Marissa Diakite can’t seem to catch up. First it was electricity bills for the Pawtucket apartment she shares with her mom. The costs kept rising even as she worked more – and was home less – to try to make ends meet, she said. Now, Diakite has debt from months of partially unpaid electric bills. […]

As calls for his resignation and impeachment grow in Washington, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came to the U.S. Naval War College in Newport Monday to announce a sweeping effort to strip military education of what he called its overly civilian influences. “This morning we strip away the comfortable veneer of academic tradition,” he told an […]

Justin Madden works as a driver for the Rhode Island Blood Center, helping to set up, operate and take down the mobile blood drives that pop up across the Ocean State. “We have a very important job,” Madden said in a recent phone interview. Madden wishes there were a few more people in his department […]

Lawmakers still have dozens of major policy decisions to make in the eight remaining weeks of the term, all of which will happen in the lame-duck stretch after Election Day.

It's a wrap on elections in Massachusetts, and the Democrats have kept a hold on almost all their levers of power in the state. But there was still plenty of controversial policy for voters to weigh in on. This week on The Codcast, CommonWealth Beacon reporter Jennifer Smith talks with Talia Lissauer of the Berkshire Eagle and Ella Adams of the State House News Service about election week, starting with a late-breaking ballot question result. They dig into the slew of ballot questions, the regions with competitive races, and what it means for areas without much down-ballot action.

It’s a new phenomenon for the Legislature to have this much unfinished business this close to the end of the two-year session.