194th Senate Scorecard: 2025-2026 Session

194th Senate Scorecard: 2025-2026 Session

About the Scorecard:

A scorecard serves its purpose if it tells a story and informs advocacy.

As such, we prioritize votes that are contentious over those that are unanimous: unanimous votes neither tell a story nor inform advocacy. We prioritize bills and amendments that relate to our Progressive Platform and Legislative Agenda over those that do not, and we make a point of including bills and amendments for which our members lobbied their legislators.

Since legislators’ jobs are to vote, we count absences as the same as votes against the progressive position when calculating scores. HOWEVER, when legislators submit letters to the Clerk detailing how they would have voted had they been present, we will count these intentions, so long as their vote would not have alone decided the outcome of a bill or amendment. This helps us better achieve one of our main goals — informing advocacy — and acknowledges that there are extenuating circumstances behind some absences.

194th Senate Scores *

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Key/Descriptions

* What you see in our Scorecards and accompanying materials and analysis are the result of many, many hours of hard work by dedicated volunteers. Research, interviews, coding, data input, reviewing, designing, coordinating, investigating, editing, and intensive consideration and deliberation. Our scorecards are unique and are having the impact we seek: giving voters access to obscure info that is necessary to keep legislators accountable.

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MA House Passes PROTECT Act 134 to 21

Yesterday, the House passed its redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to protect Massachusetts communities from increasingly lawless behavior from ICE.

The bill restricts cooperation and communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE and adds additional protections:

  • Prohibits law enforcement from inquiring about immigration status, with narrow exceptions 
  • Bars the use of state and local resources for civil immigration enforcement
  • Limits the sharing of nonpublic information and advance release notifications by banning the *initiation* of contact with ICE
  • Bans new 287(g) agreements (with very narrow exceptions), i.e., which deputize state and local law enforcement as ICE agents
  • Limits civil arrests in courthouses by requiring a judicial warrant or order, and a review by a judicial official
  • Requires that employers provide written notice to employees within 48 hours of receiving a federal immigration inspection notice, such as an I-9 audit
  • Strengthens protections for individuals in ICE detention (i.e., requiring notice of legal rights in a person’s primary language at intake, guaranteeing confidential attorney-client communication, mandating the timely tracking of custody status and transfers with notice to counsel and designated contacts; providing interpretation services for key interactions and ensure access to court proceedings)
  • Makes it easier for victims of crime and human trafficking ​to secure U and T visas, which provide a legal status that can lead to a green card 
  • Authorizes the Governor to restrict civil immigration enforcement in nonpublic areas of state facilities, and requires multilingual guidance for agencies, private entities, law enforcement, and public school districts 

The bill passed 134 to 21, with all Democrats in attendance joined by Minority Leader Brad Jones (R-North Reading), Third Assistant Minority Leader David Vieira (R-Falmouth), Marcus Vaughn (R-Wrentham), and Donald Wong (R-Saugus).

During the floor debate, the House adopted four amendments.

The House voted 130 to 25 (party line) to adopt Christine Barber (D-Somerville)’s amendment to clarify that the bill applies to sheriffs. The sheriff offices in Bristol, Plymouth, and Barnstable Counties have all previously had 287(g) agreements with ICE, and the majority of such contracts across the country are with sheriffs.

The House voted 136 to 18 for Sean Reid (D-Lynn)’s amendment to require the Governor to publish multilingual guidelines for all school districts on how to handle interactions with law enforcement officers regarding civil immigration enforcement. Joining Democrats and the four Republicans who voted for the final bill were First Assistant Minority Leader Kimberly Ferguson (R-Holden), Second Assistant Minority Leader Paul Frost (R-Auburn), and Hannah Kane (R-Shrewsbury).

The House voted 151 to 3 for Adrianne Ramos (D-North Andover)’s amendment to expedite the U and T visa certification process for applicants with a dependent who will soon age out of dependent status. Three Republicans voted no: David DeCoste (R-Norwell), John Gaskey (R-Carver), and Marcus Vaughn (R-Wrentham). Michael Soter (R-Bellingham) voted present.

The House also voted unanimously for an amendment from Brad Jones (R-North Reading) that could potentially create a new loophole in the bill, but advocates are still analyzing the implications of the text.

The bill, unfortunately, does not end the one existing 287(g) agreement in the state: the one between the Department of Correction and ICE. However, as Governor Healey remains staunchly supportive of that agreement, the legislative hurdles have become much stronger.

Take Action: Investing in People, Not Incarceration

Friday was the first day of spring, and the new season is always a perfect time to think about second chances and new life. As winter passes, we get more light, we get more greenery, we see more flowers.

It’s a time to think about how our systems can be designed to encourage second chances and new life instead of cycles of violence and harm.

Prisoners’ Legal Services, Families for Justice as Healing, the Keeping Families Connected Coalition, Jane Doe, Inc., Medical Justice Alliance-MA Chapter, Progressive Massachusetts, and Citizens for Juvenile Justice recently teamed up to write a letter to the Senate and House Committees on Ways and Means, the Speaker of the House, and the Senate President urging them to prioritize a package of six critical bills this session. Over 100 organizations have signed on in support and now we need the help of individuals to ask their legislators to make this a priority.  

This platform includes:

  • An Act relative to elder and medical parole (H.2693)
  • An Act to build restorative family and community connection (H.2591)
  • An Act relative to human rights and improved outcomes for incarcerated people (H.2608)
  • An act relative to justice for survivors (S.1256)
  • An act establishing a jail and prison moratorium (H.3422, S.2944)
  • An Act to Promote Public Safety and Better Outcomes for Youths (S.1061)

These six critical legal system reform bills have advanced to the committee on Ways and Means and are well positioned to be acted upon by the legislature this session. Each of these bills represents an opportunity to reduce incarceration, redirect spending to where it is most needed, and improve conditions for particularly vulnerable carceral populations, specifically young people, families, survivors of abuse and sexual violence, and elders. More details on the bills are in the letter.  

Please contact your legislators with a copy of the letter via email, phone, or the form below and ask them to express their support to the Committee on Ways and Means as well as House or Senate leadership.  

Email Your Legislators

2026 PM Congressional Primary Interviews

Progressive Mass’s Elections Committee recently hosted public candidate interviews with the US Congressional candidates who filled out our comprehensive policy questionnaire. Check out the interviews here.

CD-01: Jeromie Whalen

CD-04: Chris Boyd, Ihssane Leckey, Jason Poulos

CD-05: Jonathan Paz

CD-06: Beth Andres-Beck, Jamie Belsito, Mariah Lancaster, Tram Nguyen

CD-08: Patrick Roath

CD-09 Craig Swallow

The House Redrafted the PROTECT Act. How is the new bill different?

On Friday, the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee reported out a redraft of the PROTECT Act, the Massachusetts Black and Latino Legislative Caucus’s bill to strengthen protections for immigrant communities in Mass.

Original: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5158 

Redraft: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H5293 

The bill is a mashup of the PROTECT Act and Healey’s bill. For example, it takes language around protecting courthouses from Healey’s bill, not the PROTECT Act  (see comparison chart here).

PROTECT 2.0 eliminates the following provisions of PROTECT 1.0: 

  • The section requiring disclosure of ICE or CBP employment in the POST certification process 
  • Several of the protections for individuals in ICE detention
    • The guarantee of 1 free telephone call within the first 2 hours of ICE detention 
    • The requirement that detention facilities maintain a “secure electronic locator system” for detained individuals, replacing it with a less specific requirement for record-keeping. 
    • The guarantee that detained individuals will be provided access to legal services organizations 
    • The requirement that a public hotline enabling people to identify individuals in custody have hours “sufficient to provide timely location confirmation” 
  • Some of the language banning communication between state and local law enforcement and ICE:
    • The ban on communication with ICE, as opposed to simply “initiation” of contact.
    • The ban on “ facilitat[ing] a transfer timed to enable a federal civil immigration enforcement action”  
    • (BUT the language does remove the conditional descriptor of “primary” in its ban on the “use state or local resources for the purpose of facilitating a federal civil immigration enforcement action”) 
  • The expansion of agencies able to certify individuals for U and T visas to include the executive office of the trial court and the juvenile court department; the department of children and families; the executive office of labor and workforce development and any agency within the secretariat with authority over wage and hour, workplace safety, unemployment insurance or labor standards; the Massachusetts commission against discrimination; and any other state or local agency designated by regulation of the secretary of public safety and security in consultation with the attorney general.

PROTECT 2.0 adds the following provisions: 

  • A requirement that employers provide notice to employees within 48 hours of notice of an upcoming ICE workplace raid (“I9 inspection”) 
  • Inclusion of “the likelihood of imminent deportation” to the factors considered at a bail hearing, which could lead to immigration status being treated as an indicator flight risk in and of itself and could exacerbate racial disparities in bail hearing outcomes 
  • Directive to Governor Maura Healey’s administration to create rules around locations where ICE agents would be prohibited and multilingual guidelines for state agencies about how to comply (A watered down version of Healey’s “sensitive locations” language) 

Neither PROTECT 1.0 nor PROTECT 2.0 did the following: 

  • Ban future 287(g) agreements between sheriffs and ICE. More than sixty percent of 287(g) agreements around the country are signed by sheriffs. 
  • Provide a clean ban on 287(g) agreements, as opposed to one with a series of conditions. The conditions in the bill are designed to never be met, but other states have done clean bans.
  • Terminate the one existing 287(g) agreement in the state, i.e., the DOC contract, of which Governor Maura Healey has been a staunch defender.
  • End ICE detention in Massachusetts (e.g., “shutting down Plymouth detention center”) 

Find some more detailed textual analysis here.

Testimony in Support of Rent Control Ballot Question

Saturday, March 21, 2026

Chair Friedman, Chair Peisch, and Members of the Special Joint Committee on Initiative Petitions: 

My name is Jonathan Cohn, and I am the Policy Director of Progressive Massachusetts, a statewide grassroots advocacy group committed to fighting for an equitable, just, democratic, and sustainable Commonwealth.

We urge a favorable report for H.5008: An Act to protect tenants by limiting rent increases. 

Massachusetts has a lot to offer, but that does little if people can’t afford to live here. The US News & World Report’s annual state rankings put Massachusetts at #47 in affordability. A worker earning minimum wage in Massachusetts would have to work 101 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home at market rate. [2] 

Clearly, Massachusetts has an affordable housing crisis. This is unsustainable. It has led to expanding economic inequality, increased homelessness, and damage to our economy, as talented workers often leave the state for less expensive regions. Too many of us know stories of friends, family members, or neighbors being priced out of neighborhood then city then state. 

The crisis in outmigration we face is not billionaires moving to Florida. It is of working people not able to afford the cost of living here. 

Solving this affordable housing crisis will require us to use every tool in the toolbox. That requires zoning reform that encourages the creation of walkable, sustainable, and inclusive communities. It requires public investment. And it requires strengthening tenant protections that ensure that communities can remain affordable, inclusive, and stable.

AWe cannot build our way out of the crisis alone because the people at the highest risk for displacement will already be pushed out before they can benefit from any medium to long-term reduction in rents. Rent control offers the essential stability needed while other strategies can work to bring down rents overall, through building and financing schemes. 

At its core, rent control is about offering price stability to renters. We know what price stability looks like. It’s what homeowners with mortgages are given. Why should renters not have the same predictability? 

Sincerely, 

Jonathan Cohn 

Policy Director 

Progressive Massachusetts

Letter: “Reader angered by the disappearance of immigrant children”

Jennifer Debin, “Letter: Reader angered by the disappearance of immigrant children,” Hometown Weekly (Dover/Sherborn), March 19, 2026.

To the Editor:

I recently learned that approximately 700 kids are missing from our neighboring Framingham public schools in large part due to ICE and anti-immigrant activity creating an environment of distrust and perceived lack of safety.

As a public school parent myself, this is extremely troubling. If this is happening in just one district, the effects across Massachusetts of students not being in school could be disastrous for our children and the future of our state. Massachusetts has stood up to ICE but we could be doing much more.

Our country was once the Land of Opportunity and the home of the American Dream with our public education system being an integral part of that. Keeping kids away from school due to the very real fears that they or their family members may be detained by ICE for the simple act of trying to go to school is something we must fix immediately. Individuals and activists groups can be powerful and have shown that we in Massachusetts do not want ICE tearing apart our communities but we need Governor Healey and the legislature to step up to make policy change to reinforce our actions, getting kids back in school and families back to living their everyday lives without fear. Massachusetts is the only state with a Democratic Governor and Democratic Legislature to still have a statewide 287(g) agreement with ICE. I am calling on Governor Healey to end this collaboration with a stroke of the pen.

Additionally, Beacon Hill should make it clear: state and local law enforcement should not be assisting ICE and should not be acting as ICE agents.

Doing so makes us all less safe as people become afraid to report crimes, retreat further from public life, and more children are denied an education. Our legislators must support and pass the Safe Communities Act, the Dignity Not Deportations Bill, and the PROTECT Act. Children of any immigration status need to be in school and Massachusetts must do more on their behalf.

Jennifer Debin
Sherborn, MA

Sign-on Letter: Let’s Strengthen Our Vaccine Laws

March 16, 2026
The Honorable John J. Lawn, Jr.
Chair, Joint Committee on Health Care Financing
State House, Room 236
24 Beacon St.
Boston, MA 02133


Dear Chairman Lawn and Committee Members,


The Massachusetts Legislature has worked quickly in recent months to ensure that the state’s vaccine recommendations are based on sound scientific evidence and that its residents are able to access immunizations. The undersigned organizations request that the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing report out favorably H.2554, An Act Relative to Routine Childhood
Immunizations, which would remove the non-medical exemption from required school vaccines and enhance data collection and sharing to better track immunization rates.


H.2554 is supported by Massachusetts’s leading medical and public health institutions. It is also popular with voters: polling shows that 70% of Massachusetts voters support H.2554’s passage, with support rising to 72% after respondents considered various arguments for and against the legislation. Support for H.2554 was broadly consistent among voters from various
demographic groups and areas of the state.


Major religious groups agree that immunization is part of society’s moral duty to care for the greater common good. For example, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops disallows religious exemptions in Catholic schools, and released a statement in 2024 affirming its commitment to protecting the health of all children.


With two measles cases already reported in Massachusetts this year, we must act now to prevent its spread. Eliminating non-medical exemptions is the most effective way to prevent outbreaks and ensure strong immunization rates. We respectfully ask that the Committee report H.2554 out favorably.


Thank you for your leadership and your support of this important legislation.


Sincerely,
Katie Blair, JD, Director
Massachusetts Families for Vaccines

Northe Saunders, President
American Families for Vaccines
Patti Wukovits and Alicia Stillman, Co-Executive Directors
American Society for Meningitis Prevention
Azhar Majeed, Director of Government Affairs and Policy
Center for Inquiry
Alicia Stillman, Executive Director
Emily Stillman Foundation
Patti Wukovits, BSN, RN, AMB-BC, Executive Director
Kimberly Coffey Foundation
Chloe Schwartz, MPH, Director of Maternal & Infant Health Initiatives, New England
March of Dimes
Brenda Anders Pring, MD, FAAP, President
Massachusetts Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics
Hemal Sampat, MD & Sunny Kung, MD, Co-Chairs, Health and Public Policy Committee
Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Physicians
Emily Dulong, Vice President, Government Advocacy and Public Policy
Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association
Olivia C. Liao, MD, FACS, President
Massachusetts Medical Society
Oami Amarasingham, JD, Deputy Director
Massachusetts Public Health Alliance
Michael Constantine, MD, President
Massachusetts Society of Clinical Oncologists
Jonathan Cohn, Policy Director
Progressive Massachusetts

“How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts” Follow-up Links

Thank you so much for joining for last night’s webinar “How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts”! 

You can find Phineas Baxandall’s slides from his excellent presentation here. 

A Few Other Links: 

Unfortunately, although I thought I had clicked record, I had missed the final step in getting it to start. My apologies. A decoupling of action and intention, if you will. But I’m glad we have the slides to share. 

This Wednesday: How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts

Budget season is coming up soon in the Massachusetts Legislature, and if legislators don’t act quickly, damaging cuts could be on the table.

Tax policy can get wonky fast, so let me give you the gist of it. When the federal government changes the tax code with new deductions and exemptions, Massachusetts incorporates those into our tax code. In last summer’s Big Ugly Bill, Trump and Congressional Republicans created a whole list of new, costly, regressive giveaways to the richest corporations. That means that unless Beacon Hill acts, those giveaways get added to MA’s tax code too.

That would mean a loss of almost half a billion dollars in the coming budget, with cuts to essential services on which we all depend. States across the country are already saying NO and opting out, protecting essential revenue, and Massachusetts needs to join them.

Join us on Wednesday for our next Spring Forward webinar where we will hear from Phineas Baxandall of MassBudget about what’s at stake and what you can do.

Spring Forward: How MA Can Opt Out of Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts

Wednesday, March 18, 2026

7 pm, Zoom, RSVP here

Can’t make it? You can still email your state rep and state senator about taking action.