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Gov. Maura Healey will tap Rep. Jon Santiago of Boston, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve, as the state’s next veterans’ services secretary.

Lieutenant Colonel John E. Mawn, Jr. of the Massachusetts State Police will be serving as the interim colonel of the department until Healey names a permanent replacement.

House Speaker Ron Mariano of Quincy will wade into Boston city politics Tuesday when he plans to formally endorse Rep. Jon Santiago for mayor.

Massachusetts is seeing a decline in COVID cases.

The state budget plan recommends $30 million for the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, a slight increase over the current budget.

The House and Senate on Monday passed legislation extending the state’s COVID-19 emergency paid leave program, which is currently scheduled to expire on Thursday.

The Department of Veterans’ Services became a Cabinet-level executive office this month under a 2022 law that responded to governance and operational shortcomings that proved fatal during the pandemic, particularly at the state-run soldiers’ homes in Holyoke and Chelsea.

After collecting the endorsements from four more state representatives, a Boston mayoral hopeful is touting her status as the candidate “with the most support from Beacon Hill.”

House Speaker Ron Mariano was supposed to put some political heft behind state Rep. Jon Santiago’s campaign for mayor on Tuesday, but his trip to the South End to endorse the two-term Democrat turned into a major headache for the mayoral hopeful instead.

The state-reported COVID-19 data better reflect the realities of the pandemic now that the number of COVID-10 patients hospitalized is broken down between people hospitalized to be treated for COVID-19 and people who have COVID-19 but are hospitalized for another reason.

Gov. Maura Healey administered oaths of office to three more lawmakers in her suite Wednesday morning, bringing the 160-seat House up to 159 members in the middle of bill-filing week.

Jon Santiago, a second-term state lawmaker and emergency room doctor from Boston’s South End, is entering the race to succeed Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, joining a diverse field of candidates that already includes three members of the City Council.

Beginning next week, Massachusetts hospitals will start to differentiate between patients they admit primarily for COVID-19 and those admitted to be treated for something else who end up testing positive for COVID-19.

Members of the health care workers union 1199SEIU are seeking a slate of policies intended to address issues spotlighted over the past year. The union is advocating for what it calls the Healthcare Heroes Bill of Rights.

The chairman of the Cannabis Control Commission raised concerns with what he said are “predatory financing deals” being offered to entrepreneurs and businesses from communities disproportionately harmed by the decades of marijuana prohibition and renewed the agency’s call for the Legislature to make an alternate funding source available.

Five Boston mayoral hopefuls pitched their workforce development visions and records Thursday, voicing broad agreement on the need to improve access to child care and offering ideas for how to help connect immigrants learning English and people returning from incarceration with jobs.

The Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness and Management is scheduled to hold a hearing Thursday to examine the Baker Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

More than half of Massachusetts adults who participated in a May survey said they’d experienced some sort of health care cost hardship in the past year and almost three-quarters said they’re worried about their ability to afford care in the future.

In the wake of controversial images showing U.S. agents on horseback chasing Haitian migrants at the country’s border with Mexico, politicians in Massachusetts and Boston are criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies and treatment of those trying to enter the U.S.

On Feb. 19, when Rep. Nika Elugardo filed her bill to create a COVID-19 funeral and burial aid fund and Sen. Diana DiZoglio filed legislation that would add an expiration date to states of emergency, Massachusetts was still under the state of emergency declared in March 2020 and the federal government had not yet begun reimbursing funeral costs for the pandemic’s victims.

We know that Massachusetts saw a huge surge in COVID-19 cases which caused a shortage of PPE and other important hospital equiptment, well 2 elected officials are now circling back to make sure those resources were distributed adequately

House lawmakers unanimously passed a $47.716 billion budget in the early morning hours Thursday after adding tens of millions of dollars in spending over three days, largely to support investments that representatives said would guide the state in forging a pathway out of the COVID-19 crisis.

BOSTON (AP) — Kim Janey, who as a child had rocks hurled at her school bus during Boston’s desegregation era, marked her historic elevation as the first woman and first Black person to serve as mayor of the city with a ceremonial swearing-in event Wednesday. Janey replaces fellow Democrat Marty Walsh, who resigned Monday to […]

Acknowledging that the opioid epidemic that was raging before the COVID-19 pandemic has only become a more challenging issue, lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use and Recovery huddled Monday to consider bills making harm reduction tools and treatment by medication accessible to more people.

The Legislature sent Gov. Charlie Baker a bill Monday extending the state’s COVID-19 emergency paid leave program until April 1.

State representatives and House employees would be required to prove they are vaccinated by Nov. 1 to work in-person at the State House under a legislative panel’s new proposal, which also calls for reopening the building on a phased but undated timetable and continuing to livestream all public hearings.

Nearly five years after Massachusetts voters legalized cannabis through a ballot law that emphasized making the newly legal industry accessible to people and communities harmed by the War on Drugs, major barriers to entry still remain for many, one of the state’s marijuana regulators said.

Multiple members of Boston’s delegation in the Legislature said Monday they think the path is clear for a petition to call off a special election for mayor that would be triggered if Mayor Marty Walsh resigns to become U.S. labor secretary before March 5.

Vaccines continue to be the “best defense” against COVID-19, but with the omicron variant threatening to drive cases, if not necessarily severe disease, to new heights, hospital and medical experts said that additional steps like mask-wearing may be necessary this winter to control spread and prevent hospital overcrowding.

BOSTON (SHNS) – The Massachusetts House is turning to a group of representatives with emergency response, public health, and nursing and medical backgrounds to provide leadership during the coronavirus crisis. Working groups are taking shape in both the House and Senate as the Legislature searches for ways to take up bills at a time when […]

The six candidates running for mayor of Boston met for the second time this week in a forum hosted by the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department Wednesday where they honed in on criminal justice, substance abuse disorder, mental health, and homelessness.

Marking a “new day” in Boston as the first woman and first Black resident to become mayor, Kim Janey set her sights Wednesday on addressing long-standing inequities thrust into new levels of scrutiny by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But at this point in the pandemic, who amongst us has really mastered Zoom etiquette, much less the art of pulling off a virtual, comedic breakfast on TV?

The state reported another 2,615 cases of coronavirus on Easter Sunday as the death toll from the disease climbed to 756

Attorney General Maura Healey and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley plan on Tuesday to try to rattle Beacon Hill, where legislation known as the ROE Act governing access to abortion has been bottled up in a Democrat-controlled committee for more than 18 months despite widespread support.

Voting rights advocates knocked the Senate redistricting proposal as “overcautious.” A state representative with eyes on a seat in the other chamber slammed the potential split of Haverhill as “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” And in the most visible sign yet that internal dissent is rumbling, a member of the Senate called for her colleagues to just hit pause and reconsider its map.

As the second surge of the virus rages on here, Massachusetts moved to the precipice of 300,000 coronavirus infections with the confirmation Thursday of 4,985 new cases of COVID-19.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Olivier Nkamhoua was a little hesitant to enter Tennessee’s postgame locker room after a career performance against powerhouse Duke in the NCAA Tournament. So Uros Plavsic picked him up and delivered him to teammates waiting to douse him with water. It was a fitting payback considering Nkamhoua had carried the Volunteers […]

BOSTON (SHNS) – Jordan Meehan joked that it seemed like he picked the best year to take a first crack at running for state political office as the pandemic has shifted campaigning tactics from in-person meet and greets to phone banks and digital strategies. “I think we have adjusted to the circumstances better than most […]

In the month since the first COVID-19 death was reported in Massachusetts on March 20, the viral disease has claimed the lives of 1,706 people here, state officials reported Sunday afternoon.

Several of the leading medical experts who developed the state’s controversial plan to ration access to life-saving equipment like ventilators say they believe the state’s hospitals will be able to weather the surge of coronavirus infections without having to implement those protocols.

Training medical providers to ask patients about firearm ownership and storage will save lives and promote better safety practices, the city of Boston’s health and human services chief told lawmakers Tuesday.

Governor Charlie Baker visits Hasbro partner factory Cartamundi East Longmeadow.

NBC has announced its new schedule for the upcoming 2021 fall season.

BOSTON (SHNS) – After two months of government-imposed business closures and restrictions on day-to-day life, Massachusetts entered a new phase of the coronavirus pandemic Monday — one that will attempt to balance public health efforts to keep the spread of the highly-contagious coronavirus in check with a methodical return to economic and social activity. The […]

Democrats Wednesday afternoon effectively gained control of the U.S. Senate after The Associated Press called one of Georgia’s two Senate runoffs early Wednesday morning for Democrat Raphael Warnock, and the second race between incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff for Ossoff.

In a debate that thrust the marquee primary contest between incumbent U.S. Sen. Edward Markey and U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III back onto the state’s political radar, Markey put his lengthy legislative record up against Kennedy’s call for a more well-rounded senator from Massachusetts.

BOSTON (SHNS) – Sunday marked a rarity in the COVID-19 era, with no formal updates from Governor Charlie Baker or the Trump administration. State public health officials in the afternoon reported another 169 deaths, raising the total to 2,899. Another 1,590 new cases were also reported by the Department of Public Health, down from the 2,379 […]

Representatives from Poison Control Centers of America came to the State House on Tuesday to share a powerful message about the dangers of opioid exposure.

In an effort to fight childhood obesity, three Massachusetts state lawmakers have filed a bill that would create an excise tax on soda and other sugary drinks.