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 and foggy, with highs around 70 degrees. Sunset is at 4:31 p.m.
A new law making it illegal for federal immigration agents to arrest people in or near state courthouses in Massachusetts without a criminal warrant went into effect on Tuesday. That same day, Gladys Vega, president of the Chelsea social services nonprofit La Colaborativa, said she saw four agents inside a courthouse, handcuffing a man and taking him away.
“One of the agents went all the way inside the courtroom asking for the name of the man, and then when the court hearing finished, he came out and they immediately put the handcuffs and took him without showing a warrant,” Vega told GBH’s Sarah Betancourt. “It was incredible for us to witness that because there was no warrant, nothing, just your name, and immediately they threw him on the side, put his handcuffs and they took him out.”
The law, called the PROTECT Act, was intended to help immigrants come into court without worrying that federal agents will see their names on a docket and detain them. Betancourt has more on this case here.
Four Things to Know
1. Rep. Neal’s post-‘blue wave’ plans: In Springfield, Rep. Richard Neal celebrated his election to a 20th term in Congress by telling supporters he wants to focus on making health care more affordable and accessible.
“We intend to push back on $1 trillion of cuts to Medicaid. Let the ACA [Affordable Care Act] enhanced credits be returned so people can enjoy health insurance as promised,” he said. “Two hundred billion dollars in SNAP monies that were cut, [so] 42 million Americans are going to see a return to those benefits, as we aspire.”
2. Rep. Lynch’s post-‘blue wave’ plans: When Democrats officially take control of Congress in January, Rep. Stephen Lynch said he wants to see the party “restore trust in government.”
“I think there’s been so much corruption, so much theft by the Trump family, by the president, by people around him that have been selling pardons,” Lynch, a Democrat from South Boston, told GBH’s Morning Edition. “We’re gonna use the subpoena power, we’re gonna call people before Congress, and we’re gonna hold people accountable.” You can hear his full interview here.
3. Charlestown High School students speak: Boston Public Schools officials are thinking of closing down Charlestown High School in 2028 because of low enrollment, along with Greater Egleston High School on the Roxbury-Jamaica Plain line and the East Boston Early Education Center. The city’s School Committee members have to decide if they want to approve the plan, and students from Charlestown High School this week urged them not to.
“I finally have a school I feel I belong at, and this proposal would displace me and all of the class of 2029 for our senior year. I don’t want to start over at a new school as a senior, and I am pleading with you to not make me,” said Zoe Dennison, a sophomore at Charlestown High School.
4. Voice of Logan has landed: Congratulations to Chris Donisi, who beat more than 6,000 people to become the new voice of Logan Airport. You’ll be able to hear his Boston accent booming through the terminals in a recorded message welcoming travellers to the city starting in the middle of November.
Donisi, a pipefitter, grew up in Arlington and now lives in Burlington. He said his mother heard about the competition and told him he should go for it. You can hear (and see) him here.
New clues in the hunt to explain why aggressive colorectal cancer is rising in younger people
As rates of colorectal cancer in adults under the age of 50 grow, a team of local researchers found an interesting genetic difference between the tumors of younger people and older people.
Researchers used frozen samples from tumors that had been removed from people, and they found that tumors in younger people had more stromal cells — cells that make up tissues such as bone marrow and connective tissue.
“It’s well known that tumors that are rich in stromal cells … are resistant to chemotherapy,” Ana Anderson, an immunologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Gene Lay Institute for Immunology and Inflammation, told GBH’s Mark Herz. “Those same stromal cells also produce factors that suppress immune cells, so suppress the immune system of the patient from being able to try and kill the tumor cells. So it’s bad on multiple levels.”
Anderson and the other researchers also found more evidence in younger patients of a process called epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, which can cause cancers to spread more quickly throughout the body. And they found something interesting in RNA.
“We identified that a large portion of those genes that were different in the younger patient tumors belonged to a group called long, non-coding RNAs,” Anderson told Herz. “And those are genes that don’t get made into proteins, but they’ve been recognized as being orchestrators of the expression of all the other genes in the cells that they’re expressed in.”
That’s what the team will be studying next.
“What are they doing? How are they changing the biology of the cells that they’re expressed in? And trying to then figure out how we could potentially target and intervene down the road. As far as the field, we are very interested in seeing how all of our results will translate to early onset colorectal cancer across the world. It is a worldwide phenomenon.”
You can read more about this research here.
Dig deeper:
-Under 50 and living with colorectal cancer, two Mass. patients strive to help others
-Why is colorectal cancer affecting generations differently?
-This woman defied lethal cancer. Can mRNA vaccines make that possible for others?
