Letter: “Some lawmakers throw up their hands, but there’s much that can be done”

Enid Eckstein, “Some lawmakers throw up their hands, but there’s much that can be done,” Boston Globe, January 12, 2026.

Anjali Huynh rightly calls out Massachusetts Democrats for being less aggressive than lawmakers in other blue states in “building an anti-Trump wall,” but I disagree with the contention of some that there is only so much the Legislature can do. It can do plenty.

As legislators returned last week, they confronted a loss of $3.5 billion in annual federal aid, and more in lost tax revenue, due to the Trump administration’s federal tax changes. Many Massachusetts residents will be squeezed by rising health care costs, and tens of thousands risk losing health care coverage or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

Massachusetts can join neighboring states and pass a measure that would raise as much as $400 million in new annual revenue by fighting offshore tax dodging by large global companies such as Apple, Amazon, and Walmart.

The Legislature also can opt out of state-level adoption of the Trump corporate tax cuts and preserve more than $400 million in state revenue this year alone. Maine, Rhode Island, and other states have already done this.

Lawmakers also could use a reasonable amount of the $8.6 billion rainy day fund to fill the holes in key services without a long-term impact on the fund itself. The fund was created to act as a buffer for shortfalls during emergencies by preventing drastic cuts to health care, education, and public safety. This is an emergency.

Massachusetts legislators have many tools in their toolbox, and it is time to start using them.

Enid Eckstein

Jamaica Plain

The writer is on the steering committees of Jamaica Plain Progressives and Raise Up Massachusetts.

ICE is Making Our Communities Less Safe. The MA Legislature Can Take Action.

The tragic murder of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis underscores what has long been clear: ICE agents make communities less safe.

ICE has been terrorizing communities across Massachusetts, breaking up families and breaking the law.

But MA lags behind other blue states in taking meaningful action to rein in police collaboration with ICE and protect immigrant communities.

Beacon Hill could pass legislation RIGHT NOW to change that. That’s why we’ve been working with the Protect Massachusetts Communities coalition to advance legislation based on the following three principles:  

(1) Don’t assist ICE.
Massachusetts law enforcement must never assist ICE in making civil immigration arrests (taking people into custody when no crime has been committed) or ask members of the public about their immigration status.

(2) Don’t turn police into ICE agents.
ICE is pressuring and incentivizing local police departments to sign up for its 287(g) program, which turns street-level officers into ICE agents. They are even offering bounty-style bonuses for police forces that bring in high rates of targeted residents. Massachusetts should prevent this from happening within our borders.

(3) Fund legal help to fight deportations.
Immigrants are five times more likely to win relief from deportation if they have representation, and detained immigrants with an attorney are ten times more likely to win relief than those without.

Key bills before the Legislature can advance these reforms, such as the Safe Communities Act (H.2580/S.1681), the Dignity Not Deportations Act (H.1588/S.1122), and the Immigrant Legal Defense Act (H.1954/S.1127).

Can you take action today by calling or emailing your state legislators about reining in ICE in MA?

And after you do, can you think of a few friends to email as well?

📞📞If you are able to make a phone call, call. Calls have a bigger impact than emails. Find your state legislators’ phone numbers here.

But emailing is also important. ✉️✉️ Send your state legislators an email here.

An Important Deadline Just Passed on Beacon Hill. What Happened?

If you have read news about the State House or seen advocacy alerts or legislative newsletters recently, you may have heard the term “Joint Rule 10 Day.”

In the Joint Rules governing the MA House and MA Senate, Rule #10 creates deadlines for committees to take action.The Senate has a deadline of December 3 (“first Wednesday in December”), and the House had a deadline earlier this week (“third Wednesday in December”).

To meet this deadline, committees can take one of our actions:

  • The committee can give a bill a favorable report: that means the committee thinks the bill ought to pass. It then advances to the next stage of its journey from bill to law, typically moving to the Ways & Means Committee.
  • The committee can give the bill an adverse report: that means the committee thinks the bill ought not to pass, and it is done for the session.
  • The committee can send the bill to study: that means the committee does not plan to take further action on the bill. It is, in other words, a polite way to vote the bill down. No “study” results.
  • The committee can give the bill an extension: that means the committee has not yet decided the fate of the bill and wants more time to decide or redraft/combine bills.

A few of the bills we care about got favorable reports in the past few weeks. So let’s take a moment to celebrate those wins, and since committee votes are now public, take a moment to thank the senators and representatives who voted to advance them.

  • Local Option Real Estate Transfer Fee:Advanced 4 to 0 (with 2 reserving rights) out of the Senate Revenue Committee. Thank you to Senators Mike Brady, Jamie Eldridge, Pat Jehlen, and Becca Rausch for voting yes!
  • Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act: Advanced 9 to 1 (with 1 reserving rights) out of the House Housing Committee and 4 to 2 in the Senate Housing Committee. Thank you to Representatives James Arena-DeRosa, Michelle Badger, Hannah Bowen, Rob Consalvo, Kip Diggs, Rich Haggerty, David LeBoeuf, Chris Markey, and Adrianne Ramos — and Senators Julian Cyr, Lydia Edwards, Paul Feeney, and Patrick O’Connor — for voting yes!
  • Visitation Bill: Advanced 10 to 3 out of the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee. Thank you to Representatives Dan Cahill, Michelle Ciccolo, Rodney Elliott, Homar Gómez, David Linsky, Bridget Plouffe, Amh Mah Sangiolo, Alan Silvia, Richard Wells, and Chris Worrell for voting yes!
  • Preventing Gas System Expansion: Advanced 4 to 0 (with 2 reserving rights) out of the Senate Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Committee. Thank you to Senators Mike Barrett, Mike Brady, Julian Cyr, and Dylan Fernandes for voting yes!

What does it mean to “reserve rights”? When a representative or senator votes to “reserve rights,” they are typically indicating that they would like to see revisions to the bill before they would feel comfortable voting yes or want more time with it in committee.

Memo to Beacon Hill: Just Say NO to Trump’s Regressive Corporate Tax Cuts

Trump’s corporate tax cuts are going to cost Massachusetts nearly half a billion dollars this year alone — on top of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and other federal programs we rely on.

But we don’t have to let this happen. Tell your lawmakers now: reject Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires and protect Massachusetts.

Here’s the context: States use the federal tax code as a starting point to calculate how much people and corporations owe in taxes. Trump’s changes to the federal tax code cut taxes for the rich and large corporations (by more than $3 billion/year in MA alone). So, unless we act now, these cuts will be baked into our state’s tax code, meaning big tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.

Other states across the country have already taken action, but we’re still waiting on Massachusetts.

As we face looming cuts already due to Trump’s Big Ugly Bill, we can’t afford even more cuts to health care, food assistance, education, and other essential public services.

Can you write to your state legislators today?

Editorial: “Beacon Hill’s new rules are good. They should follow them. “

Jonathan Cohn and Scotia Hille, “Beacon Hill’s new rules are good. They should follow them. ,” CommonWealth Beacon, December 17, 2025.

THIS SUMMER, the Massachusetts Legislature did something that surprised everyone. And, no, we aren’t talking about passing a budget on time. The House and Senate agreed to a set of joint rules for the first time since 2019, including a number of transparency reforms that activists had fought for for years.  

The Massachusetts Legislature has often been ranked as the least transparent in the country, and the opening of this session created a fertile opportunity to change that. Last year, we saw a chaotic end of session that left many key bills on the table, competitive legislative primaries waged over voters’ desire for a more small “d” democratic Democratic Legislature, and a blowout victory for Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s ballot question on auditing the Legislature. Everyday people–and not just advocates deep in the trenches–were seeing that things needed to change.  

Read on here.

SAVE THE DATE: Our 2026 Annual Member Meeting & Activist Conference

Join us on Saturday, January 31, for our 2026 annual member meeting.

We’ll be focusing on how to build pressure for our legislative priorities, strengthen progressive organizing, and get ready for the suite of 2026 ballot questions. Stay tuned for information about speakers, breakout sessions, and more.

Join us to hone your skills, network with activists from across the state, and get energized for the fights to come.

Progressive Mass 2026 Member Meeting
Saturday, January 31
1 pm to 5 pm
Lasell University, DeWitt Hall
80 Maple Street, Newton

Our Annual Meeting is open to everyone. However, you must be a member to vote for members up for election or re-election to the Board. You also must be a member to nominate yourself or someone else for election.

To nominate yourself or someone else to the Board, submit this form to the Governance Committee at: governance@progressivemass.com. Please submit your nomination by January 3rd. Elections will take place at business portion of our annual meeting. For more information about responsibilities, roles, and terms, please email the Governance Committee.

2026 Annual Meeting Agenda

12:30 – 1:30: Registration & Mini-Activism Fair

1:30 – 2:00: 2025 in Review; What to Expect from 2026; Board Elections

2:00 – 3:00: Interviews with US Senate candidates

  • Alex Rikleen: CONFIRMED
  • Rep. Seth Moulton: CONFIRMED
  • Senator Ed Markey: CONFIRMED

3:00 -3:50: Breakout Sessions #1 — Ballot Questions & Elections

  • The Vote Yes for a Safe Massachusetts Campaign: How to Help Protect our Gun Safety Laws
  • Keeping Mass Home: The Fight for Rent Control
  • A Better Legislature Is on the Ballot: Stipend Reform & Open Records
  • The Tech Bros Say: ‘Give Us Millionaires back Our Fair Share Taxes or We’ll Kill the State Budget!’: We Say: ‘Don’t negotiate with Blackmailers!’
  • Voter Contact 101

4:00 – 4:50: Breakout Sessions #2 –Knowledge, Skills, & Strategies

  • Care Not Cages: Massachusetts Immigrant Justice in 2026
  • Budgets and taxes as levers for social change: where things stand and the road ahead
  • From Scrolling to Striking: Turning Digital Posts into People Power
  • Progressive Mass Chapters: organizing at the community level for statewide change
  • Grassroots Lobbying Beyond the Legislature: Putting Pressure on DAs & Sheriffs

Letter: Mayor renews push to ease homeowners’ burden. Will Senate budge?

Jonathan Cohn, “Letter: Mayor renews push to ease homeowners’ burden. Will Senate budge?,” Boston Globe, December 10, 2025.

“At the start of the new legislative session, the state Senate promised a new day for legislative transparency, and senators have stressed that affordability is a top issue for their agenda. But to this point the Senate’s approach to Mayor Michelle Wu’s home rule petition to temporarily shift the tax burden from homeowners to commercial properties has belied both promises (“Property taxes set to jump again: Wu sees another double-digit rise for homeowners,” Page A1, Dec. 4).

The Legislature approved a new, earlier deadline to report bills out of committee, and as a result of new rules, we get to see how legislators voted. But not in the case of Wu’s proposal. The Senate has not allowed the bill to even have a hearing, despite the requirement that committees hold hearings on every bill assigned to them.

Moreover, as Democrats across the country, including here, talk about affordability as a key goal, Wu’s proposal addresses exactly that. It asks the commercial sector to shoulder more of the tax burden than the city’s residents, who are facing high costs and are suffering from the disastrous economic policies of President Trump.

Boston residents are looking at the state Senate, especially vocal opponents of the proposal such as Senator Nick Collins, and asking: Whose side are you on?”

🎶He Knows When You are Sleeping, He Knows When You’re Awake🎶

This holiday season, Santa Claus isn’t the only one who knows when you are sleeping, knows when you’re awake, and knows if you’ve been bad or good.

That’s because large data brokers are able to buy and sell sensitive data from your cell phone, like location data, without your consent.

Let’s do something about it.

Back in September, the Massachusetts Senate passed a robust data privacy bill that would prevent the purchase and sale of such sensitive data, along with other important measures to strengthen privacy rights.

And last month, the House took the first step toward joining the Senate by voting a robust data privacy bill out of committee.

It’s important that momentum doesn’t stall over the holidays.

Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google are going to try to water down the bill, so your legislators need to hear from YOU about the importance of getting strong legislation done early in the new year.

Write to your state rep today!

Beacon Hill 101: Joint Rule 10 Day

If you have read news about the State House or seen advocacy alerts or legislative newsletters recently, you may have heard the term “Joint Rule 10 Day.” This poses a key question: What is Joint Rule 10 anyway?

In the Joint Rules governing the MA House and MA Senate, Rule #10 creates deadlines for committees to take action. By the first Wednesday of December, i.e., tomorrow, every joint committee needs to take action on every bill in its purview. (It wouldn’t be Beacon Hill without exceptions: The Health Care Financing Committee has a later deadline, and committees aren’t held to the deadline for bills filed after January, when there’s an early session filing deadline).

Also new this year: rather than voting as one joint committee, the House and Senate members of the committee will each vote on their own bills.

What happens next?

  • The committee can give a bill a favorable report: that means the committee thinks the bill ought to pass. It then advances to the next stage of its journey from bill to law, typically moving to the Ways & Means Committee.
  • The committee can give the bill an adverse report: that means the committee thinks the bill ought not to pass, and it is done for the session.
  • The committee can send the bill to study: that means the committee does not plan to take further action on the bill. It is, in other words, a polite way to vote the bill down. No “study” results.
  • The committee can give the bill an extension: that means the committee has not yet decided the fate of the bill and wants more time to decide or redraft/combine bills.

There are several ways your legislators can vote in a committee (and with the new rules, you’ll be able to see):

  • Favorable: the bill ought to pass
  • Adverse: the bill ought not to pass
  • Reserve Rights: the bill ought not to pass barring major revisions
  • No Action: the legislator was not present for the vote

Here are a few bills we’re supporting that have already advanced favorably from their first committee in either House or Senate:

  • Same Day Registration: Advanced 5 to 1 from the Senate Committee on Election Laws
  • Delinking the Municipal Census from the Voter Rolls: Advanced 5 to 1 from the Senate Committee on Election Laws
  • Clean Slate (i.e., automatic record sealing: Advanced 6 to 0 from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • Raise the Age (i.e., keeping young people out of the adult prison system): Advanced 5 to 1 from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • Prison Moratorium (i.e, putting a five-year pause on new prison and jail construction): Advanced 8 to 0, with 1 reserving rights and 2 taking no action, from the House Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight
  • Location Shield Act (i.e., banning the sale of cell phone location data): Included in the Senate’s data privacy omnibus bill in September; Included in the House Committee on Advanced IT’s data privacy omnibus bill (favorable report of 9 to 0, with 2 reserving rights)
  • Right to Free Expression (i.e., reining in politically motivated book bans): Passed by the Senate last month; Advanced 11 to 0 from the House Committee on Tourism, Arts, and Cultural Development

That’s the good news. Unfortunately, at least one of the bills on our priority agenda got sent to study. The Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources voted 4 to 0 on sending a bundle of bills to study, including Make Polluters Pay (i.e., requiring major oil and gas companies to pay fee on historic emissions). The vote was 4 to 0, with 1 senator reserving rights and 1 registering a dissent in the Senate Journal.

After bills leave their first committee, then legislators can no longer co-sponsor the bills. But there are plenty of other asks to make of your legislators!

Stay tuned for more updates.