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.
☂️Rainy afternoon, with highs in the 70s. Sunset is at 7:49 p.m.
Inside the $63 billion state budget before the Massachusetts Senate is a proposal to make canceling subscriptions a bit less annoying. If that part of the budget passes, companies that do business in Massachusetts will have to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. That means streaming services, gyms and magazines that let you sign up for their services online will have to let you cancel online, too — without requiring customers to call a hotline, chat with an agent or visit an office.
Senate Ways and Means Chairman Michael Rodrigues told GBH’s Katie Lannan he hoped the proposal would save Massachusetts residents “not money, but aggravation.”
Massachusetts would not be leading the pack here. Other states, including California and New York, have similar laws. A federal rule received Federal Trade Commission approval in 2024, but was shut down on procedural grounds the following year. Lannan has a deeper look at other changes in the Senate budget, including an explanation of the complicated way the state gives money to local sheriff’s offices.
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Four Things to Know
1. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Smith College in Northampton because the women’s college admits trans women. Smith has allowed trans women to apply since 2015 and says it is open to “any applicants who self-identify as women; cis, trans and nonbinary women.”
It’s not the first time the Trump administration has investigated Massachusetts schools over transgender students. Last year, the Department of Education announced it would investigate the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association.
2. Voters in Salem chose to raise their property taxes yesterday to fund a new high school building. With about 19% of registered voters turning out, 57.5% to 42.5%. The property tax bill on the median home in Salem (assessed at $590,000) will go up by about $700 a year, an 11% increase.
“At Harvard, except for the lab sciences, every classroom I ever had was in a building over 200 years old,” said Salem resident John Carr, who opposed the override. “Buildings don’t teach; teachers do.” Salem resident Will Walsh said residents will have to pay for the renovation one way or another. “I know people don’t want to pay more taxes, but sometimes you have to put that aside and invest in the future and tax what you can, where you can for the right reasons,” he said.
3. Boston has a new 15-person council charged with sharing updates about the White Stadium renovations in Franklin Park — from the city to nearby neighborhoods and from the neighborhoods back to the city. The co-chairs are Luis Perez Demorizi, executive director of Franklin Park, and Matt Balk, head of facilities for Boston Legacy FC, the professional women’s soccer team that will hold its games in the stadium.
Other members include three city councilors, a youth sports coach, a local business owner and residents of Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. The project has been the subject of lawsuits from neighbors who say they want more communication from the city and who worry that renovating the stadium and making it a part-time home for a professional soccer team could limit public access or accelerate gentrification. Part of the point of the council is to have a line to community members to express their opinions and concerns. “This advisory council, even though it’s later than I would have liked to see it, it’s now appointed and now ready to get to work,” said the Rev. Miniard Culpepper of Roxbury, a city councilor and member of the White Stadium council.
4. Massachusetts residents have filed more than 6,000 requests to remove their eviction records from public view since a law allowing them to do so took effect a year ago. Many of the cases were no-fault evictions, in which landlords evicted tenants without having to prove wrongdoing. Before the new law passed, those records could still make it harder for people to find a new place to live.
“With these cases removed [from] their records, they have been able to leave shelters, secure accessible housing for themselves and their disabled children and become eligible for subsidies,” said Sophie Gillard, a paralegal with Greater Boston Legal Services. The organization helped almost 500 people file petitions to seal their eviction records.
Abigail Adams implored her husband to ‘remember the ladies.’ Here’s what she meant.
On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams sat down to write a letter to her husband, John Adams. John Adams was in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress; Abigail Adams was home with their children on the family farm in Braintree.
“I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors,” Abigail Adams wrote. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.”
When people read those words today, they sometimes misunderstand what she meant, local historians told GBH’s Meghan Smith.
“I think that people today want ‘remember the ladies’ to mean, ’Give women political rights, give women the right to vote,’” said Cassandra Good, an associate professor of history at Marymount University. “But it’s actually something a lot more basic. What she’s talking about is basically giving wives better protection from abuse by their husbands because she’s going on to say all men would be tyrants if they could.”
And there’s more to it, said Sara Georgini, editor for the Adams Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Adams was also saying women made significant contributions to the American Revolution.
“Protecting from an abuse of power doesn’t mean just a king — it could be in your household as well,” Georgini told Smith.
The original letter is displayed in a glass case at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. The collection also includes John Adams’ response: “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh,” he wrote. “...Depend upon it; we know better than to repeal our masculine systems. Altho they are in full force, you know they are little more than theory.”
Dig deeper:
-In Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern, revolutionaries brewed their plans for resistance
-How the American Revolution changed college campuses
-Old broadsides and receipts offer hints to America’s Black Revolutionary War soldiers
