Because of calls and emails from people like you, the House delayed their MAGA energy bill that would have rolled back our climate, clean energy, and energy efficiency commitments.
The House will be redrafting an energy bill to vote on in the new year, so pressure will still be needed to ensure that we move forward, not backward. Stay tuned.
Becca Kornet, Progressive Mass Western Norfolk County
Progressive Mass Western Norfolk County (PMWNC) recently held our first session of “Citizens Standing up for Democracy” in Medfield. The two hour in-person session was based on learnings from Rep. Pramila Jayapal(D/WA)’s Resistance Lab Training and Indivisible’s One Million Rising program. During the session, we:
Explored the spectrum from opponents to allies, highlighting the importance of trying to move someone just one click toward allyshipParticipants felt empowered to think about actions they could take as everyday citizens. They also felt hopeful because we had a strong sense of community in that room, with folks showing a lot of empathy and compassion for others.
PMWNC’s is planning future sessions, which will to be relatively small (10-12 attendees max) and hyper-local (most all participants from the same town). We are continuing to build our list of interested folks and will be scheduling more sessions soon. Currently, we are planning additional sessions in Medfield, as well as sessions with participants from Norfolk, Millis, Franklin, Milford, Wrentham, and Foxboro. If you live in one of these towns or somewhere else in the area and would like to participate, please email ProgressiveMAWNC@gmail.com!
(Source of images: Pramila Jayapal’s ‘Resistance Lab Training’)
Jan Soma, Progressive Needham
Progressive Needham is pushing back against the dangerous overreach of the Trump administration by mobilizing supporters. We focused on resisting authoritarianism through non-cooperation in our September 2025 meetings. For example, we looked at ways we can all weaken the pillars that allow Trump to maintain power that Eric Chenoweth highlights in her book Civil Resistance.
Among the ideas generated:
Karen Walker, who represented the Needham Area Immigration Justice Task Force, gave a presentation on how we can push back and protect immigrants who are being targeted by ICE. Action ideas to support immigrants are summarized here.
We also signed a letter from Progressive Massachusetts to thank Governor Healey for protecting vaccine access in Massachusetts.
In this work, we join grassroots organizations, like Indivisible, from across the country and other Progressive Mass chapters across the state, in building support for spirited, nonviolent protests and actions.
If you live in Needham, contact us here to get on Progressive Needham’s list. We’d love to see you at our next event! If you don’t live in Needham, find a local chapter near you here or contact chapters@progressivemass.com to learn how you could organize a chapter in your community.
Thank you so much for joining our ballot question info session last night! You can watch the video:
Check out links below for how to get involved. Find it overwhelming to coordinate across several campaigns? Let me know, and I can help coordinate across campaigns to get you materials. Just email me back or fill out this form.
Yes for a Safe Massachusetts (Gun Safety)
This is the one guaranteed question on the ballot next year due to the state NRA affiliate collecting signatures for a veto referendum. It is a YES to keep the gun safety law.
Overview of the new gun safety law: https://www.mapreventgunviolence.org/_files/ugd/b6bae3_75df0455b1824bccab7b3a5a0498e712.pdf
Ballot campaign website: yesforasafema.com
Keep Mass Home (Rent Control)
Website: keepmasshome.com
Campaign Materials: hfama.us/materials
Volunteer: https://www.keepmasshome.com/get-involved
Legislative Effectiveness and Accountability Partnership (Stipend Reform)
Website: https://www.stipendreform.com/
Volunteer: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd-3Cf3u9iVdCu3I4tP4C1_sK_KRnBetkSuLlNFiJi4t_yGTA/viewform
Open Records
To get involved with this campaign, contact Auditor Diana DiZoglio via https://www.dianaforma.com/feedback or via diana@dianadizoglio.com.
Universal Voting Rights
Website: https://www.edc-unlockdemocracyma.com/
Signature Collection Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdyVHxOufZvPMswUIcrryszKtoxd5mNlrkoDxUp4lhvtBr9Wg/viewform
Election Day Registration
Email info@billgalvin.org or Norma Shulman at nbshulman@gmail.com.
Councilor Haxhiaj is fighting every day on the ground with and for her constituents. She has been a champion of housing justice, climate justice, and immigrants’ rights–a leader who speaks with moral clarity and backs it up with action.
We condemn the retaliation against her for defending her constituent against a brutal and unnecessary abduction. Communities are under attack daily by lawless, violent ICE agents, and local elected leaders are best positioned to intervene to protect their constituents and to make clear that our communities do not support President Trump’s harmful, xenophobic agenda. City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj stands up for her constituents, and we stand with her.
Your state legislators may be good at many things, but being creative in the excuses that they give you is not one of them. When you lobby your legislators on key issues, you’ll likely hear the same set of excuses. We highlight what the most common ones are — and why they don’t hold up — below.
(1) Lack of Knowledge
What They Say: “I’m not familiar with the issue.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: If a bill is new, they might actually not be that familiar (even though it is their job). But if they keep asking you for more and more answers, or keep saying they aren’t familiar even after you’ve spoken with them, they’re not being honest with you. This is an easy excuse to neutralize.
(2) Lack of Expertise / Focus
What They Say: “My expertise is [ISSUE], and I only focus on that.” / “There are more than 6,000 bills. I can’t read all or co-sponsor all of them!”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Your legislators aren’t just elected to work on one narrow issue. They should care about a broad set of issues, and co-sponsorship is the lowest-hanging fruit when it comes to ways to show support.
(3) Lack of Pressure
What They Say: “My constituents aren’t calling me about this.” / “My constituents don’t care about this.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Make sure that they are actually hearing from constituents. If they still claim this after public displays of support for legislation, then they are just making excuses for their own lack of support for it.
(4) Lack of Popular Support
What They Say: “My district is very conservative.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Studies have shown that both Democrats and Republicans believe that their districts are more socially and economically conservative than they really are. This is true in MA where Biden beat Trump in more districts than Democrats hold in either chamber. But beyond that, it’s the job of legislators to lead.
(5) Lack of Will
What They Say: “I don’t sign on to things.” / “If I take a public position, it harms my ability to negotiate.” / “I’m in Leadership, so I don’t co-sponsor.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: As noted earlier, co-sponsorship is the most basic of asks. Moreover, strong starting asks actually increase negotiating power — if you want a strong outcome. But if your legislator won’t co-sponsor bills at all, still urge them to support a bill and ask what they will do to build support for it.
(6) Lack of Leadership
What They Say: “You don’t need to bother me. Spend your time on other legislators.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Even the best legislators need reinforcement–it helps them make a better case to Leadership about why they need to vote on X, Y, or Z. Moreover, passive supporters of legislation can be made into active supporters: true champions who lobby colleagues and Leadership.
(7) Lack of Independence
What They Say: “What does Leadership think about it?”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Legislators serve at the will of their constituents, not the Leadership of the chamber. You — not the Speaker or Senate President — are their boss. Accordingly, if Leadership isn’t on board with a bill yet, it’s their job to change that reality, not resign themselves to it.
(8) Lack of Time
What They Say: ““We have a lot of competing priorities.” / “I’m busy with the budget!”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Here in Massachusetts, we have a full-time legislature. The legislative session goes from January in the odd-numbered year to July in the subsequent even-numbered year—more than a year and a half. If they run out of time, it’s because of their procrastination — and they should start legislating earlier, rather than waiting until the end of the session.
(9) Lack of Money
What They Say: “We don’t have the money.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: We are one of the richest states in the country. “Not enough money” is never an acceptable excuse for not ensuring a high quality of life for all.
(10) Lack of Initiative
What They Say: “We don’t have consensus on this.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: Legislators should be proactive, not seek to make policy based on the lowest common denominator. If other legislators are not on board yet, your legislator should try to be a partner in bringing them on board, and not deflect for them.
(11) Lack of Ability to Maneuver
What They Say: “I don’t co-sponsor bills that pass through the committee I chair / serve on in order to give every bill a fair hearing and preserve my leverage in the redrafting process.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: A legislative committee is not a court of law where impartiality is critical. Legislators, chairs included, enter every committee hearing with opinions on the bills before them, and indeed, they can file bills that appear before the committees that they chair and/or serve on. This is a common excuse, although it is not a good one. However, if a legislator won’t co-sponsor, follow up by asking them, “What will you do instead to show your support?” If they want you to believe that they are an ally behind the scenes, demand that they show you how.
(12) Lack of Independence
What They Say: “I don’t co-sponsor bills because I’m in Leadership.”
Why It Doesn’t Hold Up: We need our leaders to…lead. The idea that those in a room making a decision can’t be public about their support is a self-imposed constraint, not something baked into any rule. Similar to #11, if a legislator won’t co-sponsor, follow up by asking them, “What will you do instead to show your support?” If they want you to believe that they are an ally behind the scenes, demand that they show you how.
Last month, the Massachusetts House and Senate finally agreed to a package of reforms in the Joint Rules, with measures to improve access to information and create a more efficient legislative process. But according to transparency advocates, the legislature is not obeying its own rules.
Ironically, the Legislature’s tenuous relationship to rule-following was on display the day they passed these new transparency reforms: on June 26, 2025, the House voted to suspend the rules in order to vote later that day.
Did Members Read the Budget? The new rules stipulate that conference reports must be available for 24 hours before a vote, and that they cannot be voted on the next calendar day if posted after 8 pm. However, according to the bill page for the conference report (H.4240), the conference report for the FY 2026 budget was released on June 30 and voted on later that day.
What Happened to 10 Days Notice for Hearings? The new Joint Rules require that committees give 10 days notice before scheduling a hearing. This reform responds to years of calls from advocates to give members of the public and rank-and-file lawmakers more time to plan and prepare for public hearings.
However, since Joint Rules were passed just two weeks ago, a hearing of the Joint Committee on Public Service was recently scheduled for July 16th with 9 days notice. More recently, a hearing of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development scheduled for July 15th with only 6 days notice.
“Seeing the legislature finalize rules reforms for the first time in 6 years was an exciting moment for our state democracy,” said Act on Mass executive director Scotia Hille. “With the ink barely dried, to see them flouting those rules just days later is a really disappointing bait-and-switch. These lapses undermine the intent of the reforms, leaving the public and rank-and-file lawmakers still scrambling to attend hearings and read legislation. They also exacerbate confusion about procedure. Why write down rules if you’re not going to follow them?”
Is the House Following Its Rolling Deadlines? The House, earlier this year, adopted a new set of rolling deadlines. According to the House’s own rules, reinforced in the Joint Rules’s recognition of these deadlines from House sides of joint committees, committees will report out bills within 60 days of a hearing. After that hearing, the chair may ask for a 30-day extension.
As of today, ten hearings occurred more than 90 days ago, and additional 18 occurred more than 60 days ago.
According to an analysis of these hearings, of the ten hearings that occurred more than 90 days ago, only three committees (Public Health, Cannabis Policy, and Elections) have taken action on the bills in their purview, with the House Elections Committee rejecting a proposed constitutional amendment without a recorded vote.
The House Public Health Committee and the House Cannabis Policy Committee, to their credit, both provide recorded votes, but with inconsistent formats. The House Public Health Committee lists recorded votes as PDFs under an inconspicuous “Documents” tab on the hearing page, whereas the House Cannabis Policy Committee includes a recorded vote on the page of the redrafted bill itself, a more accessible placement.
No bill page has an indication of an extension, leaving a large number of bills in a state of limbo.
“The House promised greater transparency with its new rules, but by leaving so many bills in limbo, everyday people are left with less information about the status of bills than they did before,” said Jonathan Cohn, policy director of Progressive Massachusetts.
Will Committees Make Testimony Available to the Public? The rules give discretion to chairs to set policies and procedures around making testimony available to the public. As of now, only two committees — Aging and Independence and Municipalities and Regional Governments — are defaulting to making all testimony available, publishing it on the hearing page. Both deserve credit for setting a model that other committees should follow.
Contact:
Jonathan Cohn, jonathan@progressivemass.comScotia Hille, scotia@actonmass.org
Let’s start out with the ugly, and then the good and the bad.
The UGLY: Yesterday, the US Senate passed a horror show of a budget to take away health care access and food assistance in order to fund tax cuts for the mega-rich and large corporations, and to create a police state in the US by increasing ICE’s budget several times over. If passed, it will be a disaster for the country and for Massachusetts. If you have friends in other states who have Republican Senators or Representatives, ask them to make a phone call in opposition to the Big Ugly Bill.
THE GOOD: On Monday, the Massachusetts State House did something it hasn’t done since 2016: it passed a budget before the end of the fiscal year.
There are some major victories in this budget to celebrate:
THE BAD: But there were also disappointments in the budget:
Read more about the state budget here, here, and here.
Write to your legislator to express your support for the budget wins and your disappointment with what was left out.
For years, our friends at Families for Justice as Healing have been organizing against a proposed $50 million new women’s prison to replace MCI-Framingham.
How has Governor Maura Healey responded? By proposing a $360 million new women’s prison.
Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and girls have been clear: what we need is not a new prison, but greater programming for those currently incarcerated, better reentry programs for people when they return to community, and greater community investments in housing, health care, education, and economic security and opportunity.
Think of how much that $360 million could do if it went instead to keeping communities safe and ending cycles of incarceration and harm.
Join FJaH in telling Governor Healey to stop the $360 million new women’s prison with the action toolkit at bit.ly/FreeHerMA.
Call daily between 9am and 5pm only – (617) 725-4005
Email any time using this form: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/email-the-governors-office Sample Email/Script:
“Hello, my name is _________________ and I am your constituent. I oppose your plan to build a $360 million women’s prison. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on prison construction is not investing in people’s wellbeing and will not make our communities safer. Our communities need this money for housing, healing, healthcare, treatment and more. We could actually make Massachusetts a model for the rest of the country by releasing many more women and implementing alternatives to incarceration rather than building yet another prison.”
One major budget takeaway: The Fair Share Amendment has been delivering even more than expected, and it has proven essential. The Fair Share Amendment has been producing even more revenue than projected, and it has made possible critical new investments in education and transportation. Learn more about its $6 billion in positive impact so far at https://www.fairsharema.com/.
Earlier this year, both Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka promised reforms to make a more transparent, efficient, and accountable legislative process. We are delighted that, for the first time in six years, the House and Senate have agreed to Joint Rules, and that these new rules contain concrete, pro-democracy improvements.
We have been clear for years that better process helps produce better policy, and that the top-down, closed-door way that Beacon Hill operates disempowers the public (at the expense of monied interests) and makes it harder for rank-and-file legislators to do their job.
These new rules will make it easier for everyday people to engage in the legislative process by increasing the notice for hearings to ten days, providing bill summaries, and establishing hearing schedules earlier in the session. These new rules will provide greater accountability by making committee votes public and by making testimony publicly available. They will empower rank-and-file legislators to engage more in the policymaking process by making their votes more meaningful and their attendance at hearings more expected. They will push against the bottlenecks that occur late in the session by pushing up reporting deadlines.
We look forward to holding Beacon Hill accountable to their new rules. Rules only improve the process if they are, in fact, followed.
These new rules should be the beginning, not the end, of democratic reforms. That we have them at all is a credit to years of advocacy and popular education, the landslide win of Question 1 on the ballot last year, and the willingness of candidates to make Beacon Hill’s inertia and lack of transparency a key issue. There is more to do, such as structural reforms like fixing a stipend system that centralizes power or the deeper work of changing the culture of Beacon Hill in a way that encourages legislators to be more willing to speak out, stand out, and not settle for inertia and small wins. But today, we celebrate.
At the start of the new legislative session, both Senate President Karen Spilka and House Speaker Ron Mariano pledged a commitment to increase the transparency, accountability, and efficiency of the legislative process.
Later that month, we helped organize 30 advocacy organizations on a joint letter outlining out a suite of reforms to boost public trust in the legislative process and to make a better process for rank-and-file legislators.
With a week left until we hit the second half of 2025, we finally have agreed-upon Joint Rules from the MA House and MA Senate, the set of practices and procedures governing how joint House-Senate committees operate. (They still need a vote, but that is assured.) Rules determine timelines, deadlines, access to information, and more.
Although the fact that this did not occur until late June is damning, the fact that it happened at all is exciting, as the Legislature has been punting on the issue of Joint Rules since 2019 due to previously irreconcilable differences. It is also exciting to see real wins for the community of activists and advocates fighting for greater transparency and democracy in the State House.
It’s been clear from the start that the House and Senate would agree to a new rule in which House committee members report out House bills and Senate members report out Senate bills. And that was in these new Rules.
But what else is new in the new Rules? (See a more detailed mark-up here.)
NEW WIN: 10-Day Hearing Notice
How much notice should be provided for joint committee hearings has been a sticking point between the House and Senate since 2019. The Senate has advocated for 5 days, but the House has wanted to stick to 72 hours. Those were their positions in their Joint Rules proposals earlier this year.
However, in our letter in January, we argued for two weeks: two weeks is the standard for people seeking vacation time off work, and if we want everyday people to be able to testify, we should provide two weeks of advance notice. By embracing a 10-day standard, the Joint Rules were more pro-participation than either chamber’s original proposal.
NEW WIN: Hearing Schedules
In our joint letter, we urged joint committees to establish clear hearing schedules for the session early on (we said April 1st). The new Joint Rules say that joint committees must provide a schedule of hearing dates within three weeks of committee appointments. Again, this is more pro-participation than either chamber’s original proposal. Both this and the ten-day notice rule recognize that what is good for the public is good for rank-and-file legislators. If we want meaningful hearings, then people need to be able to show up to testify, and legislators need to show up to listen to them. That can only happen with sufficient notice.
NEW WIN: Public Hearing on Rules
At the end of the two-year session, the Joint Committee on Rules will conduct a comprehensive review of the joint rules, including a public hearing where everyday people can testify. Legislators have often said that regular people don’t care about the rules when they have argued against transparency measures; this shows that they have finally acknowledged people do.
Committee Votes
All joint committee votes will be recorded and posted on the Legislature’s website within 48 hours. This has been a sticking point for six years between the House and Senate and the subject of significant advocacy (and public shock at our outlier status).
Unfortunately, the language about committee votes does not include House language that would have required co-chairs provide committee members with a redlined version of any bill they are expected to vote on, and it does not include Senate language specifying that study orders (a polite way of killing a bill) require votes.
The new rules also specify that if no action is taken on a bill, it will be given a study order. This could become a way to avoid taking votes on bills and will have to be guarded against.
Publicly Available Testimony
Joint committees will be required to make written testimony publicly available, with limitations for testimony that includes sensitive personal information, obscene content, or information that may jeopardize the health, wellness, or safety of the testifier or others. This is a win for access to information vis-a-vis existing rules, but not as far as the Senate’s proposal and what we called for. The Joint Rules will allow committee chairs to set the rules regarding how testimony is made publicly available, but the best standard would be to simply post all of it (with the above redactions as needed), as done in several other states. We’ll have to see how this all works in practice.
Bill Summaries
Joint committees will be required to make a summary of each bill publicly available on the General Court website prior to its hearing. Summaries will be written by committee staff, as per the House proposal, instead of the bill filers themselves (as per the Senate’s).
Earlier Reporting Deadline
Joint committees will now have until the first Wednesday in December of the first year of the session (as opposed to the first February in the second year) to take action on all bills in their purview, an attempt at avoiding the legislative backlog that always results and at setting up the second year for a clear focus on legislating. The House will still abide by the rolling deadlines in its own rules, which require bills to be reported out 60 days after they are heard (with the possibility of an additional 30-day extension).
Conference Committees
As per the Senate’s original proposal, the first meeting of a conference committee (the three senators and three representatives negotiating versions of a bill) will be open to the public and media. We should hope that these are more meaningful meetings than the one held by the Joint Committee on Rules, which was more of a mumbling and disjointed press conference than a real meeting.
Also, as per the Senate’s original proposal, a minimum of 24 hours of will be required between a conference committee report filing and a legislative vote, allowing more time for review by legislators and the public. If a conference committee report is filed after 8:00pm, it cannot be voted on until the second calendar day following the day on which it was filed. More time for review is good for the public and good for rank-and-file legislators.
In a limited version of a House proposal, conference reports would be accompanied by summaries, but only “whenever practicable.”
Tracking Attendance
The House proposal had argued for tracking attendance at joint committee hearings, and the Senate proposal excluded any such measure.
The Joint Rules landed on a place that recognizes the importance of showing up while accommodating excused absences. The new attendance record-keeping would begin on October 1 (it is unclear why so late) and would count attendance both in-person and remote, both full and partial (regarding the length of the hearing).
Chairs would record all members as “Present”, “Not Present”, or “Hearing conflicts with a legislative session, hearing, conference committee or commission meeting under joint rule 29A,” posted along with the archived hearing livestream video. A member who is not present due to military service, a medical emergency, or other specified reason as agreed to by the rules of the joint committee, shall have such reason noted on the recorded attendance.
Formal Sessions Past July 31st
The the new Joint Rules would permit the Legislature to meet in formal session after July 31 in the second year of the legislative session in the following cases: reports of conference committees formed on or before July 31, appropriation bills filed after July 31, and gubernatorial vetoes or amendments. We argued against pushing more of the work of the session after July 31st, as legislators are not in the State House as regularly and thus decision-making would be more centralized and less accountable. Last session’s practice of conference committees going on through the fall and unfinished business as of July 31 wasn’t one worth encouraging.