New England

At a food rights panel at UMass Amherst, U.S. Rep. James McGovern, state Sen. Jo Comerford, and state Rep. Mindy Domb argued that food access should be enshrined as a constitutional right in Massachusetts, framing hunger as a solvable political problem rather than a resource shortage. Rising costs for food, housing, and health care have left roughly half of Americans unable to afford a basic standard of living, according to the Urban Institute, with one report finding 60% of Massachusetts college students now food insecure, up sharply from the prior year. Lawmakers also pointed to federal SNAP cuts as worsening local hunger, and said the state is exploring funding to help colleges address student food insecurity.

Republican Paul LePage, the former two-term Maine governor known as "Trump before Trump," was expected to easily flip the open 2nd District seat after Democratic Representative Jared Golden's retirement. Instead, rising fuel and living costs tied to tariffs and the Iran conflict have narrowed the race against Democratic State Auditor Matt Dunlap, who won a contested primary after Golden initially withdrew. Polls show a close contest in a district Trump carried by nine points in 2024, prompting heavy outside spending and visits from Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance. LePage, 78, has softened his combative style and touted his access to Trump, while Dunlap emphasizes cost-of-living concerns and LePage's past Medicaid expansion vetoes. The race is seen as the GOP's best chance to flip a Democratic-held seat this cycle.

Massachusetts voters face nine ballot questions in the 2026 election, the most in over three decades, covering public records access, labor rights, election rules, taxation, land conservation, housing, marijuana, and guns.

Question 1 would extend public records law to the governor's office and Legislature, championed by state Auditor Diana DiZoglio over objections that it is too broad. Question 2 would let Committee for Public Counsel Services employees unionize. Question 3 would replace party primaries with a single open primary advancing the top two finishers, backed by advocates seeking more competitive races but opposed by the state Democratic Party. Question 4 would allow same-day voter registration. Question 5 would cap state revenue growth and require rebates above that limit. Question 6 would dedicate certain taxes to a conservation fund. Question 7 would permit single-family homes on smaller lots statewide to boost affordable housing, despite local-control concerns. Question 8 would repeal legal recreational marijuana. Question 9 asks whether to keep or repeal the state's 2024 gun reform law, with both sides framing it as a matter of safety or constitutional rights.

Providence Water held a Centennial celebration in Scituate, Rhode Island, marking 100 years of continuous operation at the Philip J. Holton Water Purification Works, which opened Sept. 30, 1926. Officials said the plant remains the largest and most unique of its kind in New England and still functions largely as it did a century ago.

The facility was built after the state voted in 1915 to establish the Scituate reservoir system, which included an earth dam, aqueduct, and the purification plant, in response to a growing urban population straining the Pawtuxet River water supply. The system now delivers 60 million gallons of clean water daily to roughly 600,000 Rhode Island residents.

Speakers at the event included Deputy General Manager David Takoian, Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank Executive Director William Fazioli, Congressman Gabe Amo, and local mayors, who emphasized both the historic engineering achievement and the need for continued investment in the water system's future.

A slow-moving nor'easter battered the Northeast coast through the weekend, leaving residents in New Jersey and New York's Long Island to deal with a second consecutive day of flooding. Tidal surges swamped low-lying neighborhoods along the Jersey Shore, while powerful wind gusts knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes across the region.

Coastal towns such as Sea Bright, New Jersey, saw significant flooding and erosion as high tides combined with the storm's persistent winds. Nassau County officials, including County Executive Bruce Blakeman, responded to flooding impacts on Long Island. The storm disrupted air travel, with delays reported at Logan International Airport, and prompted comparisons to past major coastal storms like Hurricane Sandy given the scale of shoreline damage. Utility crews worked to restore power as authorities urged caution near flooded roads and eroded seawalls. The event underscores the recurring vulnerability of Mid-Atlantic and New England coastal communities to storm surge and flooding.

Connecticut's inaugural citizens' assembly is set to release its conclusions on September 28, capping six weeks of deliberation by 100 randomly selected, representative residents tasked with tackling property tax reform. Participants heard from experts, debated among themselves, and will vote on a preferred solution, following a model used in Ireland, France, Belgium, and Mongolia to address contentious policy questions outside traditional electoral politics.

Organizers plan to extend the process after November's election by moving the assembly's findings onto an open-source deliberation platform called "Frankly," inviting the broader public to review and discuss the group's conclusions online. The approach is designed to address the central legitimacy challenge facing citizens' assemblies — since members aren't elected — by opening the results to wider public scrutiny rather than reducing them to a simple referendum. Advocates, including Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, argue the model could offer a template for reducing partisan gridlock in future policymaking efforts elsewhere if the Connecticut experiment proves successful.

A New York Times/Siena University poll released Sept. 24 shows Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, leading Democratic challenger Troy Jackson 49% to 46%, the best result for Collins in any public poll since Jackson entered the race in July. A separate UMass Lowell/YouGov poll taken earlier in September had Jackson ahead by five points, underscoring how close and unsettled the race remains.

Collins is the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state Trump largely lost in 2024, making the seat a top Democratic target. She has historically outperformed polling, having won comfortably in 2020 despite trailing throughout that campaign. The Times poll was conducted largely before a Sept. 22 ProPublica report alleging a pay-to-play scheme tied to her 2020 campaign, which Collins denies, calling it a "partisan hit job." Jackson, a former Maine Senate president, entered the race after primary winner Graham Platner dropped out amid misconduct allegations. Voters see Collins favorably despite her largely pro-Trump voting record in 2025, while a majority in Maine disapprove of Trump's job performance.