Mass. Gov. Healey says she’s playing defense against an anti-innovation Trump administration (2025)

Gov. Maura Healey addresses an audience gathered in Boston for the annual MassChallenge startup awards ceremony on April 10, 2025.Scott Kirsner | MassLive

At the annual MassChallenge award ceremony for startups, held in Boston Thursday night, Gov. Maura Healey might’ve been wearing a foam “We’re #1″ finger. She was playing her role as the state’s cheerleader-in-chief.

“Massachusetts is ranked number one for innovation,“ she told the audience at Boston’s State Room. ”We’re also number one in education and health care. We are the global capital of medical discovery.” And, she reminded them, the field of artificial intelligence can trace its earliest roots to MIT.

But she also said it was “distressing” to watch as the Trump administration cut funding for scientific research, and sought to deport foreign students studying at American universities — some of whom, she said, “come to our shores to study, to research, to pioneer new cures and treatments and innovations, who actually start companies right here in Massachusetts and create jobs.” (Healey said there are almost 100,000 foreign students in Massachusetts.)

After the address, I had the opportunity to talk with Healey about some of those topics. (This transcript has been lightly edited for flow.)

Scott Kirsner: I’ve been talking with a lot of business folks this week. Every different part of the business community is in five-alarm fire mode right now. And I’m sure they’re talking to you. How do you prioritize what’s going on right now in the economy, in the business world?

Gov. Maura Healey: I am trying to stay as close to the impact as possible — convening with all of the sectors who’ve been impacted — and also be in a position to both educate the public about what’s happening and to advocate on behalf of the Massachusetts economy and our businesses.

Early on, when we started to hear news that [National Institutes of Health] cuts may be coming, I brought together teaching hospitals and universities and research institutions to start a conversation about that and how we can deal with that.

I’ve had multiple meetings with business leaders to talk about the impact of tariffs. As we stand here tonight, we’re dealing with a situation where there is tremendous uncertainty, and there’s a lot of chaos. And that is on top of what has already been efforts to dismantle any number of systems — systems that so many people rely on, that businesses rely on.

I think about the cuts that we’ve seen for food for kids, for health care for veterans, for heating assistance for seniors. I think about the disruptions that we’ve experienced already in government, with our [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] systems being shut down at times. They cut off federal grants across the country for states, for any number of important things. Incredibly disruptive and incredibly harmful.

And then on top of that, you’ve got the president engaging in this trade war with allies and friends that doesn’t seem to have a particular point or direction in terms of, what is the desired outcome here?

It’s a really difficult situation. We’re feeling it on the ground here in Massachusetts already because of the president’s actions. We’ve had clinical trials shut down, research stopped. We’ve had people being recruited by other countries to come and do research and set up their labs, because their funding is going away.

Kirsner: Someone tonight told me that they were talking [to an] entrepreneur who doesn’t want to come to the United States to build his business because of green card uncertainty, visa uncertainty.

Healey: [In] Massachusetts, we’re a knowledge-based economy. We’re an innovation economy. People come here from around the world to study, to do research, to learn, to start businesses, to grow businesses. And there is fear in other countries about coming to the United States of America.

So my message to people has been: We’re Massachusetts. We value you. We want you here. We have wonderful things going on here. We’re going to support efforts here.

The question is: how much support can we maintain …

Kirsner: … at a time when people are being pulled off the campuses and off the streets by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents?

Healey: Exactly. And I spoke out again tonight, in the face of what is — it seems like they’re just using AI to go through and scrape anybody’s name randomly who has a student visa, and then anybody could be subjected to having that visa revoked.

And that’s outrageous. I mean, there are people who are studying here on visas who are going to contribute to our economy, who are going to be finding the cures and treatments to diseases and solving major problems. Why would we want that talent to go away?

And I would just say to the president and his administration: it doesn’t make any sense. If your agenda is truly “America First,” then why are you giving away talent to China and to other countries? Because that is what is happening here.

Kirsner: Massachusetts wasn’t named in the recent executive action around clean energy and climate this week, which seeks to prevent states from legislating or creating fines around climate impact and CO2 emissions. I didn’t see that Massachusetts was mentioned in that, but do you expect it to impact the way the state approaches clean energy?

Healey: These things are very important … to addressing climate change. They’re very important to our economy.

Massachusetts [is] a climate tech hub. … Twenty-eight of the top 100 companies in climate tech are right here in Massachusetts.

I’m not turning back on that. That’s where we need to be. That’s where the world is going. And so, we’ll continue to make the state investments that we can. We’re going to continue to find ways to support entrepreneurs and companies who are in the clean energy space. And we’re going to continue to make the case for — and be an advocate for — true American energy independence.

That means — and my position is — if you believe in American energy independence, then you should support all forms of energy: including wind, including solar, including hydro, which we’re going to have coming down from Canada soon.

Does it get harder with the Trump administration, that is antagonistic to clean energy? Yes, it does. But we just need to continue to make the case for why we need to go forward with these efforts and these projects.

Kirsner: Is this going to be a four-year battle for Massachusetts to stand up against this stuff? Or are we in some kind of weird adjustment period — an Elon Musk DOGE era that may be temporary?

Healey: I think people are tiring of Elon Musk and his antics, frankly.

As somebody who prosecuted and went after fraud, waste, and abuse in government, certainly everyone wants government to be more efficient. But that’s not what Doge ended up being about. It ended up being — as he proudly proclaimed — this chainsaw exercise where a lot of people and a lot of programs got hurt, including programs that were critical to local and national economies.

So it’s hard to say. But my job is to be prepared for all that comes — and also keep us moving forward, keep us moving forward on the agenda that I control here in the state. Building more housing. Continuing to find ways to lower costs for people in health care and utility bills. Continuing to find ways to now implement what is, I think, a really kick-ass economic development law that we filed and I got to sign — the Mass Leads Act.

At the same time, we have to play defense against an administration that, in any number of instances, is taking us backward — away from innovation, away from growth, away from entrepreneurship, away from science.

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