This year, the House GOP pursued a series of wedge issues, torpedoing bipartisan policies in subservience to Donald Trump. Congressman Jake Auchincloss remained focused on working left, right, and center to deliver local wins and bipartisan solutions for the Fourth District of Massachusetts.
Congressman Auchincloss’ Legislative Victories and Representing Values
- As a “heavy hitter on national security issues,” Auchincloss remained a forceful voice against China, Iran, and Russia’s global axis of authoritarianism serving on the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
- Served as Democratic co-chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party’s Fentanyl Policy Working Group, where he led three bipartisan bills to crack down on the Chinese Communist Party’s role in subsidizing fentanyl precursors and analogues by coordinating U.S. government actions and implementing sanctions and fines.
- As a Member of the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, helped draft and pass the overwhelmingly bipartisan reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, including improvements to air traffic control recruitment and training and his own legislation to help airports reduce congestion at the curb.
- Continued his leading role as an advocate for Ukraine’s right to defend itself from Russia’s invasion forces, and was a strong proponent for the congressional aid package earlier this year.
- Led a letter with 52 House Members urging the Biden administration to pursue more vigorous Russian oil sanctions and questioning an exception granted to a U.S.-based company conducting business in Russia and fueling Vladimir Putin’s war economy.
- Delivered cable hit after hit forcefully urging President Biden to remove all remaining restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S.-manufactured weapons in the final months of his presidency. Auchincloss’ Wall Street Journal op-ed implored Biden to enable Ukraine to deploy combined-arms tactics inside enemy territory, just as NATO militaries would.
- Drafted and gained 60 bipartisan cosponsors for the “strongest set of reforms introduced in Congress to date” to tackle the prescription drug price-gouging abuses of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) – the middlemen of drug pricing – with the bipartisan Pharmacists Fight Back (PFB) Act
- Confronted the surge in campus antisemitism by holding to account the eight colleges and universities scoring poorly on the ADL’s campus antisemitism report, and by leading a bipartisan letter with over 20 U.S. lawmakers urging the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to investigate these incidents on college campuses and issue a report to Congress with policy recommendations, as it did 20 years ago
- As an “outspoken advocate for gun violence reduction efforts,” wrote to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to encourage school districts to share federal resources available under the Biden administration on safe firearms storage with parents and guardians.
- Used his unique perspective as the youngest parent in the Democratic Caucus to take on trillion-dollar social media corporations on behalf of parents for their corrosive effects on youth mental health. He co-led the successful TikTok divestment bill and introduced his own legislation, the Verifying Kids Online Privacy Act, to raise the age of internet adulthood from 13 to 16 in support of replacing the phone-based childhood with the play-based childhood
- Worked across the aisle to tackle explicit deepfakes on social media – nearly 100% of which is non-consensual, intimate content of women. His legislation, the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, would amend Section 230 to prevent social media companies from evading their responsibility to remove deepfake pornography from their platforms.
- Delivering Results at Home
Since his first term in Congress, Congressman Auchincloss has secured tens of millions of dollars in water, transportation, and social services funding across the Massachusetts Fourth. The funds have fixed bridges, cleaned water, and unlocked land for housing. In the past year, he was able to secure over $7 million in FY24 Community Project Funding grants.
In the past year, Auchincloss’ office provided assistance to constituents across all 35 cities and towns in MA-04:
- Nearly $1.494 million in tax refunds returned
- 1,270+ casework inquiries completed
- 160+ people helped with Social Security benefits
- 400+ constituents helped with immigration issues
- Nearly 104,598 responses to constituents through emails, letters, and phone calls
Recognized Leadership
Congressman Auchincloss received the Government Leader Award from the Massachusetts Society for Medical Research in recognition of his commitment to strong intellectual property protection for novel innovation, and health insurance reform that ensures first-dollar coverage for medicines.
Democratic Whip Katherine Clark stated “Jake Auchincloss is a policy leader on lowering patients’ prescription drug costs. In his first term, he helped negotiate and pass the law that empowered Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Now he’s at the forefront of efforts to ensure that health insurers improve patient access and lower out-of-pocket costs.
Shattering Echo Chambers
Congressman Auchincloss continued his aggressive “go everywhere” media strategy this year, using his voice as a “prominent, pragmatic, voice among younger members of the Democratic caucus” to reach diverse audiences.
- During his fourth year in office, he made over 275 podcast, local media, and national television appearances.
- While he represents some of the bluest zip codes in the country, the largest city in his district, Fall River, flipped red for President Trump for the first time since President Coolidge in 1924. Congressman Auchincloss appeals to both constituencies, as he is one of the Democrats that makes regular rounds on non-traditional media and conservative media outlets like Fox News.
- As part of this approach, Auchincloss has consistently shattered echo chambers on both the far right and far left: be it flipping the script on the GOP’s pandering to the NRA on conservative media, or pushing back on the far-left’s bad faith attacks on Israel.
- This spring, Auchincloss garnered national headlines for calling out the far-left’s double-standard of failing to condemn the surge in antisemitic college protests.
- Called a “particularly tough interrogator of PBM executives” at a House Oversight Hearing in July, Auchincloss continued keeping the price-gouging abuses of PBMs at the forefront of national attention. Despite the GOP’s caving to the health insurance lobby at the end of this year, he will continue to put maximum pressure on PBMs next Congress.
As we head into another year of Republican leadership and a second Donald Trump presidency, Congressman Auchincloss will continue to defend democracy at home and abroad; uphold the rule of law and the sanctity of the Constitution; and advance bipartisan legislation to deliver results for Bay Staters.
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| Memorandum: Jake Auchincloss’ Fourth Year in Congress |
