LAST 2 WEEKS IN REVIEW

I’m your representative in Congress and I write to keep you informed.

• Protecting intimate privacy online
• Ukraine seizes the initiative in Kursk
• Countering the threat of Iran & its proxy terror forces
  
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• Independent pharmacists offer feedback & support for my new drug-pricing legislation
• Meeting with hostage families in my Newton office
• The cutting edge of aerial drone technology
• Touring the state-of-the-art Carroll Center for the Blind
• Landscape architecture’s birthplace at Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
• Previewing Sturdy Hospital’s new ER with Senator Warren
• Discussing bipartisanship with Norfolk seniors
• Honoring our Purple Heart veterans

On the Hill

Countering the threat of Iran & its proxy terror forces: As Israel prepares to defend itself against attacks from Iran and Hezbollah, the United States is ensuring that Israel will not defend itself alone. Terrorism cannot be tolerated. 

I joined CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to signal support for our ally and also to urge Israel’s prime minister to present a ‘day-of’ (not day after) governance strategy for Gaza that improves security & standard of living. The most effective way to defeat Hamas and to marginalize Iran is to forge a coalition of Arab states, the United States, Europe, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority that reconstructs Gaza, stabilizes the West Bank, and rejects terrorism. 

Ukraine seizing the initiative in Kursk: Vladimir Putin is rattled by Ukraine’s Kursk offensive. Ukraine has gained something even more valuable than territory: the initiative. This is as much psychological as tactical. I joined CNN’s Jim Acosta to discuss what the United States can do to keep the tables turned. 

Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine is bankrolled by its energy exports. The United States should empower Ukraine to strike Russian oil refining capacity with U.S.-made ballistic missiles and fighter jets. Russian exports of refined oil will dry up and impair Putin’s war economy. Crude oil could still be exported, subject to the Western price cap, so global energy prices need not rise.

 It’s not just Russian oil infrastructure; the United States should authorize Ukraine to strike all sites of military application within Russia, including troop-staging, logistics, and launch sites that enable Russia to kill Ukrainian civilians and wage total war.

Combating the rise in malicious deepfakes: I introduced the bipartisan Intimate Privacy Protection Act (IPPA) with Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa to tackle the sickening rise in deepfake pornography on social media platforms. Malicious and deceptive AI-generated content is a growing problem, and nearly 100% of online deepfake videos are non-consensual, pornographic content of women. 

The New York Times recently documented the increase in popularity of ‘nudification apps’ used by teenagers to create convincing deepfake pornography of their female peers. This content is running rampant on online platforms, posing nightmare scenarios for women and teenage girls. IPPA would prohibit social media companies from hiding behind their immunity shield, Section 230. It would require a process to take down legally defined online torts. These torts include cyberstalking, intimate privacy violations, and digital forgeries. 

Under IPPA, social media platforms must uphold a duty of care for their users. This requires platforms to have a clear and accessible process to report, investigate, and remove toxic content within 24 hours of the platform knowing it constitutes a legally defined tort. Despite claims from Big Tech, there is no impairment of the First Amendment: the ‘speech’ that the social media companies are required to take down are well established in American jurisprudence as civil violations, not civil liberties. Contrarian opinions are vital in the American public square; but revenge pornography or deepfake pornography is not speech, it’s criminal harassment and a grotesque violation.

Trillion-dollar social media companies cannot monetize our children’s attention spans for ad revenue while turning a blind eye to the spread of non consensual deepfakes on their platforms. As young parents, I look forward to working across the aisle with Representative Hinson to protect intimate privacy and de-platform toxic behavior.

Do you support Congressional action requiring social media companies to remove deceptive deepfakes online?

Around the Fourth

Independent pharmacists offer feedback & support for my new drug pricing legislation: Massachusetts independent pharmacists and I held a zoom roundtable to discuss my new bipartisan legislation: the Pharmacists Fight Back Act. Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the Fortune 20 drug-pricing-middlemen owned by health insurance companies, have been abusing the U.S. healthcare system for decades. These PBMs have captured $300 billion but research & develop no drugs nor treat any patients. They mark up specialty drugs 1,000%+, price-gouge community pharmacists, and raise co-pays for sick patients and premiums for all of us. 

My legislation cracks down on abuses like spread pricing, clawback fees, and steering that are technically complicated, but intuitively quite simple. They are the behavior of monopolists hidden from public scrutiny. I also attempt to rein in the PBMs’ use of offshoring, in Ireland and Switzerland, to avoid U.S. antitrust law. 

I’m grateful for the specific and substantive feedback, particularly on calculating ‘fair dispensing fees’, from Todd Brown, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Independent Pharmacists Association, and the several dozen pharmacists who joined the call. I know my friend & fellow PBM reformer State Representative Alan Silvia was taking careful notes, too. 

Pharmacists are small-business owners and trusted medical providers whose input & advocacy is critical to thoughtful drug-pricing legislation.

Meeting with hostage families in my Newton office: The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza are living a nightmare, sometimes literally: one woman described to me how two toddlers recently released from the tunnels continue to wake up in terror multiple times every night.

These families conveyed to me their strong belief that Prime Minister Netanyahu is an obstacle to the release of the hostages. I relayed to them Congress’ continued bipartisan support for hostage release as the cardinal objective of the war and diplomacy, and that I will use my voice & vote to advance that objective.

The future of drone technology in Waltham: Skydio is the country’s leading aerial drone company. Its CEO recently testified to the Select Committee on China on the drone supply chain (big takeaway: battery inputs are key). I followed up with a visit to Skydio’s Waltham office to dig deeper on the future of drone warfare and the Bay State’s potential as an R&D hub for maritime & aerial uncrewed systems.

We discussed human + machine tactics in the Indo-Pacific, from reconnaissance to combat; procurement policy at the Pentagon; and how Massachusetts can compete to host a drone cluster. Just as we have in life sciences, clean energy, medical devices, and more, I believe Bay Staters can establish a dense & differentiated network of R&D talent for uncrewed systems.

Touring the state-of-the-art Carrol Center for the Blind: The Carroll Center for the Blind is a nationally renowned vision rehabilitation center, serving those of all ages and stages of vision impairment for decades. With its leadership & staff, including former clients, I toured the Newton campus to learn more about the cutting-edge for vision rehab.

The Carroll Center also recommended for my sponsorship the Blind Americans Return to Work Act, a bipartisan bill that would remove the financial disincentive to work for the vision impaired under the Social Security Disability Insurance program.

Picnics and landscaping at Fairsted: Fun fact: Brookline is the birthplace of landscape architecture. Along with State Representative Tommy Vitolo, Selectboard Chair Bernard Greene, and Brookline local officials, I toured the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site. Olmsted set up shop on Warren Street in the 19th century, and for a century ‘Fairsted’ housed the landscape architecture firm that completed two thousand projects in Massachusetts alone, while advancing the ‘genius of place’ design philosophy. The public is welcome at this historic site to learn about parkmaking and to enjoy picnics and games in a landscape that Olmsted himself designed. 

Visiting Sturdy Hospital’s new ER with Senator Warren: Sturdy Health is building a new emergency department, which will reduce wait times and add a 12-bed behavioral health unit. I joined Senator Warren, who helped fund the project, in Attleboro to meet with Sturdy’s leadership.

We discussed the intersection of housing with healthcare; efforts to improve capacity across the Massachusetts health system; and the effects of Steward’s collapse on nearby providers like Sturdy. I came away with a new bill idea, too: requiring insurance companies to respond to prior authorization requests 24/7.

Bipartisan policy discussions with Norfolk seniors: I addressed Norfolk seniors alongside Republican State Representative Marcus Vaughn and relayed that, even in election season, I put politics aside when it comes to crafting sound legislation. 

This summer, I have led bipartisan legislation on lowering co-pays and premiums for prescription drugs (the Pharmacists Fight Back Act) and combating the horrific rise in deepfake, nonconsensual pornography (the Intimate Privacy Protection Act). 

This spring, I helped pass bipartisan clean-energy legislation (the Advance Act). 

This winter, I supported bipartisan border security legislation that unfortunately failed due to the reversal of House Republicans. I am currently co-leading a bipartisan working group on interdicting fentanyl supplies from China. 

In a divided Washington, bipartisanship is essential to delivering wins for constituents, and I’ll continue to work with good-faith partners across the aisle.

Honoring our Purple Heart combat wounded veterans: August 7th is Purple Heart Day. I joined the Town of Franklin, a Purple Heart Community, in honoring four Franklin veterans from Korea and Vietnam wounded in service. Their heroism is an inspiration to all Americans, and an example to the next generation – like the Junior ROTC participants whose instructor attended and who provided me an update on their curriculum and development. 

The Purple Heart (originally the ‘Badge for Military Merit’) is the oldest medal, first awarded by George Washington 240 years ago. At that time, the Continental Army was the only national institution – the Constitution had not yet been drafted and the Continental Congress was in disarray. The officers and enlisted of the Continental Army were among the first to define themselves as ‘Americans’, rather than allegiant to their states. In this respect, the Purple Heart is one of the first symbols of America as a nation, and those who wear it deserve special recognition. 

Onwards,

Jake