End-of-Year Update

Hello, I’m Congressman Jake Auchincloss, your representative in Congress. As we approach the end of 2024 and the conclusion of the 118th Congress, I want to update you on the work I’m doing in Washington to support Bay State families. The best way to keep up with my work throughout the year is to sign up for my newsletter. 

Fighting for lower drug prices: Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the 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 cancer drugs 1,000%+, price-gouge community pharmacists, and raise co-pays for sick patients and premiums for all of us. 

This Congress, I introduced the bipartisan Pharmacists Fight Back (PFB) Act with Representative Diana Harshbarger, a pharmacist, to crack down on the price-gouging abuses of PBMs. Backed by 60 cosponsors, our bill prohibits PBMs from mandating patients receive expensive brand-name drugs when cheaper, generic drugs are prescribed and readily available. It implements a transparent pharmacy reimbursement model using cost-plus pricing for all pharmacies. The PFB Act also protects patients and community pharmacies from the insurance practice of steering to their own affiliated pharmacies, which has brought them over $1 billion in revenue off the backs of patients. 

Pressuring Big Tech to address non-consensual deepfakes: TikTok and other social media platforms possess unprecedented wealth and power, but they are not using it responsibly. Social media platforms have been exploiting children’s attention for the benefit of advertisers, plundering our civil discourse, and allowing content like deepfakes to proliferate on their platforms. Today, nearly 100% of online deepfakes are non-consensual, explicit content targeting women. 

In addition to co-leading successful legislation to force the divestment of TikTok from its Chinese Communist ownership, I introduced the bipartisan Intimate Privacy Protection Act (IPPA) with Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa to tackle the sickening rise in illicit deepfake content on social media platforms. Under IPPA, social media platforms must uphold a duty of care for their users, including processes to:

• Prevent cyberstalking, intimate privacy violations, and digital forgeries 
• Report instances of these harms, as well as to investigate them
• Remove, within 24 hours, information that the provider knows or has reason to know constitutes one of these harms
• Securely log data to ensure victims' access to evidence for legal proceedings

Despite Big Tech’s misleading claims, there is no impairment of the First Amendment in this duty of care. The ‘speech’ that the social media companies are required to take down is well established in American jurisprudence as a civil violation, not a civil liberty. Non-consensual, graphic images are not protected speech.

Supporting public transit: I introduced the Supporting Transit Commutes Act, which restores incentives, removed in the 2017 Tax Law, for employers to provide commuter subsidies to their employees. Nationally, public transit ridership is down significantly post-Covid. In Greater Boston, the MBTA is making significant improvements to safety and speed, and a boost in ridership would help kickstart a virtuous cycle of more revenue and better service. Providing transit benefits helps rev that kickstart, in addition to lowering transit costs for commuters and reducing traffic.

Dismantling the Fentanyl Supply Chain: This Congress, I served as the Democratic co-chair of the Select Committee on China's Fentanyl Working Group to drive policy to interdict fentanyl at its source. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Mexican drug cartels are poisoning Americans to death through fentanyl exports, nearly all of which originate from a few dozen Chinese manufacturers. The Working Group created three pieces of legislation to address the fentanyl crisis: 

• The Joint Task Force to Counter Illicit Synthetic Narcotics Act would establish a joint task force, with leadership accountable to the president and to Congress, to fuse together federal counter-fentanyl action in law enforcement, customs, sanctions, and diplomacy
• The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act would codify President Biden’s counternarcotics executive order and grant the Executive Branch additional authority to target bad actors in China that facilitate fentanyl trafficking, from the manufacturers to the ports to the online platforms
• The International Protection from PRC Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids Act would impose civil penalties on Chinese ships docking at U.S. ports if they fail to properly vet their cargo for fentanyl.

The U.S. government must respond forcefully at every link of the supply chain, beginning with China. The CCP has been subsidizing and facilitating the export of fentanyl precursors while stiff-arming American requests for law enforcement. This must end. I will continue to work across the aisle to stop the overdoses and keep fentanyl off our shores. 

Combatting antisemitism: The terrorism of October 7th, 2023, was an attack against Israel's right to exist. Israel, though, was not its only target. This barbarity was meant to make Jews of all nations afraid. To my fellow Jews here in Massachusetts, it was an earthquake that still reverberates in ways both personal and political. 

Since October 7th, there has been a surge in antisemitism both across the United States and around the world. Whether it's addressing antisemitism on college campuses, condemning pogroms abroad, or defending Israel against charges rooted in double standards and delegitimization, I remain steadfast in my commitment to the US-Israel alliance and to combating antisemitism whether it arises on the left or the right.

Reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s victory: We are approaching the three-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Three years into World War II, the United States and its allies had not yet won, either.

With support, Ukraine can achieve victory:

• A secure eastern border
• Freedom of navigation in the Black Sea
• Accession to the European Union

• Nearly $1.5 million in tax refunds returned 
• 1,270+ casework inquiries completed 
• 160+ people helped with Social Security benefits 
• 300+ constituents helped with immigration issues 
• Nearly 45,000 responses to constituents through emails, letters, and phone calls 

If you need assistance with a federal agency, please contact my office here. The best way to keep up with my work throughout the year is to sign up for my newsletter.

Onwards,

Jake