No mention of waste, fraud, DEI etc. They’re just taking a machete to budgets. The NYT has the details. …. The reaction of Congress? Nothing. … More cuts expected at FDA as RFK Jr. takes control at HHS.

I’d love to get a look at Mayor Wu’s internal polling numbers because, as the Herald’s Joe Battenfeld notes, she sure seems nervous about some of the issues Josh Kraft has been raising. …

Update – The Globe’s Beth Teitell tackles the bike-lane controversy. … Fyi: I don’t view bike lanes as an either-or issue, as Beth seems to suggest. The problem is that many of them, though not all of them,  look hideous. Too many signs and arrows and painted pavement lines, etc. Some of them seem deliberately in-your-face, a form of virtue signaling, I guess.

I wonder where the president got the following notion, via the NYT: “Trump Suggests No Laws Are Broken if He’s ‘Saving His Country.’” … Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with this?

Do you like history? If so, you’ll enjoy Jeff Jacoby’s Globe column this morning on the cautionary tale of Franklin Pierce’s lust for territorial expansion. … Being a history buff, I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t know Pierce was from New Hampshire. Not that New Hampshire is going to openly boast about its only native son to ever serve as president. Pierce was a staunch defender of Southern slave-owners’ interests and his expansionist views were often tied to efforts to expand slavery across the hemisphere. Among other things, he later criticized President Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

Btw: By coincidence, I’m reading Erik Larson’s latest book, “The Demon of Unrest,” about the events leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. His descriptions of Charleston’s open slave markets are shocking. More on Larson’s book later. 

The lenders have intervened – and they’re now planning to auction off One Lincoln, the 1.1 million-square foot tower that State Street Corp. used to call home. Banker & Tradesman has the details. … Just when you thought Boston’s distressed office market might be turning a corner, along comes this. … B&T piece via Contrarian Boston.

Banker & Tradesman has the details on BU’s unusual proposal to build a wood-framed – as in timber, not steel or iron – tower at 250 Bay State Road in Boston. … I didn’t know this was even possible, let alone permissible under the International Building Code. … Will it sway on windy days?

Btw – I’m reminded of an old friend who used to joke he was secretly building a wood-fired rocket ship in his garage. … It’s strange how the mind works.

This is why there’s more than a little MAGA in me that welcomes taking an ax to various government agencies: they have it coming. … In this case, it’s Massport and its obnoxious proposal to make its airport rideshare fee (i.e. a tax) the highest in the nation. Uber is pushing back against the plan, as the BBJ reports. … Are MassPort officials paying attention to what’s going on in D.C.? Are they aware of the local and national mood out there? … I assume not, so here’s a reality-check primer, courtesy of Rob Gavin at the Globe: “The high cost of living in Boston is straining residents. Local policy decisions don’t always help.”

The Herald’s Joe Battenfeld is having a grand old time bashing ‘deranged’ Dems fighting President Trump’s attempts at “reform, transparency and accountability.” I have to admit: There’s more than a little MAGA in me that thinks it’s about time someone took an ax to some federal agencies’ budgets. I also acknowledge: I’m so tired of progressive Dems’ indignant, moralistic, performative-politics response to anything they don’t like.

But, please, don’t tell me the Trump-Musk assault on federal agencies is all about ‘reform, transparency and accountability.’ It’s not. That’s merely the spin to cover up the fact that this is really an all-out ideological assault on a federal government that conservative elites have long sought to downsize, as David Brooks at the NYT notes in his column this morning (“Can We Please Stop Calling These People Populists?”). … And these non-populist elites will clam up and look the other way as Trump stress tests the nation’s laws and the constitution, as I noted the other day (‘For many Republicans, the end justifies the means’). 

MassLive reports that Weymouth Mayor Bob Hedlund has signed a Facebook decree announcing plans to change the name ‘Hingham Bay’ to the ‘Gulf of Weymouth,’ accusing Hingham of having ‘culturally appropriated’ the body of water and vowing the ‘North Weymouth Navy’ will respond to any military action undertaken by Hingham, which he described as merely a colony of “New Yorkers employed in financial services in Boston.” … 

Btw – WCVB is on the story.

Btw II – Why do they call it the ‘Gulf of Maine’? I’m not sure I like that.

Mayor Wu’s decision to remove a dedicated bus lane on Boylston Street shows she can indeed listen and change views – particularly when a rival candidate makes an issue of hideous-looking bus-bike lanes in general.  … Considering she didn’t listen to critics prior to the Boylston Street bus-lane flap, I found this comment from Wu interesting, as reported by the Globe: “We have heard from community members that this needs to be changed.” … I addressed her political stubbornness in a post last week (‘Mayor Wu’s Achilles’ heel: Her ideological certainty’). … Also recall Brian McGrory’s blistering Globe column last summer on the plug-ugly Boylston Street bike lane, which Wu now apparently wants to modify along with other bike lanes around the city, as the Herald reports.

Re McGrory’s column, the mind hippity hops to: ‘Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.’