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Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR’s daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
The Red Sox play their first game of the 2026 season at 4:10 p.m. today in Cincinnati. It’s the first of a six-game road trip to start the season, so you’ll have to wait until their home-opener next Friday to try Fenway Park’s new chowder-covered lobster “poutine” (an apparent attempt to see if current U.S.-Canada relations can get even worse).
However, we do have one big game, er, match, locally:
The T’s test match: Gillette Stadium is hosting an international friendly this afternoon between two of the world’s top soccer teams, Brazil and France. It’s also serving as a warm-up for the MBTA, as the agency prepares to transport 20,000 people to each of Gillette’s seven World Cup matches later this year. “ We want to make sure that we work the bugs out in advance before we have 20,000 people late for their soccer match,” Ryan Coholan, the MBTA’s chief operating officer, told WBUR’s Andrea Perdomo-Hernandez. “But that’s not gonna happen.” (Fingers crossed.)
In other MBTA news: Red Line riders are in for some mild disruption after dark. Due to a new phase of an ongoing signal upgrade project, riders on the Braintree branch will need to switch trains at JFK/UMass after 8 p.m. The new phase begins tonight and will go on for about two weeks, before it switches and becomes a problem that riders on the Ashmont branch will have to navigate.
Breaking overnight: Boston’s School Committee unanimously approved the district’s $1.7 billion budget for the coming school year, which includes cutting 300 to 400 staff positions. At the same time, Committee Chair Jeri Robinson called for an audit of the district’s spending, saying it hadn’t improved student outcomes. “It’s time to do some self-reflection,” Robinson said. “Are we really utilizing our resources to the best of our abilities? We all want to say — and we all agree — that our students deserve more, but we also understand that student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors do.”
On Beacon Hill: As expected, the Massachusetts House passed the PROTECT Act last night, by a vote of 134-21. The wide-ranging immigration bill, written in response to President Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign, now heads to the Senate, where top lawmakers have signaled they have more provisions to add.
P.S.— Not a soccer expert? You can become one real quick with this new World Cup glossary from WBUR’s Roberto Scalese. It covers everything from soccer tactics and rules to the tournament format to all those strange British idioms.
Nik DeCosta-Klipa is a senior editor for newsletters at WBUR.
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