LAST THREE WEEKS IN REVIEW

Good morning. I’m your Representative in Congress, and I write to keep you informed. Go Pats! 

Holding the line on DHS funding: The ICE agents committing violent crimes, including those involved in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, must be prosecuted, and their leaders — including Kristi Noem — must be fired. I joined WPRI’s Kim Kalunian to discuss my calls for Secretary Noem’s impeachment. 

An Appropriations measure passed the House this week, containing six bills. Five of them are bipartisan bills that fund the National Institutes of Health, community health centers, and earmarked infrastructure projects in the Massachusetts Fourth, amongst many other programs. I voted Yes on these bills previously and continue to support them.

The measure also contained a sixth bill, which funds ICE for two weeks while Democrats negotiate reforms. I previously voted against funding ICE for eight months. My position did not change when the timeline shrank to two weeks; it was still a blank check for a broken agency. I support law enforcement. I reject the ICE paramilitary. 

The Appropriations measure passed the House by a 217-214 vote; the entire Massachusetts delegation opposed the bill but almost two dozen House Democrats broke ranks to support it.

It is regrettable that House Democrats did not unite in opposition in order to force the Speaker’s hand, as I called on the caucus to do last weekend. Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to back requirements for warrants and bans on masks. I will continue to vote No on funding for ICE, absent an overhaul that makes it fit for a free people, including:

ICE out of Minnesota & full federal cooperation on investigations
revamp use-of-force & due process standards
require masks off, body cameras on re-prioritize to border security & deporting criminals, not dragnet operations that sow fear in American cities.

Speaking with constituents at a Needham vigil for Renee Good.

Town Hall on ICE operations: More than 1,000 constituents joined me for a zoom town hall focused on ICE operations in Minnesota.

The administration’s repression and gaslighting in Minnesota is the president’s most violent attack on the rule of law since January 6th, 2021. We must meet these attacks with clarity & force.

Public safety is the first duty of the government. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not just failing to protect public safety, it is an active threat to it. ICE's budget was tripled in last year’s Medicaid cuts bill (H.R. 1), which I opposed. With more funding than every other federal law enforcement agency combined, including for crime, guns, drugs, corruption, and counter-terrorism, ICE does not need more money — it needs to be hammered back into an arm of the law, instead of a presidential paramilitary.

That includes holding leaders accountable. Secretary Noem must be fired for her abysmal conduct. On January 20, 2026, I joined my colleagues in sending a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, demanding a thorough investigation into Secretary Noem’s unlawful actions, and I am a cosponsor of H.Res. 996, a resolution to impeach Secretary Noem for high crimes and misdemeanors. The resolution sets forth three articles of impeachment, alleging that Secretary Noem obstructed congressional oversight of immigration enforcement efforts; violated public trust by directing ICE to carry out warrantless arrests, forgo due process, and use violence against U.S. citizens; and engaged in self-dealing by using her position for personal gain.  

Secretary Noem’s failure of leadership and the thuggery of the ICE agents she has recruited has produced tragic consequences. I am outraged by the January 7 killing of Renee Good and the January 24 killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration enforcement officers in Minneapolis. Secretary Noem has claimed, without evidence, that these agents acted in self-defense. Contrary to the Administration’s lies, there is no standing to claim that these officers had no choice but to shoot and kill Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti.

The gaslighting is an attack upon truth just as the violent assaults are attacks upon the law. These incidents demand immediate, impartial investigations, under the lead of Minnesota authorities, and the agents involved must be relieved of duty and prosecuted. I would also support Governor Walz in further mobilizing the Minnesota National Guard, under his command, to protect public safety by monitoring and intervening in ICE operations that violate civil rights.   

I have consistently opposed the Administration’s arrests of immigrants in communities throughout the United States, including here in Massachusetts. For example, Marcelo Gomes da Silva, an 18-year-old Milford High School student, was detained by ICE agents while driving with his teammates to volleyball practice. The agents were looking for his father, but arrested Marcelo after discovering that his visa had expired. Marcelo was then held at two separate ICE facilities in Massachusetts before being released from custody after a judge granted him bond. I joined Milford students and residents in solidarity to call for his release, and I stood alongside him in support as he spoke to the public after finally being reunited with his family. 

At Tufts University, Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish PhD student, was arrested and detained by ICE agents dressed in plain clothes and masks. DHS alleges that Ms. Ozturk engaged in activities supporting Hamas, leading to the revocation of her F-1 student visa, but she has no reported record of violence or harassment. Following her arrest, I publicly condemned ICE’s actions immediately and joined my colleagues in sending a letter to Secretary Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons demanding the Administration secure her release, restore her visa, and provide more details about their justification under the Immigration and Nationality Act. On May 9, a federal judge ordered her immediate release pending further proceedings.   

These escalations by DHS are not isolated events. I rejected the President’s deployment of Marines to Los Angeles last year, warning in the Washington Post that the violation of posse comitatus, which prohibits the military from being used in law enforcement, was unnecessary, illegal, and unfair to both Angelenos and the Marines themselves. Under sustained political, legal, and popular pressure, the President has backed down, for now, from military deployments to U.S. cities. We must keep the pressure up while recognizing and protecting against his actions to weaponize ICE, instead. 

America was built on the promise that the circumstances of your birth should not determine the condition of your life. Our country formed as a nation of immigrants. To ensure we follow through on our promise, we must defend against xenophobia, secure the border, and reform the immigration system to ensure order, fairness, and the continued vitality of legal immigration. When we shut our doors to immigrants and refugees, or when we deprive those here of the same rights and opportunities as native-born Americans, we deplete our economic and cultural richness.  

To advance the immigration reform that our country so desperately needs, I am an original co-sponsor of the Dignity Act, which would create legal certainty for undocumented individuals, grant green cards to individuals who have been waiting for more than ten years, improve border security and infrastructure, and codify a host of other reforms supported by a majority of Americans.

No one is above the law, or below it. The Constitution protects the rights of all people residing in this country—citizens, refugees, and immigrants alike. The president is lashing out because he is getting weaker.

We who support the Constitution are getting stronger, and we’re not backing down.

Do you support banning masks and warrantless street grabs for ICE agents?

Texas state representative, and candidate for U.S. Senate, James Talarico joined me in a Fox News op-ed to warn against the president’s blood for oil adventurism in Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro was a tyrant, but his capture should not be a pretext for extortion of a weak nation by a strong one. 

The president has no strategy for a democratic transition, no congressional authority for his past or present operations, and no credibility that he won't just embrace the remaining leaders of the brutal Chavista regime, like he did the former Honduran president and drug lord when it suited him.

Of greatest immediate concern: the president has refused to rule out boots on the ground to serve as armed guards for oil extraction. 

The U.S. military, which conducted itself heroically and proficiently in the capture operation, deserves a commander in chief operating lawfully and strategically. 

After voting No in December on war powers resolutions, Republicans in Congress must now join Democrats to grab hold of the steering wheel of Venezuela policy and prevent this capture from spiraling into open-ended nation-building or petro-extortion. To build pressure on congressional Republicans, I made that case on Fox News with a dynamic leader from the nation’s biggest energy producing state.

I recently joined 24 Members of Congress in a letter urging the European Union (EU) to formally designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization under EU law, following their brutal crackdown on protestors. In this letter, we urged the EU “to stand on the right side of history and designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization to end their impunity in committing atrocities against the people of Europe, the United States, Iran, and around the world.” 

You can read the full letter here. 

An estimated 12,000 Iranians have been killed by the regime during the crackdown. The people of Iran deserve a government they choose and an economy that works. Designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization is a step in the right direction, and I welcome the EU’s decision to do so. 

I have also co-sponsored H.Res.993, a resolution that denounces the Iranian regime and expresses support for the Iranian people.

During the height of the protests, I repeatedly urged the Trump administration to unlock Internet freedom for protestors by surging direct-to-cell technology into the country, which enables protesters to bypass the regime’s jamming and access the Internet directly via satellites. Unlike the military action the president has been contemplating, he has both congressional authorization and appropriations for Internet freedom operations. He failed to act.

For months, I’ve warned that the FDA Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher (CNPV) program would accelerate drug and biologic approvals not for the most promising scientific discoveries – but for companies most closely aligned with MAGA. 

STAT News reported on the internal town hall the FDA hosted yesterday in an attempt to “quell staff and external concerns” over this program. It noted that “the public - and lawmakers - already seem ready to engage” on CNPV, and that [Rep Auchincloss] is “demanding transparency and the ethics' disclosures of the senior officials involved.” 

I want FDA’s career scientists to know that I have their back. I will continue to conduct vigorous oversight of the program’s integrity. Yesterday, I dialed up the pressure, calling on the FDA to confirm or refute the findings of my office’s investigation into: 

 -  the program’s potential for abuse and whether or not the FDA has the legal authority to establish the program; 

 -  the role and decisions of political appointees at the FDA, and whether scientists and clinicians have been overruled; 

 -  and the FDA’s lack of responsiveness and transparency about this secretive program, despite strong indications that ethics and legal requirements are not being met. 

Under Commissioner Makary, the FDA is replacing safety and efficacy with fear and favor. The CNPV is the tip of the spear. Unless Congress stops it, the Trump Administration will pursue more illegal, unethical, and unwise efforts.

The central theme of Utah Governor Spencer Cox & my discussion at Harvard's Institute of Politics was touch-grass populism, which can be broken down into three main elements: 

 -  legal & policy action to break up the political & economic power of the social media platforms and other miners & merchants of digital dopamine, like online gambling; 
 -  an embrace of IRL community, particularly unstructured play for our children; and 
 -  a focus on building out norms & laws that support a temperance movement for digital dopamine, like school committees banning cell phones bell to bell and parents banding together to 'wait until 8th' before buying smartphones for their children. 

Governor Cox has made Utah a leader on touch-grass policy, and I have introduced the UnAnxious Generation package of social media bills to spur Congress into action. Bipartisan momentum is growing. 

But so is the counter-lobbying. 

To secure the support of the American public, touch-grass populists should focus on children's cognitive & mental health (not market structure issues); ground arguments in the science of brain development (not antitrust law); and put forward clear & concrete proposals for action, like age verification. 

On my birthday, I met students across ages & places who make me optimistic about the generation to come. At Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics forum the night before, Utah Governor Spencer Cox & I discussed the need for a temperance movement for social media & online gambling. College & graduate students asked probing questions about polarization online and off, building IRL community, and restoring public virtue. 

At the Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School in Franklin, I listened to 8th graders deliver their Capstone service learning project presentations. With poise & insight, the middle schoolers described projects dedicated to air filtration, blindness, genetic disorders, hunger, and more. They explained the ups & downs of their efforts and discussed their personal growth over the project. They all recognized their teachers for outstanding support & counsel.

Across town, I sat down with Kahlil Mateus, senior at Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School. He interviewed me for his podcast "Talkin' TC", asking wide-ranging questions. I detailed my legislation that would fund and build 1,000 trade schools across the nation. 

To close the day, my Newton district office hosted the students who participated in the Congressional App Challenge. Not surprisingly, AI featured heavily in this year's software design. Congratulations to winner Aaron Prager. His app, BoostT1D, is a diabetes management app. It is designed to make glucose control smarter, safer, and simpler. He has been invited to House of Code, a science fair held every spring at the U.S. Capitol.

Bellingham's location on I-495 has positioned it well to host logistics & warehousing companies and to offer reasonable commutes to Boston, Providence and Worcester for its residents. I met with local leaders to discuss 

 -  economic development, including water infrastructure investments, for which I've been able to secure $1M in federal funding;

 -  housing development;

 -  and the potential to attract supply-chain robotics firms. 

We also reviewed town budgeting for education and health insurance, which are inflating faster than property tax revenues almost everywhere. 

In addition to local leadership, I heard from small business owners in Bellingham, asking each one what they were most excited about and most worried about for 2026. Proprietors at PJ's Smoke N Grill; Renaissance Salon; Active Physical Therapy; and the Famous House of Pizza gave me snapshots of their business. 

Again, health premiums were a theme — underscoring the importance of congressional action to move the debate beyond simply 'who pays?' and onto 'how do we lower the bill?'. Reforms to drug-pricing middlemen for which I have long been advocating and that passed into law this week will help, but they are just the beginning of the structural changes that are necessary.

I recently sat down in my Newton office for a wide-ranging interview at the start of this legislative year. I’ve included an excerpt of our conversation below, lightly edited for clarity:

Brookline.News: Turning away from policy for a second, as a human but also as someone who helps run the federal government, what do you feel when you’re watching things like these shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, or the detention of five-year-old Liam Ramos? What’s your human reaction to that?

Me: Visceral disgust, to watch masked agents kill people. I’d add a third dimension to that. It’s not just as a person, it’s not just as a policymaker. It’s also because my office and I interact with immigrants constantly in the Massachusetts Fourth. There’s a Haitian population here. We have a Brazilian population. We have an Ecuadorian population here, Portuguese, Israeli, Russian.

It’s a polyglot district, and we feel the fear from our constituents. I was just speaking earlier this week with a woman whose sons are in high school and she’s terrified of dropping them off for the bus. She’s a legal immigrant, but she has given them passports to take with them every day. We hear that throughout the district. I met in Milford with a priest who serves a parish that is predominantly Ecuadorian immigrants, and they’re scared. They are scared. ICE agents who were circling around their church one Sunday. That’s not what we do in America. 

Brookline.News: What’s it like trying to work with Republicans on the Hill these days? 

Me: My job is to represent the values and advance the priorities of my constituents. I often am in ferocious opposition to the Republicans, whether it’s the Medicaid cuts, whether it’s the ICE funding, whether it is the anti-vax crusade of RFK. 

To advance priorities, I am often pushing bipartisan legislation. [For example], on holding social media corporations accountable [and] on expanding sources of clean energy. I have another bipartisan bill to lower the cost of prescription drugs. I think a good legislator needs to be able to do both those things: the values based, and the priorities based.

I joined the community breakfast at Bristol Community College (BCC) in Fall River. We heard from the keynote Dr. Sean Edmund Rogers, Dean of URI College of Business; from BCC's student essay winner; and from the pastor of the Bethel AME Church of Fall River. 

We also learned the inspiring story of Fall River native Thomas Hudner, Jr., Korean War aviator and Medal of Honor recipient, and his wingman, Jesse Brown, who — despite Captain Hudner's heroic efforts near Chosin Reservoir — died in combat as the Navy's first black aviator. 

The keynote speaker reminded us all that Dr. King, while lionized today, was in fact disapproved of by up to three quarters of Americans during the 1960s. The civil rights leader was not focused on what was safe, politic, or popular, but what was right. No exposition better conveys this conviction than Dr. King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail, from which I quoted in my remarks:

"[There is a] strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."

Question: What are you and Congress going to do to stop Trump from trying to steal Greenland?

- John from Sharon 

Answer:  The president is all hat and no cattle when it comes to Greenland. His claims of a national security imperative to own or operate Greenland are unsubstantiated – American cooperation with Denmark and Greenland for air defense, Arctic power projection, and access to critical minerals is already superb. His irresponsible and juvenile threats to use the military were walked back. And his attempts to bully Greenlanders, Danes, and our NATO allies through tariffs backfired with significant damage to the reputation of the United States.

I have communicated directly with many diplomats from our NATO allies to re-emphasize my support for the transatlantic alliance. I have also communicated directly to an audience across the Atlantic, through the BBC, that this president is not speaking for most Bay Staters or Americans.

Onwards,

Jake