Local Issues

WORCESTER, MASS. – Today, Congressman James P. McGovern (MA-02) announced the winners of the 2020 Congressional App Challenge from Massachusetts’ Second Congressional District: Mahathi Gopinathan and Helen Liu. Both students attend Shrewsbury High School. Their app, The Kindness Calendar, assigns users one kind thing to do on a daily basis. The coronavirus pandemic has negatively impacted the mental health of millions of Americans. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53% of adults in the ... Read More »

WORCESTER -- Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, joined United States Senators Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation urging the U.S. Census Bureau to promptly respond to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s request for clarification of their use of college and university directory information in the 2020 Census. Read the full text of their letter here. This letter is a follow-up to two previous letters... Read More »

Washington, D.C. - Today, Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, joined United States Senator Elizabeth Warren and the entire Massachusetts Congressional Delegation in urging Congressional Leadership to provide additional funding for Massachusetts hospitals in the next coronavirus relief package as they continue to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Text of Letter (PDF) "In Massachusetts, our hospitals continue to be on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, ... Read More »

Washington, D.C. - Today, Congressman Jim McGovern helped announce $520,494 in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grants to support the reimbursement of personal protective equipment (PPE) at twenty Massachusetts fire departments. Assistance to Firefighters Grants Supplemental (AFG-S) funding was established through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The CARES Act distributed monies to federal agencies to disperse as supplemental grants for the purpose of mit... Read More »

America’s firefighters, including our military firefighters, put their lives on the line every single day to keep us safe – we owe it to them to make sure the equipment they use is free from toxic chemicals that could harm them,” said Congressman McGovern. Read More »

“We haven’t seen numbers like this since the Great Depression. This situation demands a whole-of-government response that matches the challenges we face.” Read More »

WASHINGTON -- Today, Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, joined the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation to announce that Massachusetts was awarded a total of $3,994,913 under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP). The federal funding, which was appropriated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to ease financial hardship caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pan... Read More »

WASHINGTON – This week, Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) and Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, worked with Hong Kong pro-democracy leaders Joshua Wong and Sunny Cheung and the Demosisto and Network DIPLO organizations to secure a donation of one thousand Hong Kong-made surgical masks to UMass Memorial Medical Center caregivers. In addition, Congressman McGovern was pleased to welcome a donation from Taiwan ... Read More »

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Congressman James P. McGovern (MA-02), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, alongside Worcester Regional Transit Authority (WRTA) Administrator Dennis Lipka announced that the WRTA has been awarded a $5,000,000 grant in federal funding to support operations during the coronavirus crisis. The funding, which Congress approved on March 27, 2020, was authorized through the CARES Act and provides a total of $25 billion to urban and rural transit agencies to help to prevent,... Read More »

WASHINGTON – Today, United States Congressman James P. McGovern (MA-02), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, welcomed the first batch of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) COVID-19 response grants to Central and Western Massachusetts, including over $4.1 million for Worcester, $400,000 for Northampton, $272,000 for Leominster, and $92,000 for Community Healthlink. Last week, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which included an additional $5 b... Read More »