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Day: June 19, 2026
FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts — Boston is bouncing and the Massachusetts governor wants to thank thousands of kilted Scottish soccer fans who have taken over the city between Scotland’s first match against Haiti last weekend and its second, against Morocco, today.
The tournament’s shock love affair is sparking delight in Gov. Maura Healey’s office as the supporters plow cash into the local economy, star in feel-good viral videos and drink copious quantities of Sam Adams Boston Lager.
Earlier this week, the governor — who’s seeking what stands to be an easy reelection this year — spoke with POLITICO about which of Massachusetts’ World Cup wins can be made permanent, including extended hours for bars and service along mass-transit networks.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Were you expecting this?
Oh, yeah, what do they say? No Scotland, no party? [Author’s note: This is, indeed, what they say.] I would say the Tartan Army’s reputation precedes them in the best of ways. So we knew that they would bring a ton of energy and joy and the noise. The bagpipes, the partying in our restaurants and bars, it’s just been great, and to think — it’s very warm here, of course — half of them are doing it in kilts. It’s really amazing to see.
What has stood out to you?
In just a matter of days, the Tartan Army has become part of the Massachusetts family. We have seen them become regulars at our local restaurants and our pubs. We’ve seen them take over Fenway Park. 5,000 fans marching with bagpipes into the games. We loved the viral videos of them trying hot dogs … inside Fenway. The videos of them taking over the cruise ships in Boston Harbor. We even had a Boston police officer kicking a soccer ball with them at the fanfest. So it’s just been really wonderful for us in Massachusetts, and we’re thrilled to have them here.
Do you have plans to capitalize on this beyond the World Cup?
Given that Scotland-Haiti was our first match, we were really thrilled. Massachusetts has a huge Haitian population. And then, of course, a lot of people in Massachusetts have ties with Scotland because many, many families here have ancestors who came from Scotland. And I have to say, I think Scotland just set the tone from the day the fans got into town. There was concern leading up to the World Cup, you know, how’s this all gonna work? And the media was covering a lot about security and transportation, and all these things about what could go wrong. And as soon as the Scottish fans arrived, they just laid the whole vibe for the World Cup. It’s gonna be about joy, energy, fun and bringing people together from all around the world. And I really credit them with establishing the vibe for our World Cup experience right at the outset.
Have the ticket prices charged by FIFA had an impact on that?
Well, one thing that I was really determined to do was to make sure that we were able to secure tickets for young people here in Massachusetts, which we did: 1,100 tickets that we distributed through Boys and Girls Clubs, so the kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a chance to see the game, were able to see the game — and for free. We’ve tried as a state to help out where we can, making $10 million available to communities around Massachusetts to host watch parties, because we know not everybody can afford to go to the game.
And as the governor of a blue state, how were your interactions with the Trump administration on planning for the tournament?
Well, when it comes to public safety that is something that it’s so imperative that local, state and federal authorities work together on. We did around transportation funding, security funding, that’s the way it should be. There should be that kind of work and coordination.
At the local level, would you support either a pilot program or a permanent extension of later last call and public drinking districts after the end of July? And would you encourage the legislature to start working on a bill about this?
We wanted to do that to create a welcoming environment, and I know that extension is helping our restaurants and bars and helping local businesses, and helping fans enjoy this experience. I’m certainly open to making some things more permanent, and I think this gives us a great opportunity to pilot it right now and see how it goes.
Do you see it as a runway for allowing happy hour discounts, which have been banned in Massachusetts for decades, to become legal again? Because you’ve previously expressed problems with the concept.
I expressed support for happy hour the other day. We’ll see, we’ll have more conversations with the legislature.
And in terms of the transport would you consider keeping extended service hours on the MBTA?
I’ve always been for extended service hours. For us, it’s just a matter of budgeting and the labor costs associated with that. Also, you need a little bit of downtime so that trains can get repaired and maintained. We extended hours well before the World Cup on weekends, and it’s certainly something that I’d like to see us do across the system. But again, it’s just a matter of what we can do in terms of budget. But so far, transportation has been working really well. Trains have been made available, and selling out, and people have really enjoyed that experience; it’s been super easy, you know, getting to and from the match.
I think some Scotland fans would maybe dispute that it was easy getting back from the [Haiti] match, but I guess it’s all relative when the stadium is far away from the city.
I know. You can only run so many trains at once. But, hey, they won, so …
I understand it’s a challenge to keep young people in state. Are these measures you approved for a summer of intense tourism part of a longer-term solution?
I think that they’re really important to making sure that people know that we’ve got a great culture here and a great vibe for young people. That’s why I’m building homes … so we can look at housing costs. Massachusetts is a place where people come to study from all around the world, and it’s a place that’s filled with young people, filled with opportunity. We’ve got an innovative economy, and doing so much in life sciences and robotics and AI, and cutting-edge industries. And it’s a very safe state and safe city. We’ve got the best schools in the country, best health care in the country. We got a lot going for us. And we’ve got great sports teams, too. So it’s a great vibe for young people, and we’re working always to try to make sure the message is out there around the globe. This is a great place to come and study, and start a business or raise a family.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
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Pearl Creek Elementary School is seen on June 3, 2025. The Fairbanks North Star Borough School District decided to close the school at the end of the academic year. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska’s acting attorney general filed an emergency petition with the Alaska Supreme Court to compel the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District to open a charter school whose application the district previously denied.
The petition comes one day after a Fairbanks judge denied a preliminary injunction filed by the local charter group that sought to force the district to open Pearl Creek STEAM charter school.
“Without a speedy decision, the school will be unable to open this year,” wrote Acting Attorney General Cori Mills.
Mills urged the court to reverse the state judge’s decision and instruct the district to move forward in approving the charter school to open in the fall. “That means the District must take all necessary steps to ensure the Pearl Creek STEAM charter school opens in August 2026,” she wrote.
It’s the latest development in a months-long saga and court dispute between the Fairbanks district and the group behind Pearl Creek STEAM – a proposed charter school focused on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics – that is seeking to open its doors to students from Kindergarten through sixth grade this fall.
Members of the Fairbanks school board unanimously denied the charter last year, citing a variety of problems with the proposal for the school and millions in costs to open a new school in the building of a school that was closed last year due to severe budget cuts.
The group behind Pearl Creek STEAM objected to the districts’ evaluation, saying it had a sound proposal and community support to open the school. The group appealed to the Alaska State Board of Education, which reviewed and granted the application in April, overruling the district. The district appealed the decision in state court, which was being heard in a separate case.
In the meantime, the group behind Pearl Creek STEAM filed a civil lawsuit with the state superior court and asked for a preliminary injunction to compel the district to sign the charter and work on opening the school.
The Pearl Creek charter group argued that the court should force the district to open the school because of the state approval, while the district argued the court should maintain the status quo by allowing the school to remain closed.
On Wednesday, a state judge agreed with the district and denied the preliminary injunction to compel the opening of the school, saying the Pearl Creek group does not face irreparable harm because no school exists yet.
“This is not a matter of no education as opposed to education,” Judge Kirk Schwalm wrote. “It is a matter of less preferred education to preferred education.”
The judge also wrote that opening the school would cost an estimated $2 million, which “would impair FNSBD’s ability to maintain an orderly opening of existing schools for the 2026-2027 school year including impacts to existing schools’ capacity, classroom size, and staffing.”
The two cases — the district appeal of the state board decision, and the charter group’s lawsuit — were combined in court and are being heard by Schwalm. A decision in the district’s appeal case is expected in October.
Officials with the attorney general’s office and Alaska Department of Law did not respond to emailed questions on Thursday about the reason for requesting the Alaska Supreme Court review and overturn the state court’s decision, or why the state chose to get involved on behalf of the charter group.
The attorney general also asked the court for an expedited timeline for a response from the district by 10 a.m. on Friday. That issue is pending before the court.
Fairbanks school district plans to take the state to court over charter school dispute
Bobby Burgess, president of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board, said Thursday that the district respects the rule of law and will continue in the legal process to appeal and oppose the state board’s decision granting the charter. He called the attorney general’s move “frustrating.”
He said the district is concerned not only with the budget and expense of reopening the school but it also remains concerned with the charter group’s proposal.
“I don’t think it’s possible to open the school in August at this point. I don’t really think it was possible to open it successfully even on April 30,” he said, referring to when the state board approved the school.
“I think the logistical complications between the hiring process that we need to follow, the contracts with our labor unions and the budget adjustments, frankly, all of that would have been, you know, maybe not impossible to do, but next to impossible,” he said. “It would have been a huge challenge to make any of that work without disrupting the lives of our staff and students.”
But the group behind Pearl Creek STEAM sees it differently. Jennifer Redmond, a parent and treasurer of the Pearl Creek STEAM group said the state has approved the charter and the group has a plan to successfully open the school.
“The question now is not whether Pearl Creek exists, the question is whether it will be treated the same as other approved public charter schools,” she said.
“We aren’t asking for special treatment,” she added. “We’re asking for equal treatment under the law, and for the district to fulfill the same obligations it has fulfilled for every other public charter school it operates.”
Redmond said she’s concerned the district’s continued opposition erodes public trust. She said she thinks the district has a budget for opening the school. She said the school has over 379 applicants interested in attending, plans for hiring teachers and staff, and a proposal coming before the Fairbanks borough assembly to lease the school building.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that we’ll be prepared to operate in August with just a little bit of cooperation from the district,” she said.
State education commissioner threatens to withhold funding over charter dispute
The ruling comes a week after the state Commissioner of Education Deena Bishop penned a letter threatening to withhold state funding from the Fairbanks district if they did not move forward with opening the charter school.
“Alaska law mandates in the clearest possible terms that after the State Board’s approval, the local school board ‘shall operate the charter school,’” Bishop wrote.
Bishop said under the law, state funds may not be paid to districts that fail to comply with state laws or regulations. She argued the district filing an appeal of the state board’s decision does not stop their legal responsibility to open the school.
“Failure to do so will put the state’s funding at risk,” Bishop wrote. “Time is of the essence.”
Officials with Bishop’s office and the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development did not respond to emailed questions about the reasoning behind the letter over the past week.
The Fairbanks district responded to Bishop in a letter on Thursday that rejected the commissioner’s legal arguments and defended its due process rights to appeal.
“We are pursuing a judicial review of a state approval process, because we believe that process was flawed. We’re going through the appropriate legal steps here. We are not flouting the law,” said Burgess, the district’s board president.
In an interview on Thursday, Burgess said it seemed “completely unconscionable for the state to threaten to withhold funding from an entire school district and potentially prevent 11,000 students in our case from receiving an education next year because of a small group of people who want to basically reopen a school that was closed for, for you know, important reasons.”
Redmond, with the Pearl Creek STEAM group, said the threat to withhold state funding does not change the group’s position advocating for the school. She said it’s the responsibility of elected officials and the district to follow the law.
Burgess called the state’s involvement with the charter approval and the education commissioner’s threat an overreach of local control.
“This is an egregious case of overreach, and it becomes more egregious with every threatening letter that the commissioner signs,” Burgess said.
“If the state can just force us to operate a school with a price tag of $2 million on it, what are we here for? What is the school board’s function if we can’t even control our own budget and make decisions in the interest of our own communities?”
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Kennedy and Wright cheer on US
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Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s POLITICO Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and POLITICO’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
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