Marjorie Decker

Artificial intelligence offers incredible potential, but our primary focus must always be protecting workers, families, and everyday people. As technology advances rapidly, residents are rightly concerned about job displacement, unfair automated decisions, and the loss of personal privacy. Balancing innovation with accountability means establishing common-sense safeguards so technology serves the public good rather than undercutting working-class communities.

First, we must protect workers by ensuring AI tools assist employees rather than serve as a pretext for sudden mass layoffs or invasive workplace surveillance. Workers deserve transparency when automated systems impact their hiring, evaluations, or employment status. Second, we must safeguard personal privacy by preventing tech companies from harvesting and selling personal data without explicit consent.

Common-sense oversight means drawing clear lines against real-world harms — like identity theft, scam impersonations, and algorithmic bias in housing, credit, and healthcare — while allowing smaller businesses, local entrepreneurs, and researchers the freedom to innovate. Protecting innovation does not require sacrificing worker dignity or personal privacy. By focusing safeguards strictly on high-risk uses and corporate accountability, Massachusetts can lead in tech development while keeping our workforce secure and ensuring tech tools benefit everyone, not just large corporations.

Growing up in public housing, I know firsthand how vital public parks, green spaces, and clean natural preserves are for working-class families who might not otherwise have access to nature. Protecting our natural resources requires an active defense of our water supplies, public lands, and community health against emerging environmental threats.

A critical concern for our natural infrastructure is the resource intensity of proposed AI data centers. These high-density facilities place an immense strain on local energy grids and draw millions of gallons of water for cooling. I strongly support a moratorium on data center expansion until state regulators thoroughly evaluate their impact on our water tables, energy capacity, and local ecosystems. We cannot allow corporate computing demands to compromise community drinking water or drain local resources.

Additionally, I am leading efforts to combat toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” that pollute our soil, rivers, and agricultural lands. My focus is on restricting PFAS in consumer products, eliminating chemical discharges into local waterways, and supporting farmers whose land is disrupted by toxic runoff. By establishing strict oversight on industrial water usage, funding park access for all neighborhoods, and aggressively remediating chemical pollutants, we can ensure our water resources and open spaces remain clean, accessible, and protected for generations to come.

Healthcare is a fundamental human right, yet skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs and corporate practices continue to put essential care out of reach for too many families. Ensuring affordable, ready access to care requires confronting corporate intermediaries, lowering drug prices at the source, and removing arbitrary insurance barriers that delay life-saving treatments.

To drive down costs, I supported the major PBM reforms passed by the Legislature last session to bring transparency and oversight to pharmacy benefit managers. Moving forward, we must continue evaluating additional ways to lower drug prices, including state-sponsored, in-state drug manufacturing to directly produce affordable essential medicines like insulin, naloxone, and epinephrine, bypassing corporate monopolies to reduce costs for residents.

Equally important is guaranteeing that care isn’t blocked by bureaucratic hurdles. I proudly authored and passed landmark legislation reforming “step therapy” — the harmful insurance practice requiring patients to “fail first” on cheaper, insurer-preferred drugs before receiving the medication their doctor actually prescribed. Moving forward, I am fighting to establish caps on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, expand MassHealth eligibility, protect our community safety-net hospitals, and maintain telehealth payment parity. Healthcare decisions must remain between patients and their trusted medical providers, not insurance companies. By building on recent reforms, tackling high drug prices, and eliminating barriers to care, we can ensure Massachusetts delivers affordable, high-quality healthcare to every resident.

Higher education is the engine of our state’s economy and scientific discovery, but it should not be a debt trap. To reduce the financial burden on students, we must invest in public programs that expand access and lower costs across the board.

In recent years, Massachusetts has made historic strides toward universal higher education. I strongly support and celebrate the success of MassReconnect, which made community college completely tuition- and fee-free for state residents aged 25 and older. Building on this success, we expanded this model statewide through MassEducate, making public community college free for all Massachusetts residents, regardless of age or income. Crucially, our commitment to education must be inclusive. I am a staunch advocate for our state’s Tuition Equity Law, which ensures that undocumented students and immigrants who attended a Massachusetts high school for at least three years can access in-state tuition and state financial aid.

To build on this momentum, I support expanding the MassGrant Plus program to completely cover tuition, fees, and book costs for low- and middle-income students attending our state’s four-year public universities. By protecting immigrant students, strengthening worker rights, and funding our public institutions as public goods, we can ensure that a career in science and higher education is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background.

Early-career researchers and graduate students drive Massachusetts’ innovation economy, but federal funding uncertainty and rising living costs threaten our scientific talent pipeline. To protect our research ecosystem, we must expand state-backed fellowships, protect living stipends, and directly leverage state resources to insulate our institutions from federal cuts.

I remain in close communication with our Congressional delegation to determine how the Commonwealth can best shield local research from federal budget cuts. Recognizing this urgency, the House of Representatives passed a landmark economic development bill including $200 million to offset shortfalls in federal research funds. Within the package, $175 million was allocated for our public universities and $25 million for private nonprofit institutions. I will advocate for utilizing these investments, alongside entities like the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center and MassTech Collaborative, to fund dedicated early-career training grants, post-doctoral fellowships, and bridge funding for emerging researchers.

Ensuring a significant portion of this state relief directly supports graduate students and early-career scientists will keep breakthrough projects on track. Furthermore, scientific discovery should never be reserved for those who can afford low pay in high-cost regions. I will continue fighting for state grant guidelines that guarantee living stipends, health coverage, and housing protections for researchers, while expanding state science policy fellowships to empower underrepresented scientists to lead Massachusetts in clean energy, biotechnology, and public health.