Healey shades Trump as she announces $40M in tax incentives

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey took some oblique shots at the Trump Administration's cuts to public science funding in her brief remarks from the main stage at BIO 2025 even as she celebrated $40 million in tax incentives to life sciences companies.

“In this moment, we're not only making these investments, we're also making a statement,” she said. “At a time when federal science funding is being cut, when pipelines of international talent are being shut down, and when politics is undermining innovation, we're going in a better direction in Massachusetts. It's the right direction.”

It was a full circle moment for Healey, who announced her intention to re-authorise the Massachusetts Life Sciences Initiative (of which the tax incentives are a part) at BIO 2023. That legislative priority was accomplished with the Mass Leads Act signed by Healey in November 2024.

“We are committed to investing in this industry once again, but now, not just for five years, for 10 years, because we want a decade of investment and certainty,” Healey said this morning. “Hundreds of millions of dollars in funding has already gone out the door into labs, startups, and training programmes all across our state.”

The $40 million committed to life sciences companies via the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Tax Incentive Program was announced just last week. The incentives are expected to create 1,500 new life sciences jobs.

The largest incentive, of $5.6 million, went to Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, followed by $2.7 million to GlaxoSmithKline in Cambridge.

“We're doubling down on medical discovery and our commitment to life sciences,” Healey said. “We're increasing investments. We're opening our doors. We're supporting and growing the workforce that we need. We're celebrating our innovators and entrepreneurs. We're proud to be the hub of healing a state that not only produces cures and discoveries, but also provides hope to patients and families all over the world. And we're going to stay that way.”

Healey hasn’t been shy about criticising the President’s cuts to public science funding. Just yesterday she issued a blistering statement in response to a judge’s ruling that that Trump’s NIH funding cuts were illegal.

“While today’s ruling is reassuring, President Trump’s cuts to NIH funding have already caused significant damage,” she said yesterday. “He halted lifesaving research into cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s – diseases that we are all impacted by. We can’t get that time back. He forced our research universities to lay off staff and rescind PhD offers. And he handed China and other foreign countries the opportunity to recruit away our researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs. President Trump’s NIH funding cuts made America weaker and less competitive – and Judge Young made the right decision by striking them down. I’m grateful to Attorney General Campbell and others who successfully opposed this illegal attack on science, public health and our economy.”