WBUR's newsroom reviewed the whirlwind of executive orders, directives, counter-actions and lawsuits over the past three-plus months — with a special focus on how federal actions are affecting Massachusetts and New England.
And compared to his first term, it has been characterized by a blistering pace of action and ongoing disruption. Since taking office, Trump has wielded executive powers — and, many others have spurred seismic shifts across the country and in Massachusetts, from cuts to federally funded programs to 401k losses to local residents' civil rights.
WBUR's newsroom reviewed the whirlwind of executive orders, directives, counter-actions and lawsuits over the past three-plus months to chronicle the real-world effects. Here's a look at the first 100 days of the Trump administration, with a special focus on how federal actions are affecting Massachusetts and New England.Massachusetts climate and environmental nonprofits . Some money, like $17.5 million from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for habitat restoration on Cape Cod, is back for now.awarded to Massachusetts for its Solar for All program. After two federal judges ordered the administration to unfreeze the money,which experts said would send the price of heating oil and diesel fuel skyrocketing in New England. The tariffs went into effect on March 4, but two days later, Trump exempted certain goods,The agency said it would honor obligated funds, but suspend any future funding. For Massachusetts, this means the state will get $50 million of the $63 million it was originally awarded.. It will not disclose how many staffers at the New England office have been fired, quit or taken a buyout. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wants to cut the agency’sthat the Trump administration is making it “almost impossible” to provide services. The center estimated that layoffs, buyouts and rescinded job offers will likely result in the loss of a third of its 180-person staff.targeting state and local efforts to address climate change and environmental justice. The action directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to identify relevant laws and take action to stop their enforcement. Massachusetts has some of the strongest climate laws in the country and$1.6 billion — about 25% — from NOAA’s budget. If Congress approves the budget, cuts include all funds for habitat restoration and species recovery, MIT and Woods Hole Sea Grant programs, and the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.on imports from close trading partners Canada and Mexico, as well as a 10% tariff on China. While he delayed the tariffs on Canada and Mexico only two days later, the tariffs on China took effect Feb. 4.science and research funding sent a shock wave through Boston’s for-profit biotech and science industries. Startups here often partner with or fund ideas coming out of the city’s universities and research centers. Boston’s venture capital and private equity giants also invest in these companies.. Some immigrants are afraid to go to work; others won’t go out to restaurants. It has caused stress for business owners and left some business districts wanting for their usual customers.for imports from Canada and Mexico, and Trump doubles China’s tariffs to 20%. All three countries said they wouldThe Social Security Administration announced plans to no longer allow recipients to verify their identity over the phone, meaning some people filing claims or benefits changes would be required to visit a field office. However, followingseeking to punish Boston-based WilmerHale over its diversity policies and work with his political opponents. Unlike some law firms that acquiesced to the president’s demands, WilmerHale sued and won aTrump announced a minimum 10% tariff on all trading partners, with higher rates to come for various countries, especially China — sending stocks2,200 points in a single day and global markets followed, as consumers and businesses fretted over huge price increases on goods to come. And big Boston investment firms likeInvestments and State Street Corp., which oversee trillions of dollars in retirement funds, got a front row seat on the turmoil.: Trump postponed the potential ban on TikTok, giving the video app’s China-based owners until mid-June to sell the platform or face prohibition in the U.S.a 90-day halt on his tariffs for all countries, except for China. That was cold comfort for the governor and business leaders, who met that day to figure out how to navigate the tariffs."The fact remains: we do not know what is going to happen next,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said. “This is causing considerable harm to our residents, to our economy and to our businesses.”Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on social media, pushing for an interest rate cut and threatening to fire him. Investors globally revolted at the possible threat to the Fed’s independence — sending rates higher, including those on home mortgages in Greater Boston's already. Powell stood firm and said the president can’t legally fire him. Days later, Trump backed off, saying he had. Formed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB has cracked down on fraud and abuse by financial firms to the tune of billions of dollars returned to consumers. As Trump and DOGE try to gut the agency, Massachusetts consumers, like others across the country, could be left without a dedicated watchdog in financial services.for people fleeing countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The move set off a chain of events that left hundreds of thousands of people: ICE arrested Lucas Dos Santos Amaral in Marlborough during a traffic stop and sent him to a Texas detention facility. It was anthat immigration agents aren’t just looking for “criminals,” but anyone without legal status. A father and husband whose tourist visa had expired seven years ago, Amaral was later permitted toEarly Februaryfor a Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Coalition program that provided free citizenship assistance. The freeze forced MIRA to cut back on services and stop accepting new clients. The funding wasweek-long series of ICE raidswith visas, including aggressive treatment of two people at Logan Airport. A doctor specializing in kidney transplants was held at Logan for 36 hours and sent back to Lebanon, against a judge’s order, on allegations she sympathized with Hezbollah. And a German engineer and green card holder who lives in New Hampshire was allegedly showered with ice water and"violently interrogated" over decade-old drug charges. to Vermont overnight, before transporting her to a Louisiana immigration detention center the next day. Öztürk, a 30-year-old Turkish national, said she feared for her life during what Massachusetts lawmakers have called a kidnapping. Her lawyers say she was targeted for aninstances of the administration revoking student visas and empowering ICE agents to detain pro-Palestinian students who are not U.S. citizens.. The U.S. attorney for Massachusetts argued neither the judge nor the Suffolk County district attorney have authority to file contempt charges against ICE.they will not share student information with federal agents without a court order and will protect children’s right to attend school no matter their immigration status.banning policies tied to diversity, equity and inclusion from all executive agencies Northeastern University scrubbed all DEI messaging from websites and renamed its “Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” to the “Office of Belonging,”,” an early example of local college administrators making subtle changes to evade the government's scrutiny. On April 28, Harvard became the latest Mass. school to re-brand its"Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging" to the"Office of Community and Campus Life,”an executive order vowing to deport and revoke the visas of “all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.” In response to the order, along with Trump’s pledge to issue mass deportations and other immigration enforcement actions, collegesthe cancellation of more than $600 million in grants to K-12 districts for teacher training, recruitment and preparation. Massachusetts is one of several states thatwith the Trump administration. The canceled grants include $2.3 million to UMass Amherst to train paraprofessionals to become licensed early childhood educators, and $5.9 million to train bilingual teachers in Boston Public Schools.by the Dept. of Ed that they are under investigation for alleged failure to address reports of antisemitic discrimination. This followed aof nearly $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard University over alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus. Faculty and students: The Dept. of Ed canceled more than $2 billion in K-12 grants geared toward pandemic-era learning loss, including more thanall K-12 school commissioners to compile local school districts’ certification against DEI efforts or risk loss of federal funding. Patrick Tutwiler, Massachusetts’ education secretary and acting K-12 commissioner, curtlythat the Dept. of Ed “does not have the legal authority to demand individual certifications from school districts.” Local ACLU chapters$2.2 billion in federal funds to Harvard one day after school leadership vowed to stand up to the government’s new demands. Trump officials also moved to have the IRS strip the institution of its tax-exempt status andinto the Harvard Law Review and Harvard University for alleged reports of race-based discrimination. Specifically, the government is reviewing policies and practices involving the journal's membership and article selection, claiming the publication favors submissions from scholars of color.Trump signed an executive order announcing his administration will only recognize two sexes — male and female — leading to concerns about the future of transgender health care, and the mass deletion of research and information on government websites mentioning the terms “transgender” or “LGBTQ.” Some of the material has been restored following, a federal agency focused on improving global health and education, among other things. While the shutdown, which was not approved by Congress, isenforcement on hold Outside the JFK Federal Building in Boston, Labor Unions protest against an effort to cut funding for scientific research. . Mass General Brigham, Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s hospitals are three of the country's top five largest NIH grant recipients.to local health care facilities if they didn’t reassign staff working on diversity, equity and inclusion, and remove select words from their websites.A Maine program that allowed parents to fill out a form at the hospital to register newborns for a Social Security Number was briefly canceled by the acting commissioner of the Social Security AdministrationThe Trump administration moved to pull back $11 billion in COVID-era public health grants that the CDC distributed to states, cities and organizations — includingApril 1:that nearly three dozen research programs led by Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital were recently terminated by the NIH and other federal agencies. The programs include research into the roots of long COVID and how the pandemic affected the mental health of LGBTQ+ people. An NIH spokesperson said they were terminating research funding that is not aligned with the administration’s priorities.As a result of the administration’s freeze on more than $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard, researchers received orders to halt research intoand promised to find its environmental cause as early as September. To do so, the agency has said it will gather private medical records from federal and commercial databases to support its renewed autism study . Not only do some scientists say this timeline is too short to produce reliable results, but researchers who have been studying autism for years have repeatedlymost of a multi-year $1 million federal grant to address some of the causes of asthma in Hampden County — once dubbed the “asthma capital” of the U.S..The funds were intended for in-home air quality remediations, like mold removal and improved air ventilation, in Chicopee, Holyoke and Springfield.Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office seeking to end birthright citizenship in the U.S. for those whose parents are in the country without legal status. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell and a coalition of state AGson"gender ideology" led to the removal of gender-neutral options from federal identification documents, such as passports and visas. State officials in Massachusetts said state-issued identification cards that let transgender, queer and nonbinary residents choose “X” instead of male or female remain valid in Massachusetts —the sentences of approximately 1,500 people convicted of crimes committed during the Jan. 6 insurrection, including at least three from Massachusetts who were serving prison sentences as a result of their participation in the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Looking more broadly across the region, the clemency also applied to 55 New Englanders who took part in the insurrection., for “alleged harassment and discrimination against Jewish people” at schools across the city. Trump administration officials were in Boston earlier this month for an “advance site visit” — and thento slash federal funding and increase enforcement of schools that allow trans women and girls to compete in women's sports. The NCAA, led by former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker,to restrict competition in women's sports to players who were assigned female at birth. Some governors, like Maine Gov. Janet Mills, haveto Justice Department staff saying any private companies that continue their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives will be flagged for potential “criminal investigation.” Several Boston-based companiesrequire voters to show proof of citizenship when using a federal form to register to vote. Several lawsuits have been filed seeking to block the changes, including one, a top fundraising platform for Democrats. It’s the latest example of Trump using his position of power to attack his political opponents. Findings from the investigation will reportedly be shared within 180 days of this memorandum.who receive support allocated by the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a number of local artists applying for grantsFrom the moment Trump appointed himself chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and then made his special envoy Richard Grenell the center’s president, artists and at least one local Boston rock legendscheduled performances in protest. Among them: Peter Wolf, the J. Geils Band frontman and Guster. Others decided to go forward with their performances. To receive $250,000 in federal funds from AmeriCorps that would’ve paid for 11 tutors, they needed to take out any reference to diversity, equity and inclusion. The nonprofit's board unanimously voted to let go of federal funding rather than betray its values. The Kennedy Library is opened one day after it closed due to layoffs on Feb. 19. . It’s one of 16 presidential libraries overseen by the Office of Presidential Libraries and the National Archives and Records Administration. Five probationary employees were laid off and then reinstated, as their salaries are paid by museum admissions and not federal funds., including the Museum of African American History. It’s losing nearly half a million in federal funding, affecting both its Boston and Nantucket locations. This order could also impact other institutions such as theThe New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill was hit by the Trump administration's funding cuts. Officials at the Boylston nonprofit said the administration canceled a $250,000 grant they got through the Institute of Museum and Library Services — without giving a reason.A local Boston restaurant is just one of many local eateries reconsidering their menu offerings due to tariffs. The Vietnamese restaurant in Quincy,to review grants awarded during the Biden administration to ensure they line up with Trump's priorities and “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.” According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Massachusetts had some of thewere later reinstated after a court order, according to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists. A union spokesperson told WBUR that none of the affected employees work at Boston’s Logan International Airport., “generating $20.5 billion in 2024." The organization estimates even a 10% reduction in Canadian travel to the U.S. would result in a loss of $2 billion in spending and cost 14,000 jobs. Industry experts worry the decline couldthat the original proposal would hurt smaller ports like Boston’s Conley Terminal. The fees are expected to start in October and will gradually increase.he expects Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products to raise the costs of new Red and Orange line trains. MBTA deputy press secretary Lisa Battiston said in an email that the leadership of CRRC, which is producing the train shells in China, “assures us they are committed to the contract but the new tariffs will likely have impacts on their subcontractors, including the suppliers of materials.”
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