Migrant crisis spills over into year
Beacon Hill leaders continued to grapple with the fallout from the unprecedented influx of refugees and asylum seekers as 2025 got underway.
A surge of immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border in preceding years pushed the state’s emergency shelter system to the brink of collapse, forcing Democratic Gov. Maura Healey and state lawmakers to devote hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and push through reforms to the shelter system.
The arrest of a migrant staying in a state-funded hotel shelter in Revere on gun and drug charges in early January prompted Healey to sign executive orders tightening restrictions on emergency housing, including increased background checks and a limit on stays in the shelter system from nine months to six months.
Under the state’s “right-to-shelter” law, Massachusetts is required to provide emergency housing and food to homeless families, including asylum seekers and other legal immigrants.
The state spent nearly $1 billion on shelter, food and other benefits for migrants and other homeless families. Lawmakers approved another $275 million early in the year to cover shelter costs after the Healey administration warned the system would run out of money.
Republican lawmakers spent much of the year demanding changes to the system following reports of drug dealing, sexual assaults and other criminal activity in state-funded shelters where thousands of migrants are being housed. They also pushed unsuccessfully to repeal the state’s right-to-shelter law.
But by December, the number of migrant families staying in taxpayer-funded shelters dropped below 1,700, according to the Healey administration, which credited reforms to the emergency housing system. The state also ended the use of hotels and motels to provide shelter for migrants and other homeless families.
But the drop in migrants seeking shelter also coincided with the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which has led to a historic decline in border crossings.
Federal cost-cutting pushback, lawsuits
Massachusetts also wrestled with the impact of divisive federal policies for much of the year, with the Trump administration taking over the White House in January and targeting the state over its diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender policies, and resistance to federal immigration crackdowns.
Shortly after he was sworn into office in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing most federal grants and financial assistance to states while it conducted a review of the spending. The order caused widespread confusion for the state and local governments, prompting legal challenges.
Massachusetts receives about $20 billion a year in federal funding that remained in jeopardy for much of the year because of the president’s directive. The Healey administration says the state has lost more than $3.7 billion in funding because of the federal cost cutting.
But the Trump administration also took aim at what it called “woke” policies by Massachusetts and other Democratic-led states, with a series of executive orders rolling back DEI programs, federal protections for transgender individuals and expanded voting by mail.
The state’s top colleges and universities were also under pressure for much of the year as the Trump administration targeted Harvard University, MIT and other elite schools that pushed back against the president’s efforts to force school leaders to eliminate diversity programs and curtail student demonstrations on campus.
The Bay State was also targeted by the Trump administration over policies that restrict cooperation with federal immigration crackdowns. In September, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Boston over its “sanctuary” policy limiting cooperation with ICE agents seeking to detain and apprehend undocumented immigrants wanted on civil immigration detainers.
Attorney General Andrea Campbell filed or signed onto dozens of lawsuits in 2025 against the Trump administration, challenging funding cuts, but also the White House’s immigration enforcement policies and efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs, along with transgender protections.
Many of the legal challenges have been successful in blocking funding cuts and policy changes, but others remain unresolved as the new year gets underway.
Fighting the housing crunchThe chronic shortage of housing in the state was also a pressing issue on Beacon Hill in 2025, with state policymakers pushing through plans to offer more tax credits and subsidies for real estate developers to build more homes in the state.
Massachusetts has some of the highest housing costs and rents in the country, with the median price of a single-family home hitting a record $660,000 in October, according to real estate industry reports.
The prolonged housing crunch is affecting the state’s economic growth, experts say, making it much harder to attract new families and companies. Many cite the lack of housing as the top reason people are leaving the state.
Healey made housing a key plank of her agenda much of the year and ramped up efforts to solve the crisis as she seeks another four-year term in the governor’s office.
In February, Healey released a five-year “Home for Everyone” plan with a goal of building 222,000 new housing units over the next decade. The report states that every region of the state needs to increase housing, ranging from less than 2.5% to more than 10% over the next decade, to meet demand.
Healey has also taken steps to streamline the state’s environmental regulatory process for building new homes, which can delay projects for months – sometimes years — often resulting in significant added costs for developers and ultimately the cost of housing.
The Healey administration is also working with the Attorney General’s office to enforce the MBTA Communities Act, which requires communities along the public transit system to add more multi-family zoning. A majority of communities are in compliance with the act, but others have rejected the plan.
Compromised care, looming cutsSkyrocketing health care costs also dominated the headlines in 2025, as state leaders wrestled with the dual challenges of reducing costs and offset the impact of looming cuts in funding for Medicaid and other federal programs.
On Beacon Hill, the rising costs prompted dozens of changes aimed at providing relief for health care consumers, from directing insurance companies to provide no-cost sharing options for drugs used to treat life-threatening illnesses to a cap health insurance plan co-pays and deductibles paid to private insurers.
Healey pushed for a plan to reinstitute a 6% pharmacy fee to drum up money for Masshealth, the state’s Medicaid program, but it was rejected by lawmakers.
President Donald Trump’s $4 trillion One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which he signed in July, also worsened the fiscal outlook for the state’s health care system.
The law, which extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, will cut federal spending on Medicaid by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years, leaving Massachusetts and other states to make up the difference with their own funds or reduce coverage.
It will also require “able-bodied adults” to work a certain number of hours each week to maintain their Medicaid health coverage. There are few exemptions to those requirements, which advocates say will force people to drop their coverage.
Meanwhile, nearly 330,000 Massachusetts residents who get health insurance through the federal Affordable Care Act law are expected to see their premiums increase next year after Congress failed to approve a plan to extend expiring Obamacare tax credits for another three years.
Massachusetts is one of the few states that requires individuals to have health care coverage, which is one of the state’s biggest expenses. Costs for the state’s Medicaid programs have doubled in the past decade, accounting for nearly 40% of state spending.
It was also a tough year for the state’s safety-net hospitals, many of which are struggling to stay afloat amid dwindling federal funding and ongoing losses from providing care for low-income patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A deficit in a state fund that helps hospitals pay medical costs for large numbers of uninsured and low-income patients ballooned to nearly $290 million by the end of the year, prompting state lawmakers to approve a bail out.
Clean energy at center of political struggleMassachusetts’ reputation as a leader in the clean energy movement remained in jeopardy as 2025 closed out, with state leaders struggling to adjust to the shifting political landscape as the Trump administration scaled back federal environmental protections and scrapped support for offshore wind and solar energy projects.
Massachusetts has set an ambitious goal of reducing excess greenhouse gas emissions to “net-zero” over 1990 levels by 2050, which includes tapping into solar, wind and other renewable energy. Those goals have run up against the Trump administration’s opposition to clean energy and a focus on expanding the use of fossil fuels.
In September, the U.S. Department of Transportation dealt the state a major blow by cancelling federal funding for a dozen infrastructure projects that would support offshore wind, including a grant for the Salem Offshore Wind Terminal project, which got underway last summer after securing funding and permits.
That and other developments over the past year have prompted Healey and state lawmakers to consider delaying or rolling back some of the state’s green policies to blunt the effect of changes in federal laws that have jeopardized the state’s climate-change plans.
In November, a group of House lawmakers pitched a proposal that would make the state’s benchmark goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared with 1990 levels by 2030 “unenforceable” and cut funding for the budget for MassSave — the state’s primary energy efficiency program.
The plan also sought to push back the state’s deadline to procure 5,600 megawatts of offshore wind to 2029, two years later than originally planned.
But the legislation faced pushback and threats of legal action from environmental groups, and top House leaders put the brakes on the proposal before a key committee vote last week. Lawmakers are expected to revisit the issue when they return for winter break early next year.
State leaders were also under pressure for much of the year to reduce energy costs as its major utilities won approval from regulators for double-digit rate increases for gas and electricity. Energy affordability is expected to be a major issue in the next year’s elections when Healey and other top state leaders will be on the ballot.
Christian M. Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for North of Boston Media Group’s newspapers and websites. Email him at cwade@cnhinews.com.