Gov. Charlie Baker is spending his final Thanksgiving as governor of Massachusetts about 3,000 miles away in Ireland, the governor's office said over the weekend.
The governor and First Lady Lauren Baker left Saturday evening for Dublin to start a weeklong family trip to Ireland. They plan to return to Massachusetts next Monday, Nov. 28. Acting Gov. Karyn Polito will be in charge most of the time that Baker is away.
Polito will be leaving Massachusetts on Monday afternoon for a personal trip to Maine, the administration said. She will return to the Bay State on Tuesday afternoon. While the lieutenant governor is away, the powers of the governor are handed off to Secretary of State William Galvin.
President Joe Biden will be in Massachusetts while Baker is in Ireland. The commander-in-chief and his family traditionally spend Thanksgiving on Nantucket and are planning to do so again this year, according to the Inquirer and Mirror. The White House said the president will travel to the island Tuesday and return to the nation's capital on Sunday.
AAA said this Thanksgiving is predicted to be the third-busiest for travel since it began tracking the traffic in 2000. About 54.6 million people will travel 50 miles or more this Thanksgiving, the motor club said, representing 98 percent of pre-pandemic volumes. About 4.5 million Americans are expected to take to the skies this week, AAA said. The Transportation Security Administration said airports will be busy from Nov. 18 through Nov. 27. TSA could screen as many as 2.5 million passengers at checkpoints nationwide on Wednesday and more than 2.5 million passengers on Sunday, Nov. 27. The busiest Thanksgiving, in 2019, saw the TSA screen nearly 2.9 million passengers, the agency said.
