ICYMI Cambridge had another win this week against Trump’s cuts. Last year, Trump's HUD tried to gut funding for permanent supportive housing, the kind of housing that keeps formerly homeless residents in homes.

The Gift of the Wind is one of Massachusetts' most iconic public art installations. When it opened at Porter Square 40 years ago, it became the MBTA's crown jewel. The sculpture even has its own wikipedia page (!) 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀, 𝗶𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿.

The lesson here is that Democrats should be running single-stair reform advocates in every race in every state

What actually happened was the 21st amendment passed and then John D. Rockefeller got this book commissioned and said in the forward "If carefully laid plans of control are not made, the old evils against which prohibition was invoked can easily return." And now we live with the consequences.

While we're on the topic of alcohol. It costs about $100,000 just to get a liquor license in Somerville. Before you sign a lease or pour a single drink. Why? A cap from prohibition times (1933). The city voted unanimously to scrap it. Beacon Hill said no. Let's lift the cap!

Cars are anti density. The more people, the harder it is to find parking and the more traffic. Transit is pro density. The more people, the more bus lines, the smaller the time between trains. By aligning development and transit policy, we can get both to improve and be more popular!

Let’s keep the good times going 🤘

For years, the Boston area has let state capacity fall away as private industry did a lot of heavy lifting on making things happen, both good and bad. Now, as we're facing a downturn, we need to revitalize our ability to dream big, and push for better. I'm proud to be supporting Burhan for that.

Where does a popular, AG-backed consumer protection go to die in Massachusetts? A private conference committee. The Senate passed a ban on predatory electric suppliers twice. Both times it vanished in conference, with no recorded vote and no explanation. Almost no one opposes this bill.

This is a nightmare electoral college map if blue states don't start building a lot more housing www.jchs.harvard.edu/son-2026-pop...

Thanks for pointing out the issue of underenforcement @ofsevit.bsky.social!

You might hear the T is going to redevelop Alewife and fix the issues. Don't count on it. They canceled the last RFP. They own 30 acres of prime real estate in Cambridge and can't do anything with it. They lack the will and imagination.

It looks like this proposed $3.75M single family home is now Going to be 9 more affordable units instead.

The opposition put forth this website to track the negative impacts of our zoning This is just a blighted property with no units being replaced with 43 including 9 forever affordable

George has lived near Alewife for 25 years. His son Eric is 20, has autism, and loves the trains. They're grateful for the service. They just want working bathrooms, a roof that isn't propped up, and a garage that isn't crumbling. Eric deserves a station that works.

Let’s not have the fun end when the World Cup does. Two policy orders on Monday to keep the good times going!

alewife: barely 40 years old and already crumbling bsky: same bestie same

Alewife is dystopian. Caution tape, boarded windows, whole sections abandoned. You'll hear we have the oldest subway in America. True. But Alewife opened in 1985. It's barely 40 years old and already crumbling. We deserve better and we can't accept the status quo.

Housing is the biggest budget line for every resident of our state and fixing the house of crisis would make a single biggest impact of any policy change. I’m proud to be running on housing.

Corporate lobby groups' ballot question to decimate the state budget just knocked off the ballot because of their fraudulent ballot summary. 🎉 #mapoli www.mass.gov/doc/finfer-v...

You've probably noticed everyone wants to cut the gas tax. It's lazy thinking... but they kinda have a point. The gas tax is dying as cars go electric, but the solution isn't just to cut funding. We need to get ahead of it and price the roads. We can bring congestion pricing here.

Great overview here about the corrupt incentives and manipulative secrecy that make Massachusetts lawmakers profoundly bad at doing their jobs – and how voters will have a chance to change things this fall. #mapoli

This will probably come up at CCTA the forum tonight.

We need to raise the salaries and ban discretionary stipends. House leadership should not have a say in Representatives pay.

Massachusetts has the least transparent legislature. We just won the journalists' Black Hole award for it. And if you cross leadership, you can lose a big share of your salary, so almost nobody does. That's why in 2023, 10,000 bills went in and only 21 made it out. youtu.be/EkNvXE7szcY

Your electric bill has a hidden premium in it. In Massachusetts, utilities buy power from suppliers who bid a fixed price. If they guess high and the real cost comes in lower, they keep the difference. You get no refund. 2015 to 2024, customers overpaid $12.3 billion. In 2023, over $100 a month.

Trump tried to cut $100 million a year from research that funds cancer treatment at Dana-Farber and biotech in Kendall. The court threw it out. He keeps breaking the law. We keep beating him in court. I want to bring that fight to the State House.

We got had a wedding. And for our honeymoon, we’re knocking on doors in Medford in 86 degree weather. Last month was a great one. We knocked on almost every door in the city, then I stepped away for a few campaign things and the wedding. Now we’re back at it, together.

The 2022 federal audit of the MBTA found too few workers, undertrained staff, and almost nothing fixed from the 2019 safety audit. The T then paid consultants millions it didn't have to re-diagnose the same problems. Some trains are now so old the T machines its own parts. The makers are gone.

We're in the NYTimes again! That's now three times since the start of May. The reason is housing is the number one crisis our state is facing and people are looking for a politician who will do something about it.

David Weinstein taught English and art in Massachusetts and New York public schools, including the New York School for the Deaf. In January, Cambridge made him the first School Committee elected chair since 1940. Today he endorsed our campaign. Thank you, David!

A dramatic jump in new apartments in Chittenden County — and a dip in demand — have contributed to a rising vacancy rate after the white-hot rental market of the pandemic years. Read more: https://ow.ly/YOAV50Z9Typ

MIT invented the fusion reactor now being built in Virginia. This is a common story. Massachusetts: where great companies are born and never raised. Silicon Valley runs on a pro-worker California law from 1872: the noncompete ban. It's time to bring it here.

The competitive electric supply market is a 25-year laissez-faire experiment that mostly transfers money from confused households to private suppliers. The Massachusetts AG has now tracked it for years: customers who switched lost money, more than 738 million dollars in total.

Go @burhanazeem.bsky.social go!! #mapoli

Massachusetts has one of the least productive legislatures in the country. Last week it moved fast for once: voting 125-28 to gut the audit 72% of voters approved and block the courts from enforcing it. No hearing, 24 hours to read it. They can move quickly. Just not for you.

It's summer and the potholes from winter are still here. Massachusetts has some of the worst maintained roads in the country, and the average driver pays about 620 dollars a year for the damage. Fixing them won't make headlines. We should do it anyway.

We guarantee a lawyer to anyone accused of a crime, but not to someone about to lose their home. In Massachusetts eviction court, 90% of landlords have counsel and only 3% of tenants do. It also saves money. The cost of is about $26M against $63M in avoided eviction and homelessness costs.

Massachusetts isn't dependent on gas by accident. Every clean alternative has been blocked. Offshore wind was killed by Trump twice. Hydropower was delayed by a Maine ballot question backed by fossil fuel companies. The result is a grid that's 75% gas and some of the highest bills in the country.

Mike has been consistently on the right side of this

We could really use the help on this campaign, so if you're local and have a few hours, come volunteer with us. My whole theory is that voters can handle the real answer. So instead of platitudes I want us to break down how we got a broken MBTA, a housing shortage and what actually fixes each one.

The MBTA is a case of shortchanging while overcommitting. The issues: 1. lowest-bid procurement, CRRC never built a railcar in the US 2: scope creep, the new trains had to be a Western mass jobs program and meet insane standard That's how you get a billion dollar bill and trains that derail

In most Massachusetts cities and towns, the housing that built the middle class and workforce would be illegal to build today. In Boston, 99% of existing residential buildings couldn’t be built today. Our Commonwealth’s future depends on our willingness to fix what we broke.

Most of our district, including the triple deckers everyone loves, was technically illegal to build. That's not an accident. It's the result of decades of rules that quietly banned the cheapest housing we ever built. Cambridge changed it last year. Every city in Massachusetts can too.

if leadership of the other 350 municipalities in MA were as clued in and as knowlegable as Burhan, all 7.5mm of us would be better off

The New York Times editorial board just came out in support of our ballot question to legalize starter homes. In much of the state you need up to two acres of land to build one home, so nobody builds anything modest. We basically outlawed the starter home. Time to make it legal again.

If dangerously broken in your apartment and you call inspectional services, your landlord can just decide to not renew your lease. Technically you sue them for retaliatory eviction but in practice it's almost impossible. Just cause eviction (which even NH has!) prevents such bad behavior.

Rat poison is one of the worst tools we have for reducing rats. Populations are capped by food, not by how many you kill, so the survivors just rebound. What doesn't rebound: the hawks, owls, and foxes that ate the poisoned rats.

I remember advocating for LA County's Measure M when I was a teen!!

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." That's the story of the mbta and how it went awry. The T runs on a state tax that's always short, set by legislators whose voters don't ride it. LA faced the identical broken incentive in 2008 and fixed it. Montreal did too