachusetts company that sends caregivers to the homes of mostly older adult clients to help them with everyday tasks, laid off three Haitian workers with Temporary Protected Status this week because they believed their legal work permits had expired.
Local lawyers — and the website of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — said the employees are still legally allowed to work. Tribute Home Care’s CEO and a spokesperson told GBH’s Sarah Betancourt they’ll contact an employment lawyer.
“It’s understandable that certain employers would be nervous when confronted with a work authorization document that on its face seems to have expired,” co-litigator Andrew Tauber of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner said. “But hopefully, the updating of the USCIS website will give such employers the certainty and comfort that they need to continue employing Haitian TPS holders.” You can read the full story here.
Four Things to Know
1. A judge has decided to drop a domestic violence charge against a former Boston city employee whose arrest made headlines last spring. Chulan Huang, who worked as a neighborhood business manager for Boston’s Office of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion, was arrested after an argument with his then-girlfriend, Marwa Khudaynazar. The judge dismissed the case because Khudaynazar did not show up to testify.
“Losing my role was devastating, not due to any lack of integrity on my part, but because I was made to absorb the consequences of someone else’s misconduct,” Huang said in a statement. “This situation stems from a clear abuse of power from an individual who not only held a leadership role within my office, but a leadership role within the entire city of Boston itself,” he said, referring to outgoing Chief of Economic Development and Inclusion Segun Idowu, his former boss. Khudaynazar still faces charges of domestic assault and assault and battery on a police officer and is suing the city, saying she was fired in retaliation.
2. Secretary of State William Galvin, who has been in his current job since 1995, is seeking re-election for a ninth time this year. He’s in charge of making sure elections run smoothly, coordinating the state’s U.S. Census count, ensuring public records compliance and keeping the registry of lobbyists and corporations up to date. So far, no other candidates have signed up to run.
Galvin said he’s “greatly concerned with federal efforts to interfere with the conduct of the election,” a reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection; he also said he’s worried about the “ongoing effort to manipulate congressional districts in 2026.”
3. Cambridge is reminding its residents that while Boston lets people leave lawn chairs, traffic cones or buckets to save the parking spot they painstakingly shoveled out on a public street in the 48 hours after a snow emergency, Cambridge does not.
“Nobody owns their parking space,” Cambridge city councilor Marc McGovern said. “If you move your car, that space is available to anybody else.” The city began to remove space savers yesterday and is also working on getting the lingering piles of snow off the city’s streets.
4. Before the Winter Olympics start tomorrow, we’d like to draw your attention to a local woman who achieved a remarkable polar feat. Monet Izabeth Eliastam, who grew up in Weston, recently became the first American woman to ski to the South Pole solo and unsupported.
“Probably because I’m an introvert, being alone was very easy. That wasn’t difficult at all for me,” she told GBH’s Morning Edition. “Honestly, I was so busy on the expedition. There’s no downtime. That, for me, is really the mentally hard part. You’re either skiing, eating or sleeping. There’s not time for anything else and you’re always rushing to the next thing and thinking about the next thing that you have to do.” Hear her full interview here.
‘We show up for each other’: Gloucester mourns after tragic loss at sea
When seven people died on a commercial fishing vessel called the Lily Jean off Gloucester’s coast last week, the people who work for Fishing Partnership Support Services knew some of what lay ahead. The nonprofit organization employs people who have worked in fishing, grew up in fishing families or married into them, and relies on those community connections to offer support when tragedy strikes.
“They’re bringing resources. They’re even doing those very basic things that you might need after something like this has occurred, but it’s really, really important — making sure that families have a warm meal, a place to gather, that there’s food and coffee,” Lauren King, vice president of community health, told GBH’s All Things Considered.
Coast Guard officials are still investigating why the Lily Jean sank. On board were Captain Accursio “Gus” Sanfilippo, Paul Beal Sr., Paul Beal Jr., John Rousanidis, Freeman Short, Sean Therrien and Jada Samitt, a fisheries observer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Deb Kelsey, a community health liaison with Fishing Partnership Support Services, said she and her coworkers are trying to help in any way they can: booking hotel rooms, making sure people have eaten and planning to stay on for the long term.
“Mostly, they’re not asking for much; they’re in shock and awe,” she said. “We’re here to listen and to comfort. As a member of a fishing family, this hits home. Any time there’s a tragedy on any waterfront, it hits home.”
And they’ve been hearing from people who live and work in other fishing communities.
“We know that this could happen to any one of us,” Kelsey said. “Every time a tragedy happens, it brings you back to all the tragedies that have occurred. I know that we’re all thinking of our Gloucester family. I’ve seen many posts and reach-outs from fishing families that we’ve assisted here in New Bedford during their times of tragedy. We’re all feeling the hurt. We’re all feeling the love, and [we’re] ready to support as we can.”
You can hear their full conversation here.
Dig deeper:
-Coast Guard IDs victims, begins investigating fishing boat’s sinking that killed 7
-As boys face rising loneliness, this Massachusetts mentoring program is showing up
-With $900K, what causes would teens support? This nonprofit put that to the test.
-She raised a cheetah cub in the ’70s. Now, she’s saving them from extinction.
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