Rep. Jake Auchincloss

10/19/2026

As co-chair of the Massachusetts STEM Advisory Council, I am always working to understand up close the Bay State's education & workforce system for technical talent. Last week I saw three successful phases: STARBASE Academy at Hanscom Air Force Base, which offers STEM enrichment for K-12 students and teachers; Bristol Aggie, an agriculture trade school in Dighton; and MIT Lincoln Lab, a federally funded research & development center.

From elementary students seeing themselves as scientists after a week of fun instruction, to high-schoolers running their own automated dairy farm, to elite researchers pioneering quantum computing, Massachusetts always gets a big return on STEM investment. I support enhanced funding for the Department of Defense's STARBASE educational enrichment and for federally funded research centers like MIT Lincoln Lab; I also have legislation to fund the construction of more trade schools like Bristol Aggie by taxing the social media corporations.

10/18/2026

Rehoboth's local leadership and I met to discuss PFAS remediation. The town has no public water system, so it is not eligible for the two most impactful federal & state clean-water programs. We talked through other ways I can help with federal funding, and I will stay in close partnership with Rehoboth as it addresses the leeching of PFAS into groundwater near its fire stations.

This small town's experience with PFAS from firefighter foam is another example of why I am pressing so hard in Washington for an essential-use framework for PFAS, similar to how ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out in the 1980s with the Montreal Protocol. In this framework, PFAS would only be permitted for essential products where it is non-substitutable, like medical devices, and those producers would be responsible for on-site mitigation. Other, non-essential, products that use PFAS, like skis and cookware, would be required to phase out the chemicals.

It's much cheaper & easier to get PFAS out of its bio-accumulation cycle at the factory site, with clear corporate accountability, rather than digging it out of the soil and groundwater years later, when responsibility ends up on the taxpayers.

10/16/2026

“Massachusetts lawmakers should boldly promote the [biotech] industry, which plays a crucial role in the state’s economy, Auchincloss said ... 'What makes us great, [he said], is high [...] standards paired with the world’s best talent getting funded to pursue curiosity-driven research.'"

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) has some advice for fellow lawmakers: unapologetically support the biotech industry.

10/09/2026

South Weymouth Naval Air Station was established during WWII as the Navy's northeastern-most station for airship operations and research. Massive blimps surveilled the waters for German submarines. In 1995, the base was closed. The state and host communities Weymouth, Rockland and Abington then grappled with three failed developers over 25 years.

Finally, right before the pandemic, the fourth (and hopefully final) master developer took over. I visited the site, now called Union Point, to see the progress. It's impressive: financial & legal clean-up, land assembly & zoning permits, and infrastructure approved & funded. Shovels will soon go in the ground for 6,000 new homes, a walkable downtown, large commercial properties, new roads, and walking & biking paths to complement the hundreds of acres of preserved green space and recreation areas.

While Union Point is not in the district, I visited because it's the most ambitious single project in the commonwealth for solving our biggest economic challenge: the price of housing. I have written and spoken frequently about how developing new towns can improve both affordability and productivity, so I was fascinated to learn about this development up close. Most critical for its success will be water; Union Point needs an MWRA extension to provide millions of gallons.

10/08/2026

Eliya Cohen was held hostage in Hamas' terror tunnels for 505 days. He was chained, starved, and beaten. Every morning, he and his fellow captives prayed in Hebrew so that their captors would know that their Jewish spirit was unbroken. His girlfriend, Ziv Abud, was with him at the Nova Music Festival. She escaped a bomb shelter in which their family and friends were murdered by terrorists using grenades & guns.

Eliya & Ziv were honored guests at Temple Shalom in Newton on October 7th to share their story (he learned English from a book that Hersh Goldberg-Polin gave him to pass the time in the tunnels) in commemoration of the third anniversary of the Hamas attacks. I joined hundreds of others to bear witness, memorialize the thousands slain, and take inspiration from the indomitable spirit of Eliya and Ziv. Sustaining Americans' memory of October 7th is an homage for the victims, a tribute to the heroes, and a powerful way to strengthen the resolve of the Jewish community.

10/05/2026

The shipping company Maersk opened a massive fulfillment center in Hopedale. This warehouse – the size of multiple football fields – will be a distribution hub for the northeastern United States & support high-volume fulfillment operations, employing approximately 1,000 people when fully running. I toured the warehouse and met with its leadership to learn more about this major new employer in the district and establish lines of communication.

10/05/2026

Congress for the New Urbanism invited me to address their New England summit. What an honor to speak to an audience that includes Jeff Speck, whose book Walkable City has been a major influence on me.

I spoke about how Democrats should adopt localism as a defining theme of our platform — not just a tool of resistance to MAGA when we’re out of power, but an instrument of better housing & mobility policy, through measures like Street Votes for zoning and by devolving the federal Dept of Transportation to the states.

10/02/2026

State Representative Mike Soter (R) and I spent the afternoon in Blackstone together. First we spoke to high-schoolers at Blackstone-Millville Regional, then we met with local officials to discuss public safety & infrastructure priorities that federal & state funding can support. Partisanship is fierce in Washington, but inside the MA-4 I work closely with Republican state & local officials to deliver for our shared constituents. Rep. Soter & I debated & discussed national & state policies in our Q&A with the high schoolers, then went over to town hall to work on local issues together.

10/01/2026

The Trustees of Reservations is the largest agricultural land holder in the state. I visited Powisset Farm in Dover to meet with their leadership & Board to discuss the Farm Bill. The Republican Farm Bill from this term, which cuts $187B from food stamps and $1B from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, is unlikely to pass. Next term, if Democrats have control over one or both chambers, we will need to amend the legislation. The Trustees gave me insight into good agricultural conservation and habitat preservation policies in this term's proposed Farm Bill that should be included next term, too.

I also got to tour Powisset Farm and learn about its programming for children in farming & cooking; the R&D it does for organic and polyculture farming, and its community-supported agriculture model in which 330+ families have shares in its harvest.

09/28/2026

"Americans have conflicting views of housing, said Congressman Jake Auchincloss; they expect it to be both an asset for building wealth (with growing value) and also a widely available, affordable commodity with stable pricing. “We need attainable middle-class homeownership,” he said. Massachusetts is pricing-out the middle class and creating a generational divide among Democrats. The average first-time homebuyer is now 42, up from 29 in 1981 and 33 in 2021. He suggested people could focus on investments beyond housing to build wealth.

Congressman Auchincloss suggested hyper-local zoning as a way to support new housing development. It empowers neighbors on a street or even a single block to agree on zoning specific to their own immediate area. John Myers, who runs the YIMBY Alliance in London, has said that with hyper-local zoning, “votes by street or by block would give residents a way to negotiate to share the benefits of new development and ensure that it will suit them.” London, Houston, and Japan are used as examples of increased housing through hyper-local zoning.

Congressman Auchincloss said Massachusetts needs modular housing, and it needs to be manufactured in-state to bring down costs. He suggested manufacturing and developing modular housing on unused military bases and said the Metropolitan Area Planning Council is looking into this."

At Newton for Everyone’s forum, How Housing Scarcity is Costing Massachusetts Political Power, Boston University Professor Maxwell Palmer advocated for statewide zoning to increase housing and maintain Massachusetts’s political power. Congressman Jake Auchincloss said he does not believe the num...