GoFundMe for family of Worcester man killed in Boston crash tops $56,000

A GoFundMe for the wife and daughters of Ilir Janko Melka, the Worcester man who died in a crash on Boston’s Arborway on Sunday, Oct. 11, had raised more than $56,000 by Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 14.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office identified Melka, 48, on Tuesday, Oct. 13. He was driving on the Arborway in Jamaica Plain around 2 p.m. when another car struck his vehicle, according to the district attorney’s office. Melka died at the scene.

Dashcam footage obtained by WHDH-TV shows a white sedan going over a concrete median and hitting Melka’s SUV head-on. Sources told the station the sedan’s 18-year-old driver lost control while traveling faster than 50 mph. The Arborway has a 25 mph speed limit.

The other driver remains hospitalized. Prosecutors have not released his name or said whether he will face charges, and Massachusetts State Police and the district attorney’s office continue to investigate the crash.

Klodi Melka, Ilir’s brother, organized the fundraiser for Ilir’s wife, Mariola Doko Melka, and the couple’s three daughters, ages 20, 18 and 12. The family needs the money first for funeral and cemetery costs, according to the page. Any remaining money will help the family cover ongoing expenses, and the organizer asked supporters to consider recurring donations.

The campaign has a $100,000 goal and had drawn 387 donations as of Wednesday afternoon.

“He loved life more than anything else,” his brother told Boston 25 News. His brother also said he believes Melka may have been driving for Uber at the time of the crash, though no one has confirmed that.

Melka attended Doherty Memorial High School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, according to Telegram & Gazette archives.

Audit finds 29 Worcester schools missing required 20 mph signs

Auditors checking Worcester school zones this summer found 47 streets at 29 schools without the 20 mph signs the city’s school zone ordinance requires, City Auditor Robert V. Stearns told the City Council in a report dated Oct. 13.

The report answers a council order that came out of a May 11 Committee on Education meeting and won full council approval June 2. The order asked Stearns to review drop-off and pick-up areas, the streets students use to reach school, crosswalks, flashing crosswalk signs, 20 mph signs and bus stops located away from crosswalks.

Auditing staff visited 38 schools and 93 of the city’s 108 designated school zones in June and July. Along with the 47 streets that had no signs, they counted eight more where branches partly blocked the signs or where signs faced only one direction.

The Department of Transportation and Mobility has since hired a contractor to install 120 new school zone signs. Nearly all are up, and the department expects to finish the rest by the end of October, Stearns wrote.

Vernon Hill School shows the kind of gaps auditors found. On Providence Street the school meets the ordinance and has a radar speed feedback sign that warns speeding drivers. Astrid Avenue, Doane Street and Upsala Street, the other three streets the ordinance lists for the school, had no school zone signs.

The audit also found four schools missing from Schedule XXIII, the list of school zones the city clerk keeps under the ordinance. They are Bancroft School, Worcester Academy, Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public School and St. Paul Diocesan Junior/Senior High School.

The council voted 10-0 on April 29, 2025, to adopt the ordinance. It sets a 20 mph limit in school zones during the posted times and days. On most other city streets, the citywide speed limit is 25 mph.

Faded crosswalks, few flashing beacons

Of the 38 schools auditors visited, 29 have crosswalks at the school. Many of the side streets listed in the ordinance have none, the report says. Many existing crosswalks also lack the newer fluorescent signs or have no signs at all.

The report lists nine schools without crosswalks or with faded ones:

• Al-Huda Academy
• Clark Street Community School
• Doherty Memorial High School
• Francis J. McGrath Elementary School
• Lincoln Street School
• Nelson Place School
• Norrback Avenue School
• Worcester Arts Magnet School
• Worcester Technical High School

The transportation department has picked 37 streets to get new crosswalk signs. So far it has sent work orders to the Department of Public Works for eight of them.

Thirteen of the schools have rectangular rapid flashing beacons on at least one nearby street. These are signs that pedestrians push a button to activate. The other 25 schools auditors visited have none. A pair of beacons, one for each direction, costs about $27,000 to install. The department saves them for busy streets, areas with frequent speeding and crosswalks that drivers have trouble seeing.

Crashes cluster near schools

Data from the city’s Vision Zero program show that 30% of pedestrian injury crashes and 32% of bicycle injury crashes in Worcester happen within 1,000 feet of a school. City Manager Eric D. Batista adopted the Vision Zero Safety Action Plan in June 2025, which aims to end traffic deaths and serious injuries on city roads by 2035.

The public schools with the most severe crashes within 1,000 feet are the Adult Learning Center, Chandler Elementary Community School, Worcester East Middle School, Belmont Street Community School and Grafton Street School, according to the report.

The reconstruction of Chandler Street has held up school zone signs there, Stearns wrote. Belmont Street now has updated signs and flashing beacons in both directions in front of Belmont Street Community School.

Outreach depends on one coordinator

All Worcester public schools now belong to the state’s Safe Routes to School program, run by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Membership lets schools get walk audits and reviews of arrival and dismissal, and apply for grants for signs and pavement markings. A citywide task force brings together Worcester Public Schools, the city transportation and public works departments, police, public health and MassDOT.

Four schools have had state walk audits so far. About a dozen have had arrival and dismissal reviews. One state outreach coordinator covers Worcester and several other communities.

“One limitation would be the capacity of SRTS to accommodate all of our requests for support, specifically around A/D and walk audits,” the district’s director of school safety wrote in a response included in the report.

The director also listed problems at individual schools, including speeding, traffic jams at dismissal, sidewalks that need repair and winter weather that makes walking harder. Upsala Street still needs the sidewalk repairs a July 2025 state walk audit at Vernon Hill School called for, Stearns wrote.

Stearns’ letter does not say which bus stops sit away from existing crosswalks, the last of the six items the council asked about.

Gov. Healey presses utilities to send $1.5B transmission refunds now

Gov. Maura Healey wants Eversource, National Grid and Unitil to start returning Massachusetts customers’ share of an estimated $1.5 billion in transmission overcharges now, months ahead of a May 2027 federal deadline.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Oct. 13, Healey asked the three utilities to work with grid operator ISO New England and other transmission owners to begin issuing refunds immediately. She gave the companies until Oct. 27 to send an accounting of what Massachusetts customers are owed and a schedule showing when and how the money will reach them.

“Massachusetts families have been paying too much for too long, and they shouldn’t have to wait another winter to get their money back,” Healey said in a statement announcing the letter.

The refunds stem from a March 19 decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that cut the base return on equity for New England transmission owners to 9.57% and applied the lower rate back to Oct. 16, 2014. Return on equity sets the profit utilities may earn on their transmission investments. FERC ordered the companies to refund the difference with interest, along with charges from a separate 15-month period in 2011 and 2012.

The Massachusetts attorney general’s office filed the original complaint in 2011 and pursued the case under Healey, who served as attorney general before her election as governor, and her successor, Andrea Joy Campbell. Massachusetts customers make up roughly half of New England ratepayers, according to state officials.

“This office has fought for years to secure this ruling, and now it’s time for customers to get their money back,” Campbell said.

FERC first gave the utilities 30 days to finish the refunds. The transmission owners and ISO New England asked for more time, and the commission moved the deadline to May 20, 2027. In May, FERC refused a request from Eversource and Avangrid to pause the refunds while the companies appeal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also turned down the utilities’ bid to delay, according to the governor’s office.

State officials first estimated the refunds at about $900 million. The total rose to roughly $1.5 billion after the utilities filed their own figures, the Maine Morning Star reported. Healey’s staff has no estimate yet of what the average customer will receive.

Eversource spokesman William Hinkle said reconciling more than a decade of billing data across every electric distribution company made the original 30-day timeline impossible. He said the company plans to comply with FERC’s directives.

National Grid spokesperson Brendan Moss said the company is calculating the refunds and expects to begin “processing them in 2027, in advance of FERC’s May deadline,” The Boston Globe reported. Unitil spokesperson Amanda Vicinanzo said the company will answer the governor by Oct. 27 and intends to meet its obligations under the order.

“Customers have waited too long for this refund, they shouldn’t have to wait a day longer,” said Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Rebecca Tepper.

The utilities also want higher profits going forward. On April 30, the transmission owners asked FERC to raise their base return on equity to 11.39%. Healey and Campbell oppose the request, and Healey joined the governors of the other five New England states in urging FERC to reject it.

The refund letter follows Healey’s declaration of a State of Energy Emergency on Monday, Oct. 5, when she announced nearly $150 million in winter energy bill relief. Healey, a Democrat, faces Republican Mike Minogue in the Nov. 3 election.

Worcester fall leaf collection starts Nov. 2

Worcester Department of Public Works crews will begin curbside leaf collection Monday, Nov. 2, the city announced Tuesday, Oct. 13.

The DPW expects to finish in four to five weeks, depending on the weather. Crews will skip collection on Veterans Day, Wednesday, Nov. 11, and during the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Nov. 26, and Friday, Nov. 27.

Pickup schedule by trash day

Collection follows the city’s trash route schedule. The city lists these approximate pickup windows for each trash collection day:

• Wednesday trash route: Nov. 2-6
• Friday trash route: Nov. 9-14
• Monday trash route, Quinapoxet/Grove section: Nov. 9-14
• Thursday trash route: Nov. 14-21
• Monday trash route, Grove/Salisbury section: Nov. 14-21
• Tuesday trash route: Nov. 21-28
• Monday trash route, Salisbury/Pleasant section: Nov. 21-28

Weather and other factors may shift those dates. Because early snow could interrupt pickups, the city suggests residents on the Friday route and the Salisbury/Pleasant section of the Monday route consider bringing leaves to a drop-off site.

Parking ban and raking

The city will post signs on each street before crews arrive to announce a no-parking ban during collection. Notice generally goes up one to two days ahead, and drivers who leave vehicles on posted streets will receive tickets.

Residents should rake leaves from sidewalks and yards to the edge of the street gutter, then push the row into the gutter after signs appear on their street. The DPW asks residents to do this just before collection begins in their area or on the weekend before.

Leaves headed for the gutter should not include brush, branches, plastic or other trash, and piles should not cover catch basins. Residents who bag leaves should use biodegradable paper bags.

Drop-off sites

Residents can also bring leaves to one of three city yard waste drop-off sites without an appointment. The sites serve Worcester residents only and require ID to confirm residency. All three close for Veterans Day. The hours below take effect in November; through October, weekend hours run until 5 p.m.

1065 Millbury St. (the only site that accepts brush and small branches)

• Wednesdays, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
• Fridays, 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• Saturdays and Sundays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

300 Chandler St.

• Wednesdays, 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

299 Clark St.

• Wednesdays, 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Updates

The city posts schedule changes and a live status map showing crew progress on its fall leaf collection page. Residents can also sign up for ALERTWorcester notifications to learn when crews will reach their neighborhood or call Worcester 311 with questions.

School Committee panel to hear Scenario 3 of Worcester schools realignment plan

Consultants studying how Worcester assigns students to schools present their third set of proposals Tuesday, Oct. 13, at Vernon Hill Elementary School, two months before the School Committee takes up a final plan.

The School Committee’s Standing Committee on Operations and Governance convenes at 5:15 p.m. in the school’s auditorium, 211 Providence St. A Realignment Community Forum follows at 6 p.m., when staff from Dillinger Research and Applied Data will walk residents through Scenario 3, which the nonprofit released Thursday, Oct. 8.

The district encourages the public to attend. School Committee meetings offer a virtual attendance option, according to the district’s fall meeting and forum schedule.

District officials say they have made no decisions. Scenario 3 also keeps earlier proposals in play, and the consultants continue to weigh every option.

What the realignment project aims to do

The School Boundary and Quadrant Alignment Project began in the spring and runs through the 2027-28 school year. The district lists its main goals as easing crowding at over-capacity schools and filling seats at under-enrolled ones.

The project also targets feeder patterns, the sequence of elementary, middle and high schools a student attends based on home address. Worcester organizes those pathways into quadrants, and the district wants routes from elementary to middle to high school that keep classmates together.

Redrawn assignment zones could give some families a different school for their address within one to three years, the district said in August. Other possible changes include expanded full-day preschool and new school start and end times to widen bus service.

What changed in Scenario 3

• School assignment boundaries would shift across the city. An online comparison map shows how the lines differ from Scenario 2.
• Consultants revised elementary school capacities to reflect a reorganization of preschool and substantially separate special education seats.
• Middle and high school capacity figures changed after additional feedback from principals.
• Students at Francis McGrath Elementary School would move on to Forest Grove Middle School in the Doherty Quadrant, then to Burncoat High School in the Burncoat Quadrant.
• Greendale Head Start would relocate to the South Quadrant closer to 2032, freeing space for a new elementary school in the Burncoat Quadrant, where the district expects enrollment to grow. Goddard Elementary School in the South Quadrant may add seats for preschool and behavioral programs.
• Rice Square Elementary School would keep its sixth graders on site, provided construction expands its classroom space. Under the alternative, those students would attend Worcester East Middle School.

What comes next

Dillinger will present a final scenario to the School Committee and district administration in December. Committee members and administrators will then decide which options they can feasibly pursue. The district said in June it expected the full committee to vote on a recommended scenario that month.

Residents who miss the Oct. 13 sessions can attend one of the remaining fall meetings:

• Monday, Oct. 19, 3 p.m.: Community forum, Chandler Elementary School, 114 Chandler St.
• Monday, Oct. 26, 6 p.m.: Operations and Governance committee meeting, Forest Grove Middle School, 495 Grove St.
• Saturday, Nov. 7, noon: Community forum, Goddard Elementary School, 14 Richards St.

Families can send questions to alignment@worcesterschools.net. The district posts updates and answers to frequently asked questions on the project website and through a ParentSquare notification group.

Image Courtesy of Worcester Public Schools

Auburn traffic stop leads to arrest of Leicester man wanted on parole warrant

Auburn police arrested a Leicester man wanted on a parole violation warrant after he gave officers a false name during a traffic stop Sunday, Oct. 4, according to the Auburn Police Department.

Sgt. Gregg Wildman saw a black Acura leave the Massachusetts Turnpike onto Southbridge Street at high speed at about 6:35 a.m., police said.

Wildman ran the car’s registration and learned the registered owner had a suspended license. He found the Acura on West Street and pulled it over. Officers arrested the driver on a charge of operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license. The department did not release the driver’s name.

The front-seat passenger then offered to drive. He told officers he held a Maine driver’s license but did not have it with him, and he gave them a name that turned out to be false, police said.

Officers identified the passenger as Connor Ferguson, 30, of Leicester. Ferguson had an outstanding warrant from the Massachusetts Parole Board for violating the terms of his parole.

Ferguson pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2018 for his role in the 2015 shooting death of an 18-year-old man in Worcester, and a judge sentenced him to state prison, according to police.

The U.S. Marshals Service also sought Ferguson in a separate case that originated in Maine, police said. The department did not describe the Maine case.

The announcement did not say whether Ferguson faces a charge for giving officers a false name or when he will appear.

Worcester police arrest 2 suspects in Shrewsbury armed home invasion

Worcester police arrested two suspects Friday, Oct. 9, in an armed home invasion on Lake View Avenue in Shrewsbury the night before, according to the Shrewsbury Police Department.

Shrewsbury officers responded to the home at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, after a caller reported that two people armed with a knife had kicked in the door. Police said the pair threatened the residents and took several personal items before fleeing.

Officers searched the area that night but could not find the suspects.

Shrewsbury detectives and officers identified both suspects during the follow-up investigation. Detectives applied for and obtained arrest warrants for the two on Friday, Oct. 9.

Officers from the Worcester Police Department’s Gang Unit found the suspects at a residence in Worcester that evening and arrested them.

Police have not released the suspects’ names or the charges against them. The department also has not described the stolen items or said whether anyone suffered injuries.

Massachusetts sets a steep minimum sentence for armed home invasion. Under the state’s home invasion statute, a person who knowingly enters an occupied home while armed with a dangerous weapon and uses or threatens force faces 20 years to life in state prison. Police have not said whether the two suspects face that charge.

Shrewsbury police said the incident does not appear to be random, and they do not believe the community is at risk.

Three criminal cases involving ICE hit the Supreme Judicial Court

by Jennifer Smith, CommonWealth Beacon

When Massachusetts’ criminal justice system collides with federal immigration actions, the fingers start pointing.

Justices of the Supreme Judicial Court spent most of Monday’s oral arguments trying to work out whether prosecutors have any duty to tell judges if their defendants could be arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and what power, if any, state judges have to order immigration officials to bring a person back into the state so they can face trial.

If it turns into federal versus state “standoff,” as several justices put it, what then?

Lawyers for three men detained by ICE during their criminal prosecutions argue that judges and prosecutors can do more to prevent immigration proceedings from derailing the normal course of justice.

In a case that sparked a political conflagration between the Suffolk County district attorney’s office and federal prosecutors last year, Dominican national Wilson Martell-Lebron was arrested outside the courthouse mid-trial by an immigration agent who had been slated as a prosecution witness. Martell-Lebron was charged with providing false information on a license application.

The judge in the case, Mark Summerville, accused ICE agent Brian Sullivan of violating Martell-Lebron’s rights to due process and a fair trial, and concluded that two state troopers involved in the case and communicating with the ICE agent knew about plans to detain the man. Summerville dismissed the case against Martell-Lebron, ruling there had been egregious prosecutorial misconduct.

The Suffolk County district attorney’s office appealed Summerville’s decision.

Justices on Monday were openly skeptical of claims that prosecutors had no special knowledge that their defendant would be detained, given that the ICE agent who directed the detention was part of the prosecution before the trial.

“I’m not buying your argument that he’s not a member of the prosecution team after the discovery stage,” Justice Frank Gaziano said, referring to the period of time before trial where both sides exchange relevant information.

A member of the prosecution team is not allowed to do anything to derail the prosecution — that would be prosecutorial misconduct, said Justice Gabrielle Wolohojian, who noted that the ICE agent was a member of the prosecution team “and he caused the defendant’s unavailability for trial.”

State officials have no jurisdiction over federal immigration enforcement operations. Assistant District Attorney Elisabeth Martino told the justices that the ICE agent was conducting a “separate, sovereign, federal action.”

Martino acknowledged that the ICE agent had said throughout the proceedings that his agency was interested in taking the defendant into custody at some point. But she claimed the understanding was that meant at the end of the trial.

“Why wouldn’t the prosecution give the judge the information it has,” asked Chief Justice Kimberly Budd. “I understand you’re saying they have no power to do anything, but they have the power to let the court know what’s happening.”

The district attorney’s office argued that prosecutors should not have to inform the court about possible immigration enforcement action, in part because federal agents might try to hold prosecutors responsible if they scare the defendant into fleeing.

Under the law at the time of Martell-Lebron’s trial, the burden was on federal agents to inform the court if they plan to arrest a defendant.

And the PROTECT Act, which was passed this year and creates new guidelines for how federal agents should operate in “sensitive locations” like courthouses or schools, does not instruct prosecutors to inform the courts if there may be an immigration action.

There are consequences for failing to follow the new rules, like being sued by the state attorney general, but those remedies are aimed at the ICE agent rather than prosecutors.

The Martell-Lebron case, like the two other immigration cases before the high court on Monday, also considered what power state judges have to make sure a defendant is able to appear in court.

Once Martell-Lebron was taken into ICE custody, Martino said, prosecutors asked for a writ of habeas corpus, which is an order demanding that the government bring a detained person to court. ICE told the prosecution that the initial writ did not have the correct language, and Judge Summerville refused to issue a second one with corrected language.

That seemed to trouble the high court. Dismissing a case with prejudice, Gaziano noted, was an “extreme remedy, and before getting there [a judge] should exhaust the process that’s available to him properly, and that didn’t happen.”

Even if the judge was skeptical that ICE would comply, SJC justices suggested, he should have gone through the process of correcting the writ. Martino said that is “the absolute, major problem in this case.”

In the case of Freslet Noralus, charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and taken into ICE custody in May 2025, a state district court judge wouldn’t issue a writ of habeas corpus to immigration officials at all.

After consulting with the Fall River District Court clerk-magistrate, Judge David Sorrenti concluded he did not have the authority to issue the writ after learning that Noralus was being held at a detention facility in Kentucky.

The court denied a motion to dismiss and issued a default — or failure to meet a legal obligation — because Noralus was not present, along with a warrant for “a man it knew was in a cell in Kentucky,” attorney David Rassoul Rangaviz said. This effectively punished him for not being there, an absence that was “guaranteed” by the court refusing to sign off on the writ of habeas corpus, Rangaviz added.

Noralus has now been deported to Haiti. Rangaviz told the court that this means the state wants to keep the charge open indefinitely “against a man that its own inaction helped to deport.”

Rangaviz asked the SJC to hold that the courts can issue writs of habeas corpus even if the defendant has been moved out of state and that there cannot be a default against a defendant who the court knows is absent because of being detained by ICE. He also argued that the case must be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the defendant can’t be retried, if the state does not “do the work” of trying to get the person to trial.

The defendants’ attorney, prosecutors, and the attorney general agree that the trial judge should have issued the writ in Noralus’s case. Even though state writs can’t be enforced on the federal level, there are several instances where federal officials have respected the court order anyway, Rangaviz said.

In a brief, the of Massachusetts said the process is well-established. A state trial court can issue a state writ to bring the person to the next court appearance, and if federal officials don’t recognize it, state prosecutors can request that the US District of Massachusetts issue a supplemental federal writ to accompany the state one.

If ICE chooses not to comply with the writ or deports the defendants, that creates another legal quagmire. At least 30 Massachusetts criminal cases are in the same holding pattern, Rangaviz noted in his brief, with “outstanding default warrants, absent defendants, no end in sight.”

Jaime Loredo, who was arrested on drug charges in 2025, was detained by ICE right after his family posted bail.

Loredo is a messy example of writs in action, as he was moved from ICE detention in Massachusetts to Virgina. ICE ignored at least one state writ to have Loredo appear virtually, and honored multiple others. The state prosecutor did not file a federal writ to have him appear in person, and the federal government deported Loredo before trial. Like the Noralus case, the court similarly declined to dismiss Loredo’s charges and issued a default warrant.

Loredo then came back into the and was arrested again.

Keeping cases and defaults open can punish defendants for absences beyond their control and complicate immigration or asylum proceedings. This puts them in a “terrible limbo,” said Michaela Martin Strout, Loredo’s attorney.

Norales and Loredo’s attorneys argued that defaults issued when someone is unable to appear due to ICE action violates defendants’ constitutional right to due process. But justices suggested in some cases, “the default serves a practical purpose for a person who doesn’t deserve to be let off scot-free,” said Justice Scott Kafker.

Rulings from the high court are supposed to be handed down within 130 days of the oral arguments but can take longer.

Amid the thorny questions of prosecutors reporting immigration action or the mixed incentives of defaults and open warrants targeting people well outside the state’s jurisdiction, justices appeared most clear on one takeaway — if judges can act, they should.

“You have to try,” said Justice Dalila Wendlandt of the Suffolk judge’s refusal to submit a corrected writ to ICE. “I’m not just making that up. I think it’s the case law.”

This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Image credit: Swampyank at English Wikipedia, John Adams Courthouse SJC Massachusetts, CC BY 3.0

Massachusetts has lost at least $5.9 billion in federal funding, tracker shows

Federal funding cancellations and slowdowns have cost Massachusetts at least $5.91 billion, and medical and scientific research accounts for the largest share of the losses, according to a national tracking project.

The figures come from Lost Funds, a database of federal funding disruptions in Massachusetts run by States United Democracy Center and Grant Watch. The project tracks what it calls the Trump administration’s federal funding disruptions and the legal challenges states have filed against them. It last updated its data Oct. 6.

Massachusetts expected about $13.9 billion from the 48 programs Lost Funds tracks in the state. The losses equal about 43% of that money. Recipients include 75 nonprofits, 59 local governments and 40 colleges and universities, along with 164 other organizations.

Nationally, the project counts $174 billion in disrupted federal funding. It lists 3,188 local governments, 752 school districts and 452 businesses among the affected recipients, plus 15,375 others.

Lost Funds counts a disruption when a federal agency formally cancels committed money, freezes funds so recipients cannot draw them down, or slows grant-making compared with previous years. The project draws award amounts from USAspending, the federal spending database.

Research absorbs the largest share

Five research and science-training categories account for about $1.77 billion of the Massachusetts total, or roughly 30%. The largest, cancelled and frozen biomedical grants listed under health, totals $1.31 billion.

The tracker also counts $217 million in lost science research grants and $168 million in biomedical education grants, a category that covers graduate students and other trainees.

Massachusetts led the nation in National Institutes of Health grant losses by mid-2025. A June 2025 report from the volunteer project Grant Watch put the state’s NIH losses at $1.27 billion, the most of any state, Becker’s Hospital Review reported. Harvard Medical School had more terminated grants than any other institution, with 340.

Gov. Maura Healey pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the cuts in a Jan. 6 letter demanding restored NIH funding. Citing a study in JAMA Internal Medicine, Healey said the cuts had halted 18 clinical trials involving 13,000 patients in Massachusetts.

NIH disputes the scale

NIH challenged those numbers. In an April 29 response to Healey, NIH Principal Deputy Director Matthew Memoli wrote that agency staff replicated the study and found 28 clinical trials still tied to terminated grants, with 14 of them actively enrolling participants. He said institutions could keep drawing funds to protect participant safety and close out projects.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya has defended the agency’s shift in priorities. During a March visit to the University of Pennsylvania, he said NIH spent all the research money Congress provided in 2025 while funding fewer grants, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. He also said he wants to steer more NIH money beyond research centers such as Boston.

In December 2025, Bhattacharya said NIH would decline to renew diversity, equity and inclusion grants that courts had forced the agency to restore. “When it comes to renewal, those grants no longer meet NIH priorities,” he said in a podcast interview, STAT reported.

Food aid, disaster relief and transportation

The largest single Massachusetts item on the list involves food assistance. Lost Funds counts $1.83 billion in slowed Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program funding, though the site marks that money as restored outside of litigation.

Other large losses include $794 million for infectious disease control, which the site lists as temporarily restored, and $406 million in slowed disaster relief. Pollution-reduction programs lost $310 million.

Congress drove some of the cuts. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation lost $31.9 million for low-carbon construction materials after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act rescinded the program, the governor’s office said in August 2025. Healey called the cancellation “bad for our communities and bad for our economy.”

State takes fight to court

Massachusetts ranks among the 27 states that have joined lawsuits against the administration, according to Lost Funds’ tracking of state legal challenges.

Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell co-led a 16-state coalition that sued over NIH grant terminations in April 2025. U.S. District Judge William G. Young ruled the terminations illegal that June. In August 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that challenges to the terminations belong in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, allowing the administration to withhold the money in the meantime, Campbell’s office said.

The states won a separate fight this year. A Jan. 5 ruling upheld an injunction blocking NIH cuts to research overhead payments that the agency announced in February 2025, The Boston Globe reported. Campbell said the decision protects money that pays for faculty, lab infrastructure and utilities.

Mass. State Police, 5 states to crack down on dangerous driving

Massachusetts drivers will see more troopers on major highways from Tuesday, Oct. 13, through Thursday, Oct. 15, as state police here and in five neighboring states run a coordinated crackdown on dangerous driving.

Massachusetts State Police Lt. Col. Brendhan Shugrue announced Operation Wicked Safe on Thursday, Oct. 8, at the department’s Weston barracks, alongside officers from New Hampshire and Connecticut. Troopers from Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont will run targeted patrols in their own states during the same window.

Patrols will focus on speeding, aggressive driving, distracted driving, impaired driving and other high-risk behavior.

In Massachusetts, priority roads include Interstates 84, 90, 91, 93, 95 and 395 and Route 146, along with other roads that participating agencies select. Specialized units will support troopers on patrol.

“Dangerous driving does not stop at state lines, and neither does our commitment to keep people safe on our roadways,” said State Police Col. Geoffrey Noble.

“Our message to the driving public is straightforward: If you choose to drive dangerously, we will find you wherever you are, and you will be held accountable,” Noble said.

State Police Maj. Sean Maher said the department’s Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Section, known as the “Truck Team,” will assign 30 troopers to inspect large trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles during the operation.

The department’s Division of Field Services designed the operation as part of the State Police Excellence Initiative, which sets a goal of promoting safer communities. Department officials said dangerous driving and crashes peak each October, when fall tourism and school schedules add traffic while changing weather affects road conditions.

In October 2025, State Police logged more than 4,000 crash-related calls for service, and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation recorded 38 fatal crashes, the most of any month that year.

A 2025 AAA study on aggressive driving found that 96% of drivers admitted to at least one aggressive behavior, such as speeding, tailgating or cutting off another vehicle, in the previous year.

Col. Daniel Loughman, commanding officer of the Connecticut State Police, said troopers there will increase enforcement next week to deter dangerous driving and encourage motorists to obey posted speed limits.

“Operation Wicked Safe occurs during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year in our state,” said New Hampshire State Police Lt. Brian Viglione. He said troopers will patrol from the Massachusetts line to the northern border and from the Seacoast to the Vermont border.

Lt. Robert McKenna, special operations executive officer for the Vermont State Police, said cross-border coordination extends the reach of each agency’s patrols. “Working together in a coordinated operation across state lines allows police agencies to expand our impact region-wide,” McKenna said.

New York State Police Superintendent Steven G. James said the campaign aims to reduce crashes caused by aggressive and dangerous driving.

“We know all too well the needless tragedies that result when motorists don’t make safety their number one priority,” James said.

Image courtesy of the Massachusetts State Police