LAST TWO WEEKS IN REVIEW

Good afternoon. I’m your Representative in Congress, and I write to keep you informed.

A memorial commemorating lives lost to overdose in Needham. 
Image: Becca Schmill Foundation

Drug trafficking in Massachusetts: I visited the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) Field Division office in Bedford to hear from special agents about fentanyl and meth in Massachusetts. Three takeaways and two go-forwards:

Three takeaways:

 -  buying pills on the dark web is supremely dangerous, and young adults are especially susceptible. Often, they believe they are buying either OxyContin or Adderall, but are in fact ingesting fentanyl or meth, respectively. 
 -  ghost guns (3D-printed weapons or weapons without serial numbers) are often confiscated along with pill presses, underscoring how critical it is that Bay Staters support tough enforcement of the state's new ghost-gun legislation, rather than allowing it to be overturned at the ballot box this fall.
 -  the DEA is getting increasingly sophisticated at tracing illicit payments through crypto wallets, which is the preferred currency for drug traffickers.

Two go-forwards:

 -  I am reintroducing the bipartisan Chinese Communist Party Fentanyl Sanctions Act, which would codify and build on President Biden’s Executive Order 14059, which authorized sanctions against Chinese chemical manufacturers that export the global majority of fentanyl precursors. It also expands those authorities to target online marketplaces and money launderers.
 -  the DEA is hamstrung by encrypted apps, which is where drug trafficking coordination now happens. Congress will need to balance privacy against safety in considering legislation to address this.

Do you support stronger ghost gun regulations?

Bipartisan sanctions bill on Chinese fentanyl exports: This week, I re-introduced the bipartisan CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act to hold the Chinese Community Party (CCP) responsible for its role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis.

This bill was first introduced last Congress, when I served as Co-Chair of the Fentanyl Policy Working Group (PWG) as part of the House Select Committee on China. It would strengthen sanctions on China-based and CCP-backed entities engaged in drug trafficking by targeting the Chinese chemical manufacturers and online vendors that are profiting by poisoning the American people.

My co-sponsors and I remain focused on combating the CCP’s role in the fentanyl epidemic with legislation to curtail the threat via sanctions, trade and customs enforcement, and regulatory and enforcement measures.

Thousands of families in Massachusetts have been scarred by fentanyl. The Chinese chemical manufacturers that are exporting this addictive poison to American shores should bear the full force of U.S. sanctions and anti-money-laundering measures.

With the Mass Society of Addiction Medicine: While interdicting the supply of fentanyl is critical, Congress must also support patients and clinicians on the front lines. The Modernizing Opioid Treatment Access Act is bipartisan legislation to improve access to addiction treatment by allowing doctors to prescribe, and pharmacists to dispense, methadone. Currently, only methadone clinics may do so. I met with the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine to hear from physicians how this legislation would increase patients' adherence to treatment plans.

Pharmacists have the knowledge & facilities to safely store & dispense tightly regulated medications like methadone. Independent pharmacists are convenient and trusted frontline medical providers and Congress should empower them to meet the full scope of pharmacy needs.

Six months after Operation Epic Fury began, Donald Trump is now the only president in American history to start and lose a war by himself. Congress must step in to prevent this failed war from becoming a forever war.

I discussed my sense of urgency on Bloomberg’s Balance of Power, Newsweek's The 1600 podcast, as well as on Fox News Sunday over the last week. You can read some excerpts of my remarks from Bloomberg below:

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: I'm not voting for a single dollar to appropriate a failed, illegal war… Again, this is not the situation as an American I want to be in. I don't want to watch my country having lost a war and thinking about exit strategies. But it's the situation we find ourselves in because, having fought in Afghanistan, I refuse to be a policymaker who sits by and does nothing as this country gets dragged into the third debacle of the 21st century. My constituents are sick of these forever wars overseas. They want to see the United States exercise mature, respected global leadership.

Meanwhile, up north, there is nothing mature or respectable about how the president is behaving with America’s closest ally. Canada is a close economic, security, and cultural partner. This trade war will be expensive at a moment when everything already costs too much. I will do my part in Congress to relay to Canadians, through formal and informal channels, that the American public, and Massachusetts, values our alliance.

Forty percent of all wages paid in Massachusetts are directly or indirectly supported by R&D. Research pays the bills in the Bay State. Boston BioProducts, a family-owned company founded by Indian immigrants in the 1990s, is an excellent example. 

Boston BioProducts manufactures reagents for medical scientists, diagnostics, and biopharma companies. When academic labs like the Broad Institute (Cambridge) and biotechs like Vertex (Boston) spend more on R&D, they buy more reagents to conduct their experiments. Boston BioProducts (Milford) hires more technicians – paying good wages to individuals without requiring a bachelor's degree. When demand stays high, Boston BioProducts invests in its facility, hiring Hodess Cleanroom Construction (Attleboro) to build the state of the art. Hodess hires skilled construction workers for the project.

Our state's life sciences ecosystem is vital for patients everywhere. That is intuitive. Less discussed, and just as important: life sciences is also the prime source of good jobs, here in Massachusetts. That's one reason I am so focused in Washington on the funding & programming that supports life sciences R&D.

In Mansfield, pharmaceutical fulfillment supports more than 100 warehouse & maintenance jobs. Cencora is a large pharmaceutical solutions & supply-chain company, and I visited its Mansfield warehouse to meet with the people who keep it running. I asked about the impact of robotics on fulfillment operations and learned about European warehouses that are automating inventory management, which is leading to new jobs in maintenance & repair. 

I also toured new construction of cold-chain storage, largely driven by the increased demand for GLP-1 injectables that is spurring Cencora to invest $1 billion over the next five years in specialized distribution. New medicines = new jobs.

Meeting with independent pharmacists in Sherborn

This week, I joined Cutting to the Case with Cameron Sabet for a wide-ranging conversation on health care. We covered my bipartisan legislation addressing early Alzheimer’s detection, drug pricing reform, clinical trials modernization, and more. You can read an excerpt of the podcast below, or watch the full episode here.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: You pay premiums to your insurance company. Your insurance company negotiates with pharma to put their drug on their formulary through their PBM, and then they assign you a deductible and an out-of-pocket cost…Here's my question: Why is there an out-of-pocket cost for that drug?

Cameron Sabet: To reduce misuse and overuse.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: How many people do you know who are faking asthma to get access to inhalers?

Cameron Sabet: No one.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: What about people faking HIV to get access to HIV drugs? Or prostate cancer to get chemotherapy? The concept you're describing is called moral hazard…The idea is if you have out-of-pocket costs, if you have some skin in the game, you're going to behave differently…With some vanishingly rare exceptions in the biomedical field, there is no moral hazard. If you have cystic fibrosis, you need a drug for it. There's nothing free in this world… [don’t] promise free things to people. You have to pay health insurance premiums. We all do. We pay them when we're healthy, just the same way that you pay local taxes, and then if your house starts burning down, the fire department comes. You pay your health insurance premiums, and if the house starts burning down because your kid gets diagnosed with a genetic disorder, your insurance company needs to come in and pay their bills. That's their responsibility. That's what you gave them premiums for. These out-of-pocket costs and deductibles are unconscionable...Don't turn around [and] tell patients that you cover something, and then when that patient actually needs it, say, ‘Oh, but by the way, there's a coinsurance of 20%. So the list price was $7,000. Now you're paying, you know, $1,400 every month.’ That's not insurance. That's a shakedown.

…Cameron Sabet: If you could maybe change one FDA clinical research rule tomorrow to accelerate cures without compromising patient safety, what would it be?

Rep. Jake Auchincloss: Higher success rate in Phase 2. There was a great paper that just came out in Nature that looked at, of all the different phases in drug development, where would an improvement along the dimensions of quality or cost have the greatest impact on the total amortized cost of drug development? 

And what's very clear is increased success rate at Phase 2 – not even faster Phase 2 trials, not even cheaper Phase 2 trials – but increased success rate in Phase 2, would have the biggest bang for the buck. 

And so I view every question that we ask about [my] clinical trials modernization [bill] and… AI's use in drug discovery, the pivot point on those questions should be: what is the outcome on success rates in Phase 2? Because if it goes up, that you're getting literally probably twice as many shots on goal for the same dollar spent.

By 2033, there will be 16 million middle-income seniors, who do not qualify for subsidized housing but cannot afford continuum-of-care living. Enter Opus Newton, the first project in the nation to address this 'forgotten middle.' I joined the ribbon-cutting to celebrate 2Life CEO Amy Schectman's inspiring vision & indomitable execution to bring Opus from dream to reality. Not only does the project provide middle-income seniors with affordable housing, social connection, and health care access, but it also induces those same seniors to sell their houses to the next generation of Bay Staters, looking for the right home in which to raise a family. Congratulations, Amy, on a one-two punch for dignified retirement and homeownership opportunity.

Q&A sessions with seniors: Immigrants make up about 21 percent of the nursing home workforce, with many in direct care roles such as certified nursing assistants, nurses, dietary aides, and housekeepers. Their labor-force participation has declined due to fear, visa revocations and deportations. This has put pressure on assisted living facilities (ALFs) to fully staff nursing assistant & aide roles. For Massachusetts ALFs, it is especially critical to protect the Haitian workforce, who work at a high rate in direct care.  

I held Q&A sessions at Cornerstone Residence at Milford and Hebrew SeniorLife in Brookline, two assisted-living facilities, to discuss immigration, health care costs, and their interplay. Democrats passed an extension of Temporary Protected Status for Haiti out of the House of Representatives, doing an end-run around Speaker Johnson; now we must do the same in the Senate. 

Social Security policy to promote the dignity of work: The Aspire Seven Hills Adult Day Center in Hopedale welcomed me for a discussion with leadership and a tour. Aspire offers programming for individuals with disabilities. One issue that came up in this conversation – and comes up consistently – is the $2,000 asset limit for beneficiaries of Supplemental Security Income (SSI). This decades-old cap is a sharp disincentive for people with disabilities to work, marry and save. 

That’s why I’m a co-sponsor of the bipartisan SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act, which would raise the asset limit to $10,000 for individuals ($20,000 for married couples) and index the limit to inflation. Experts estimate that modernizing SSI could cut beneficiaries’ poverty in half; it also affords individuals with disabilities the opportunity and dignity of a job and a paycheck, without worrying about losing dollars earned with forfeited SSI eligibility. 

I consistently hear from individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and their families, how important employment is to them. This bill makes that easier.

At an Ocean Spray Cranberry bog in 2022

Cranberries aren’t candy: Ocean Spray Cranberry is a cooperative that markets & distributes cranberry products on behalf of hundreds of family farmers. With HQ in Lakeville in my district, I have developed a strong working relationship with cranberry farmers to ensure that FDA regulation follows the science on this unique product, which has demonstrated health benefits (including urinary tract health) but which can be mischaracterized as candy due to arbitrary distinctions between natural versus added sugars, which are chemically identical. Total sugar content should be the criterion for evaluation. 

It was great to speak with cranberry farmers in Washington — and when you come visit yourself, my office offers packs of dried cranberries as a snack. 

More housing for Fall River: The One SouthCoast Chamber of Commerce welcomed me for a Q&A with the southeastern Massachusetts business community. In addition to speaking about current events, I addressed economic development in Fall River. Since taking office in 2021, I have worked closely with the mayor and state delegation to direct millions of dollars for infrastructure improvements to the Flint neighborhood and to the Rt 79 waterfront redevelopment. I am excited that the waterfront is now out to bid for a transformative, 20-acre mixed-use development.

This week I met with congregants from Beth Menachem Chabad in Newton. I listened to individuals describe specific experiences of antisemitism, including verbal threats and vehicular intimidation, vandalism, and ongoing insecurity at their places of worship. Government and society must address the re-emergence of this ancient hate through education, social media reforms, and leadership.

On Fox News Sunday this past weekend, I was asked about Hasan Piker, the popular social media influencer who has been campaigning with some Democrats. I rejected his rhetoric, including excuses for 9/11, venom directed against Israel and Jews, and his celebration of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Afterwards, in a new video livestream, Piker said the following while placing the picture of a Jewish elected official behind him:

“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”

This bigotry has no place in the Democratic Party. I reject it, as I rejected Graham Platner’s. The Democratic Party needs to be able to reach young voters who are angry at the status quo. Viciously scapegoating Jews or Israel for American challenges is a toxic and self-defeating attempt to do that, which every Democrat should condemn.

Question: I was appalled to read that ICE is budgeting money for gloves that send electric shocks to further subdue frightened immigrants who are being stopped and taken from the streets. What can you and the Dems do to prevent this further violence to immigrants?

- Sherry from Chestnut Hill

Answer: Getting Secretary Kristi Noem fired was a start, and now Congress must ensure that the new Secretary installs body cameras – not electric gloves – on all agents, improves recruitment, training, and use-of-force standards, and cooperates with all state & local investigations. Ultimately – when Democrats take back power – funding and authority for ICE, which has morphed from an arm of the law into an instrument of fear, must be stripped to the studs and rebuilt. 

You can submit a question for a future newsletter here. Please note that casework inquiries for federal agencies must be submitted to my website here. My casework team will respond to these in a timely manner. 

Onwards,

Jake